It is an honour to rise as the official opposition’s lead in speaking to government Bill 142, entitled Better for Consumers, Better for Businesses Act.

Nothing personal here, of course, but as you could imagine, on this side of the House, we deal with government bills with a healthy amount of skepticism, as many bills come wrapped in a hopeful name and elegant packaging but too often hide a dangerous core. As a matter of fact, many opposition critics and researchers have become violently ill when handling new government legislation at times.

Speaker, I have a young family to take care of, and I could not take any chances, so I did the only responsible thing, as critic, before diving into this legislation: I first contacted poison control to take the first look. And so there I was, watching with trepidation, at a safe distance, as the team went about leafing through this highly technical bill in their bright yellow haz-mat suits. And imagine the relief and surprise I felt when, after a long period of examination, the team began unzipping their suits and handling the bill with bare hands. We haven’t found a poison pill, for now.

But in all seriousness, I’d like to acknowledge and congratulate the minister and Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery for their work on this bill, which entirely repeals the Consumer Protection Act, 2002, and replaces it with the legislation we are now debating, and which I believe will improve consumer protection in some important areas—a process that has no doubt taken many months, if not years.

While the government has numbers—meaning an army of staff—and time on their side when it comes to drafting legislation, we in the opposition have neither when it comes to critiquing and analyzing it. So I would like to thank our small but mighty research team, especially Caitlin Hipkiss, for her tremendous work in a short time. As well, I’d like to thank a number of other contributors who have come through in a short period, including Marina Pavlović, associate professor at the faculty of law at the University of Ottawa; Dave Deonarain, real estate lawyer; the consumers council; Canadians for Properly Built Homes; consumer advocate Barbara Captijn; Linda Palmieri, a concerned citizen; and many more I’ve had the chance to contact in this short time.

I’d also again like to thank the minister and his ministry for arranging a short technical briefing that helped address some of the immediate concerns we had upon reading the bill.

Speaker, the need for consumer protection in Ontario has never been greater. As many find themselves affected by the affordability crisis, the value of a dollar means more now than ever. People are frustrated out of their minds with price gouging, misleading advertisements, shrinkflation. To top it off, entire industries are posting massive profits while people are struggling to survive. And, of course, there’s an unending variety of scams particularly targeting our elderly and most vulnerable. It is our responsibility, as legislators, to ensure that Ontarians have the gold standard of consumer protection that they deserve.

That being said, today we are debating a government consumer protection bill that would replace and repeal the existing act that’s there today. Analyzing this act was challenging, as parts of the act have been moved around and deleted entirely, leaving us concerned that consumers would not be protected in some areas. As well, certain protections were removed from legislation, placed into regulation—and this reminded us of what happened with the PAWS Act. As you may remember, there was a problem when provisions were removed and were to be prescribed by regulation—however, when the regulations were delayed, it actually led to no laws in place for a period of time. This caused a series of problems, and we want to ensure consumers don’t find themselves in a similar situation, without protection—because this bill moves many provisions from legislation into regulation and also appears to expand the scope of what provisions can be made into regulation.

Early analysis from law firms has suggested that this list of areas signals that the regulations under the new CPA may be more detailed and expansive than the current version. It is difficult to ascertain what the impact will be, as we do not yet have the text of the regulations, which is always a challenge. As it stands, we know that previous provisions on motor vehicles and the cashing of government cheques have been removed from the legislation in favour of shifting to regulation, as an example.

At the briefing, ministry staff answered some of our questions and said that there would be a seamless transition that would not leave unintended holes in protections. So I will move on and dig deeper into this legislation.

When this legislation was announced on October 23, the government stated that it would “strengthen protections and make life easier for consumers and businesses” through a series of initiatives it included in its backgrounder. I will now reference each initiative and briefly discuss whether I think it is a valid issue to be addressed and if the government’s aims will improve said issues. So let’s see what they are.

First off, tackling unfair business practices: This legislation changes language to allow that it is a prohibited practice to charge for goods or services that grossly exceeds the price at which similar goods or services are available from similar suppliers—or to state it simply, price gouging is not allowed. In the midst of this affordability crisis, the public certainly wants to see action on this. After grocery chain CEOs testified in the House of Commons, Dalhousie University polled Canadians about their opinions on food inflation; 31% of Ontarian respondents blamed price gouging, and a significant number of respondents across the country believed it was in fact the role of government to intervene.

We New Democrats are committed to fighting price gouging wherever it rears its greedy head, and we are interested to know how this government intends to do it with this legislation. In the way that it is worded, it will not stop industry-wide gouging but will only address individual sellers as compared to their competitors as a whole. This legislation defines price gouging as an unconscionable act and includes other examples such as the misrepresentation of products or services.

At present, unconscionable acts include representations that goods are new or unused if they are not, for example representing a used appliance for sale as if it was new. This can lead to serious consequences in the mechanical safety and operation of the item. It also prohibits exploiting a person’s inability to understand and expands these rights to include language barriers as a reason as to why a person may not be able to understand a contract. It also goes further to lay out that it is an unconscionable act to enter into a contract with a consumer if the person or business doing so knows that there is no reasonable chance that the consumer will be able to pay the total amount owing under the contract.

This bill changes language to allow that it is a prohibited practice to charge a price for goods or services that grossly exceeds the price of other similar goods. So this is an attempt to curb gouging, and that is good. The only problem, you could argue, is, well, what happens when an entire section of the market is charging high prices? So I have questions about what would happen in monopoly situations where similar suppliers or businesses are all offering products with the same inflated price. You might say that this act is not intended to regulate the market—and I guess that’s a different discussion, but I appreciate this safeguard in place here. So while all these aims of the proposed legislation and this initiative seem to all be positive and supportable, it remains to be seen how this will be undertaken and enforced.

The next initiative, addressing predatory practices by some suppliers leasing equipment to homeowners: This issue has garnered quite a bit of media attention. Often they involve door-to-door HVAC rentals and sales that have resulted in many consumers being taken advantage of due to an inability to understand often-misleading contracts and terms. In this initiative, the government tries to address a common problem in what they call purchase-cost-plus leases, where the amount of product drastically exceeds the cost of the purchased good.

A purchase-cost-plus lease is an agreement where a party agrees to reimburse the contract party for expenses plus a specified profit proportional to the full value of the contract—for example, you need to purchase an item that’s $1,000, but you don’t have that up front; instead, you enter into a contract where the full term is $1,300 over two years, and you pay a monthly fee to the person providing the contract with that extra profit.

Cost-plus leases can be a large problem when the amount of profit drastically exceeds the cost of the good. This bill would add provisions that would entitle the lessee to purchase the leased goods and terminate the lease at any point during the lease term, upon payment, not exceeding the cost at which the lessee may purchase the leased good. The cost must decrease to $0 during the lease term.

The legislation states that a purchase-cost-plus lease would be “a lease under which the total amount payable exceeds 90% of the estimated retail value of the leased goods.” The provision does not regulate the market, but it does regulate at what point a consumer can exercise their rights. For example, a furnace at retail could cost $6,000. Frequently, we will see contracts with exorbitant markups. With these new provisions, using $6,000 as an example, the total amount payable could now go up to $11,400, but not above. For contrast, in one case, a senior couple in Welland saw a $43,000 bill for a $6,000 furnace.

So this change seems to be a positive move, as the legislation adds provisions to allow customers to purchase and terminate the lease at any point during the term, requires that costs decrease to $0 during the lease term and caps, and even more.

There are also some provisions here that limit contracts being initiated at a person’s dwelling, and that clearly state that consumers may, without any reason, cancel certain listed consumer contracts within 10 days. I think this section is long overdue, as door-to-door sales have resulted in a huge amount of consumer complaints that continue to shock people when reported in the media. One such type of scam is referred to as notices of security interest, often referred to as NOSIs or liens, which I will cover in greater detail soon. This initiative is welcome, and certainly supportable.

Providing an exit for time-shares: This initiative is self-explanatory and needed, as many consumers and their families locked into infinite time-share contracts exist today. With this new legislation, a consumer can automatically exit a time-share contract after 25 years, or at the time of their passing, with limits to any exit costs. It is also worth noting that the ability to exit a time-share contract on or after the 25-year anniversary, so long as the termination fees and other requirements are met, is in fact retroactive. This is good. It is not often that we see retroactive changes. I believe this will assist many individuals who are struggling to resolve disputes relating to time-shares for deceased family members. We do not have more information, as this will be defined in regulations, but this initiative will improve the current situation for consumers.

Clarifying rules for gift cards: again, another self-explanatory initiative that seeks to clarify that all purchased prepaid cards cannot expire, regardless of how they are purchased. Despite an already-existing ban on gift card expiration dates in Ontario, CTV News reported earlier this year the case of Carola Della Mattia of Brampton, whose $250 prepaid Visa gift card had an expiry date as well as a service fee that ate away at the balance—as prepaid credit cards may also have activation fees and maintenance or dormancy fees deducted each month that many are unaware of. Like too many consumers who are taken advantage of, Carola only found justice after the company was shamed in the media.

I should also note that points and loyalty cards that are used for collecting store awards are not covered by gift card rules, so we could see there is room for improvement here.

It is also interesting to note that approximately 2% to 4% of gift cards in the US are never claimed, representing billions in profits for retailers, according to a study by the Retail Gift Card Association. I imagine the statistics are similar here.

I also wonder about protecting consumers who have gift cards for stores that have declared bankruptcy. You may wonder, how does the gift card rule apply to this and protect consumers? Well, currently it does not. When a company files for bankruptcy, the ban on gift card expiry is not applied. Enhanced clarity on this to ensure that all gift cards cannot expire is welcome.

The next initiative, protecting consumers’ right to take action in court—