Last month, I held a meeting where I informed my community about fraud and the abuse of a type of lien against a property called a notice of security interest, or NOSI for short.

As you know, people across our province, especially seniors and vulnerable members of our communities, have been victimized by unscrupulous door-to-door salespeople who have used every trick in the book to try to scam them into a bad contract. Many of these scams involve NOSIs without the knowledge of the victim. So these liens sit unnoticed until the time comes to sell, take out a loan, or refinance your home. During this stressful time, the victims are extorted to pay large amounts to have the lien removed, or spend loads of time and money in the courts trying to reverse this vexatious registration. These liens are often in the tens of thousands. A family in my riding had over a dozen NOSIs placed on their home—a dozen.

In many cases, the personal banking and identification of these victims are trafficked and used to commit other types of fraud. In extreme cases, the victims are tricked into signing reverse mortgages in an attempt for the thieves to steal their homes.

At my town hall, residents couldn’t believe that the government hasn’t put an end to this yet. I let my residents know about our private members’ bill to ban NOSIs, and they all insisted that it be passed immediately.

Once again, I call on this government to ban NOSIs in Ontario and to notify all Ontarians who have a NOSI on their property, free of charge.

I want to commend the member for her speech and for focusing on her own community.

My question is about value for money. My question is simple: Does the member believe that, at a cost of a billion dollars, this was good value for money for nursing, when instead of paying public nurses a better rate, they went out to agencies—at a cost of a billion dollars—to get one third of the hours they would have got from public nurses in our health care system?

I’d like to also welcome members of the Armenian Community Centre. Also, I’d like to especially welcome my friend and neighbour, former MPP Faisal Hassan.