The issue with the price-gouging provisions of this bill is that they apply to companies. They don’t apply to sectors where similar suppliers are all charging the same inflated price. So if a constituent comes to me with concerns about price gouging, I would tell them to advocate to the government to put in place strengthened protections for consumers to prohibit unscrupulous price gouging by large companies across a sector, as we are currently seeing in the sale of food and groceries.

Unfortunately, this government voted against the private member’s bill that we had brought forward and also chose not to create that consumer watchdog position, despite the support for that position and the advocacy for that position from many consumer protection experts.

We have pointed out several places where the legislation could be improved. We’ve also raised a concern about a number of provisions being shifted to regulation, and so without being able to see those regulations, it is difficult to ascertain how exactly this legislation will impact consumers in this province.

I would like to ask a question of the member on the opposite side about the consumer watchdog position, which is the proposal that had been brought forward by the official opposition.

We know that it can be very difficult for consumers to exercise their consumer protection rights. Often, the only avenue is to pursue matters legally. That is not available to many consumers, and it is cost-prohibitive. So, a consumer watchdog position would be able to provide those protections that consumers deserve and need without having to pursue legal action.

It is a pleasure to rise today to participate in this debate on Bill 142, the government’s consumer protection legislation entitled Better for Consumers, Better for Businesses Act. I want to start by commending the critic for consumer protection for the official opposition, the member for Humber River–Black Creek, who spoke for an hour on this bill yesterday and set out the need for strengthened consumer protections for people in this province, and also identified some of the gaps in this legislation, some of the work that still needs to be done to make sure that consumers in this province are protected.

Certainly, having this debate today in the context of an affordability crisis that has significantly challenged people in this province, especially people who are on low income—we are hearing every day from constituents, the people we represent, about concerns as to whether people will be able to make their paycheque last the week, whether they will be able to put food on the table, whether they will be able to pay their rent. Particularly, tenants who are living in apartment buildings or units that were constructed since November 2018 do not have any rent control on the units that they occupy, so every year when the new rent is announced to the tenants, they worry about whether they will be able to continue to live in the unit that they call home.

We know affordability is a challenge. We hear also from people about their utility bills, the cost of Internet access, cellphone bills. All of this in today’s economy has really created huge pressure, so consumers need to be protected, because dollars are scarce and they want to make sure that when they purchase something, they will be treated fairly.

One of the issues that my colleague raised when he spoke to this bill yesterday was about the fact that the government has moved many regulatory provisions of consumer protection legislation from bill form or from the legislation into regulations. The member pointed out yesterday that this can be a problem because it can delay the implementation of the legislation. It can delay making sure that those protections are put into place.

The PAWS Act: Many members in this place may remember the debate on that legislation for the protection of animal welfare. When the PAWS Act moved provisions from legislation to regulation, it caused considerable delay in getting the bill enacted, because there had to be the consultation done on the regulations and sometimes that process takes time and delays the enactment of the bill.

Further to that, Speaker, there’s not only the concern that there may be a delay in getting these protections in place, but we have seen examples of legislation that is designed to protect consumers and citizens in this province—legislation that is debated in this House, goes to committee, gets public input, comes back to this House for third reading and actually gets royal assent, but then is never proclaimed. I want to use the example of an act called the Access to Consumer Credit Reports and Elevator Availability Act. That was legislation that the Liberals brought in in the dying days of their mandate in 2018. The bill went through all of the stages required by the legislative process. It got royal assent, but it has never been enacted.

I have a situation right now in my riding in London West where people have been harmed because that legislation, the Access to Consumer Credit Reports and Elevator Availability Act, has not been enacted, so the protections in that bill, even though it has had royal assent and is waiting to be put into force, are not available to people in this province. And the particular concern in London West right now—I know in ridings across this province, many MPPs will have heard this—is around elevator maintenance and repair. There is a building in my riding, 1 Andover Drive, where it’s a four-storey walk-up and it is occupied by many, many seniors—vulnerable seniors, seniors with mobility issues—and their elevator is out of commission. They have been told that it could take up to four months to get that elevator repaired, and there’s no legislation on the books to require the building manager or the owner to make those repairs in a timely fashion.

Seniors from that building have contacted my office and they’ve talked about the fact that they feel that they “are being held hostage.” An email I received just last week says that the fact that it could take up to four months to repair the elevator is “unacceptable, grossly negligible and quite frankly feels like we are being held hostage in our apartments ... we are looking at” having to spend maybe the entire “winter being locked in.” Speaker, you can imagine for vulnerable people, for seniors who have medical needs, the impact of the loss of access to the elevator.

One senior who lives on the third floor uses a cane and can’t use the stairs. He said that he has had to cancel medical appointments that he had scheduled for an upcoming knee operation, so he’s not able to make it out of his apartment to get to those necessary medical appointments. Another tenant said that he has had to cancel a dialysis appointment because he can’t manage to get up and down the stairs. This is an important protection that people in this province need to feel assured of, and there is legislation that would offer that protection. It would require the elevator to be repaired in a timely fashion, and that protection, even though it’s on the books, isn’t enacted. That legislation is not in force.

So that is definitely what we do not want to see happen with this piece of consumer legislation. We want to make sure that when it moves through the legislative process, moves through the regulatory consultation process, once those stages are complete, the legislation will be not only passed and get royal assent but that it will be enacted for people in this province.

Some of the provisions of this bill speak directly to some concerns that I have heard from constituents in London West. I want to talk about the issue of time-shares. I was recently contacted by a constituent who said he had signed a time-share contract in 1999 when he and his wife were in their late fifties. The duration of the contract was 50 years, which they felt was too long, but they were assured that if they wanted to terminate the time-share contract, the time-share company would buy it back from them or they could sell it on the open market.

Subsequently, they discovered that there never was a buy-back option available from the company. They said that “it is impossible to even give the time-share away for free on the open market.” They raised the concern that they are essentially on a fixed income now as retirees, yet the maintenance fees for the time-share are increasing by at least the cost of living every year. They advocated for an exit clause to be available to all time-share owners and resorts in Ontario. He says, “Over the years, we have met many time-share owners and most want to terminate their contracts.”

This bill, by putting in place an ability to terminate a time-share contract after 25 years and making that retroactive—there’s no question that that will assist many consumers in this province, like my constituents in London West who are in a time-share agreement that they want to get out of.

However, it’s unfortunate that the government didn’t strengthen consumer protections for other issues related to home ownership and property ownership. In particular, I want to talk about Tarion. There is a real problem that the government did not do anything to strengthen the Tarion provision for new homeowners.

The organization Canadians for Properly Built Homes has been advocating for better protections for new-home owners for years. They raise the concern that the legislation that’s before us today does not address many of the key concerns that they have raised that are necessary to help purchasers of newly built homes. They argue that the government has a responsibility to ensure that the largest purchase that most people ever make in their lifetime, a home, is good quality and that it meets basic code provisions. They note that the bill fails to address the ongoing serious shortcomings of administrative authorities that are supposed to be providing consumer protection oversight, such as the Home Construction Regulatory Authority, the Ontario Builder Directory and others.

Of course, I’m very proud of the work that the NDP has been doing to push for the necessary reforms to Tarion, to push for a full public audit of Tarion and to strengthen protections for new-home buyers. I’m also very proud of the work that the NDP has done to—

I was very proud of our party’s initiative in the last election to launch the Green New Democratic Deal. This was a bold, ambitious, detailed plan to bring jobs and protect climate in our province and get us where we need to be, with a 50% reduction by 2050.

We do support an electric vehicle strategy. That was a big piece of our Green New Democratic Deal. One of the things that we are committed to is a financial rebate for consumers to purchase electric vehicles. We know from other jurisdictions that financial assistance to purchase not the Teslas, not the luxury EVs, but the growing number of mid-range electric vehicles that are coming onto the market—if we want to really jump-start that market, we have to provide the financial assistance to consumers to purchase those vehicles.