Proposed Changes Improve Protections for Building a New Home and Buying Travel, Real Estate and Event Tickets
Ontario is introducing legislation that would, if passed, strengthen protection for consumers making significant purchases like buying event tickets or travel services, and purchasing or selling real estate, including newly built homes.
Tracy MacCharles, Minister of Government and Consumer Services, made the announcement today in Toronto.
The Strengthening Protection for Ontario Consumers Act would:
- Strengthen confidence in Ontario’s new home warranties and protections by introducing significant changes, including the creation of two administrative authorities — one to administer the new home warranty program and one to regulate new home builders and vendors.
- Introduce stronger rules and professional standards in the real estate sector, including new measures to address conflict of interest issues that arise in multiple representation situations and heavier fines for Code of Ethics violations by real estate professionals.
- Further protect consumers buying travel services by enabling the creation of new rules for representations, such as advertising by out of province travel businesses that target Ontarians, creating new registration requirements for individual travel salespersons and improving compliance with the rules by enhancing enforcement tools, such as administrative penalties.
- Help prevent ticket fraud and excessive markups in the resale ticket market, including banning ticket bots and the sale of tickets that were purchased using bots, capping the resale price of tickets at 50 per cent above face value, requiring businesses selling or reselling tickets to disclose key information to consumers and establishing new enforcement measures.
Strengthening consumer protection is part of our plan to create jobs, grow our economy and help people in their everyday lives.
Quick Facts
- The Honourable Douglas Cunningham, Q.C., conducted an independent, public review of the Ontario New Home Warranties Plan Act and the Tarion Warranty Corporation that identified opportunities to improve consumer protection for new home buyers.
- The new proposed rules for real estate agents are part of the government’s Fair Housing Plan announced in the spring.
- Consultations with the public and the travel industry helped inform ways to better protect consumers who book a vacation or buy other travel services in Ontario.
- Through an online survey, Ontario heard from more than 34,000 fans who shared their experiences and ideas about buying and selling tickets online.
Background Information
Additional Resources
Quotes
“I am pleased to introduce proposed legislation that will provide consumers with the protection they deserve when making significant purchases — like a new home, a dream vacation or concert tickets. Building a fair, safe and informed marketplace is a key priority of this government. We are committed to strengthening consumer protection and making it work better for everyone.”
“Stronger rules for buying and selling tickets will help give fans a fair shot at getting music, sports or theatre tickets. Our proposed changes will ban bots and excessive mark ups, prevent fraud, and provide more information in the ticket industry. We are putting fans first by making the industry more transparent and tickets more affordable.”
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