NDP pushes consumer protection agenda
Alberta’s payday loan merchants are upset, the dears.
Profits are down. In these miserable times, they can only score 200 per cent annual interest on a short-term loan, not 600 for weekly payments, as they did in the good old days before the NDP.
The federal legal limit for criminal usury is 60 per cent per annum, but provinces can make exceptions. Alberta’s payday lenders benefited from whoppers, thanks to years of casual oversight by the Progressive Conservatives.
The lenders now say Alberta is an “extreme” case of restriction on these loans. To the NDP, that’s high praise. It means that desperate people are no longer being buried under mountains of debt.
The government’s contempt is obvious. They called their legislation An Act to End Predatory Lending. It passed third reading one year ago.
The NDP’s consumer protection agenda is now much wider and deeper, a kind of social holy war designed not just to protect vulnerable people from abuse, but to build support among those middle and lower-income groups.
The government has no interest whatever in placating interest groups like the lenders. They’ll act wherever a significant number of people are getting screwed by lax rules or scammers.
So far, new rules and laws cover industries from home building to financial services, energy sales, auto dealers and much more.
Just last week, Finance Minister Joe Ceci announced tougher rules for investigating stockbrokers and mutual fund salespeople.
In this case, the NDP isn’t actively disgusted, just rightly concerned that in generally wellrun industries, shady people can slip through.
Alberta is, after all, the land of Bre-X and Ponzi artist Milowe Brost.
The bill now before the legislature gives two industry regulatory bodies power to compel evidence and testimony. They would be exempt from civil suits.
The bill contains no provision for scammed customers to be repaid, but at least it’s a deterrent against more being duped in the first place.
Another big one is licensing of Alberta’s 4,000 residential builders. Currently, there’s no registry at all. Anybody with a hammer and a business card can be a builder. Even builders convicted of fraud have kept right on going, unbeknownst to their clients.
Builders will have to apply for a licence and secure warranties on new homes. They’ll be required to disclose full financial history. There will be an online registry of licensed builders.
Ontario, B.C. and Quebec already licensed builders. Alberta’s fees — $600 for the first application, $500 annually thereafter — are identical to B.C.’s. Ontario and Quebec charge much more.
The NDP also acted fast to stem scams in Fort McMurray after the great fire. Currently, there are 153 active investigations relating to home builders, renovation contractors and others who fall under the Fair Trading Act.
The province also nailed a landlord for raising a tenant’s rent during the mandatory price freeze. It was the first such charge ever laid under the Emergency Management Act.
The government has banned door-to-door sales of electricity and natural gas contracts, slamming the door on scammers who pressured vulnerable people, especially seniors, into unfavourable deals.
Another major move is the overhaul of the Alberta Motor Vehicle Industry Council, a body that was supposed to help car buyers but more often protected the auto dealers.
“This is an organization that perhaps fell off the tracks,” Service Alberta Minister Stephanie McLean said last December. That was kind. It flew into a ditch at high speed.
One AMVIC duty was to compensate scammed buyers. In 2014, despite having $4 million in the kitty, AMVIC concluded that only a single claim met the payment criteria. The wronged customer got $2,000.
The CEO is gone and the organization is now being overhauled under the supervision of a registrar.
Many people in the various industries, including the honest majority, are annoyed and inconvenienced by all this.
The New Democrats couldn’t care less. They believe they’re just tightening up PC laxity that got a lot of people cheated. And so far, there isn’t much complaint from the public.