OPINION: Fox promises to better guard the hen house
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This week, many new home buyers in the province welcomed the first-ever auditor general of Ontario’s audit of the arms-length agency of government, Tarion Warranty Corporation, the monopoly protecting new home buyers and regulating builders.
Many who’ve worked for nearly a decade as consumer volunteers on this issue have truly learned the truth of the quotation (attributed to Gandhi) — “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
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For over a decade, consumers have complained to the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services that Tarion is builder-friendly, non-transparent, confusing, misleading, and time-consuming. The auditor-general’s report researched all aspects of the agency’s processes and validated many consumer complaints about dispute resolution, licensing and regulation of builders, imbalances in board composition, and the failure to conform “to the spirit or intent” of its governing legislation. It is shocking that Tarion has been a black box no one could really look into, until the NDP brought a motion to the legislature in 2018 enabling this audit.
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The 58-page report contains a detailed analysis of Tarion’s operations and oversight by the Ministry of Consumer Services. After each recommendation, the report gives us Tarion’s response, and that of the ministry. Not surprisingly, they both fully accept the auditor’s recommendations, and will do better next time. Where have they been for the last 42 years?
Promises of working together, monitoring, tracking, and better communicating, all ring hollow. Effective oversight requires impartiality and independence: working together sounds like team-playing. To protect the public, the former is needed.
Premier Doug Ford needs to fundamentally overhaul this broken agency of government, and heed these 32 recommendations of the audit, as well as the 37 recommendations of Justice J. Douglas Cunningham’s Tarion review of 2017. Otherwise, all we’ve got is the fox admitting he really should have taken better care of the hens for the last 42 years. But he’ll do better next time.
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