The Consumers Council of Canada is pleased to announce the election of its board of directors and new executive for 2014-15.
Aubrey LeBlanc has been re-elected for a second term as President of the Council. Dennis Hogarth has been chosen as the first Vice President of the Council. A past-president of the Council, Don Mercer, has been appointed to a new and temporary position within the executive of Vice President, Consumer Representation & Stakeholder Outreach. Agni Shah remains as secretary of the Council and Howard Deane as treasurer.

Also, elected to the board of directors:
Paul Bates
Dolly Gerrior
Lesley Jacobs
Marshall Leslie
Bonnie McIlmoyl
Elizabeth Nielsen
Andrea Rosen
Simon Wong

“With the election of this new board of directors and, particularly, with the creation of a special executive post, the Council is positioning itself to increase its contact with stakeholders and key public processes, ” said Council President Aubrey LeBlanc. “The Council is in a period of transition, as it seeks to increase its capacity to represent Canada’s consumers. Our initial efforts to expand the Council’s program have met with success, with a major initiative last year concerning Food Information, Labelling and Advertising and a new one ongoing this year concerning the impacts on the rights and responsibilities of consumers related to housing intensification.”
The Council has also been working actively on consumer protection in e-commerce, having completed several research projects in the field funded by Office of Consumer Affairs, Industry Canada, in recent years and with the addition of a new study being funded by the the Canadian Internet Registration Authority that will seek to develop practical guidelines for understandable and usable online agreements.
“Consumers are finding almost every commercial relationship they have is affected in some way by e-commerce practices,” said LeBlanc. “Effective and appropriate implementation of consumer protection in e-commerce is essential to a healthy economy leveraging the power of the Internet. Consumers want the benefits of the Internet, but they will expect a century of improvement of protection of their rights to be part of the IT revolution, as well.”