A Canadian Consumer Advocate
Consumers Council of Canada has recommended the Government of Canada act swiftly to keep its commitment to create a new agency to rebuild consumer confidence and protect consumers – the Canadian Consumer Advocate.
Governments Must Re-focus on Protecting People
Canadians are quickly learning how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed shopping, working, health care and their economic prospects. A safe marketplace has never been more important. Consumer confidence and fair market practices are critical to Canada’s economic recovery. Canada needs a plan – and fast – to restore both.
A National Agency for Consumers
Canadian consumers deserve a national agency that has the sole objective to argue for consumers, advance their needs, and stress the relationship of those needs to the decision-making processes within agencies of government.
The economy is for consumers, not just producers. The federal government should expand its current plan for the Canadian Consumer Advocate to ensure it is an independent agency answerable to Parliament through the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. The Advocate should be capable of promoting meaningful engagement with and on behalf of consumers.
Constant, Capable Advocacy Needed to Protect Consumer Protections
Canada needs its government to keep the promise it made in 2019 and hold ministers accountable for the mandate given to them to establish the Canadian Consumer Advocate and ensure it can capably protect consumers’ interests.
Related Publications
Time For A Real Federal Consumer Advocate – This report by the Consumers Council of Canada highlights the reasons and benefits for expanding the role of the Government of Canada’s proposed Canadian Consumer Advocate beyond receiving complaints. It argues the government needs to address the present patchwork and isolated responses to consumer needs and vulnerabilities, which will not meet the challenges consumers face in a post COVID-19 economic recovery, and beyond.
Consumers Council of Canada Parliamentary Submission: Federal Budget 2021 – A submission to the Standing Committee on Finance of the Parliament of Canada by the Consumers Council of Canada in response to its pre-budget consultations concerning the 2021 federal budget.
Super Complainers: Greater Public Inclusiveness in Government Consumer Complaint Handling – This research reveals consumer views on third-party consumer complaint management systems (consumer complaint handling systems operated by entities other than private-sector businesses) and their receptivity to alternative systems where greater transparency, and consumer advocacy group participation is encouraged.
A ‘Sustained Institutional Role’ for Consumer Organizations in ‘Internal Trade’ Harmonization – This research found the Canadian public expects well-resourced consumer groups to be part of any stakeholder process attached to negotiations among the federal and provincial governments concerning internal trade.
News About Consumer Representation
Immediate past Council President named chair of Ontario’s new Condominium Management Regulatory Authority
Aubrey LeBlanc, immediate past president of the Consumers Council of Canada, has been named as the first chair of Ontario's new Condominium Management Regulatory Authority. The authority formally takes on its new responsibility to administer the Protecting Condominium...
Hyperbole about Ontario electricity prices unhelpful
Improving independent institutional representation of consumers is essential to Canada's public discussion about energy policy, and hyperbolic points about electricity prices in Ontario are unhelpful to that discussion. That was the theme of a letter to the editor...
Advertising self-regulator appoints new board
Advertising Standards Canada, Canada's national not-for-profit advertising self-regulatory body, has appointed its new board of directors, and a Consumers Council of Canada member and former director remains as the "public representative" on the board. Christina...
New research on paths to justice and the resolution of consumer problems
As a part of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice’s Cost of Justice project, Dr. Les Jacobs, a director of the Consumers Council of Canada, and his research associates David Kryszajtys and Matthew McManus examined the ways that Canadians try to resolve their consumer...
Independent dispute resolution for telecom and now TV services upheld
The review by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission of the structure and mandate of the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services, which provides dispute resolution for Canadian retail consumers of telecommunications and...
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