Priority #2: Affordability and Consumer Protection
Canadians today face an affordability crisis nearly unprecedented in our history. Amidst the worst jobs market in generations, declining incomes and rampant economic insecurity, the tight budgets of too many are being needlessly strained by the state of a few crucial industries where insufficient competition, weak regulation and deeply entrenched unethical business practices unfairly abuse today’s Canadian consumer to the detriment of our economy and your bottom line.
New Democrats alone among the Federal parties have a plan to put affordability and consumer protection on the agenda in Ottawa. I am committed to concerted action on a number of fronts to ease the mounting cost-burden eating into your bank account, family budget or – worse still, forcing you into debt.
We’ve proposed taking the Federal tax off your home heating oil or natural gas to ease the burden of this unavoidable cost associated with Canada’s extreme climate and geography.
Our proposal for the creation of a National Gas Price Ombudsman to monitor, regulate and enforce rules governing the gas market in Canada was widely celebrated by consumers’ advocacy groups, but never acted upon by Liberal or Conservative Governments. With instability abroad fuelling historic spikes in the price of gasoline, this idea is today more relevant – and necessary – than ever before.
Only New Democrats have called for real reform of the banking sector, advocating an end to ridiculous fees and excess charges at ATMs, on mortgages and other investments, while proposing workable caps on abusive, border-line criminal interest rates on student loans, credit cards and lines of credit.
We were the first to call for an end to the abusive practice of Usage-Based-Billing (UBB) on your residential or commercial internet account, and the most aggressive in pushing the Harper Government to finally act. We believe UBB constitutes an illegitimate, manipulative practice which unduly restrains Canada’s development as a digital society and economy, one which should be resigned to the dustbin of history at the earliest opportunity through swift, decisive regulatory intervention by a reformed CRTC or, in the continued absence of such basic regulatory common-sense, personal intervention by the Minister of Industry. Make no mistake: our objection to UBB isn’t limited to one misguided ruling on wholesale: we fundamentally object to the practice itself and will act decisively in Government to permanently end it.
Similarly, we’ve consistently and forcefully opposed the most abusive practices of our uncompetitive market for wireless voice and data services. We stood up against the text-message cash grab by the big industry players to impose unilateral fees on even incoming text messages – including outright spam – leveraging the voices of tens of thousands of Canadians to end that outrageous practice. We’ve called for contract reform so a cancellation means a cancellation – not tricks, punitive fees and damaged credit. We also introduced legislation compelling service providers to permit consumers to unlock digital devices across networks without penalty.
When it comes to consumer protection and affordability for individuals and families in the 21st Century, I’m proud to represent the only political movement which has a coherent, integrated plan to cooperatively establish fair business practices with companies willing to voluntarily respect consumers and the law, while pursuing relentless action on your behalf against those who won’t.
