The new year brings some substantial new powers to Quebec’s Office de la protection du consommateur (OPC) in its quest to protect those shopping for new cars in La Belle Province. The upgraded regulations include increased fines as well as an all-new sanctioning system that can be used to more rapidly penalize errant dealers.
More specifically, two new provisions in the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) came into force on January 5. The first is a set of new administrative monetary penalties — such as tickets for speeding or running a red light — that allows the OPC to take immediate action against the offenders. The second sees the OPC’s traditional fines — those that end up going through the court system — doubled.
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The sale of automobiles (new and used) generates the most complaints to the OPC of all consumer sectors. Year in, year out, auto dealers account for 20% of the complaints received by the Office. Yes, one in five complaints throughout the entire province is from the automotive sector.
This is why the OPC has concentrated so much of its efforts on the auto industry. In its last fiscal year (2023-2024), it saw some 30 of its investigations of car dealers end in convictions or sentences in the courts. However, on the average, the courts only imposed fines of about $15,000 per dealer conviction.
George Iny, director of the Automobile Protection Association (APA), has long criticized these relative puny fines: “Such penalties are far from a deterrent, when we know that the merchant who doesn’t respect the law can earn up to a quarter of a million dollars a year.” Iny, who has been defending the interests of motorists for almost four decades now, is therefore delighted with the new doubling in punitive measures that has just come into force on top of the daily penalties.