Auditor slams province’s homebuyers protection program

If you have purchased or built a new home in Ontario sometime during the last 40 years, you will no doubt have heard of Tarion. It is a private, non-profit organization which the Ontario government has empowered to administer and enforce the Ontario New Home Warranties Plan Act and Regulations. With more than 230 employees, its role is to investigate home owner warranty claims, resolve warranty disputes between homeowners and builders, provide deposit and delayed closing protection for new home buyers, and prosecute illegal builders. It also regulates new home builders to ensure they meet provincial standards of technical competence and financial capacity.

When The Current’s owners, who at the time were living in the UK, decided to build a retirement home in the Valley, they were comforted by learning of the protections offered by Tarion. Also, using a Tarion-registered builder reduces the risk of being victimized by “cowboys.” As it turned out, there was never a need to have recourse to Tarion remedies which, judging from a report released on October 30 by the province’s auditor general Bonnie Lysyk, was perhaps just as well.

Lysyk’s scathing report accused Tarion of failing tens of thousands of new home buyers by putting the interests of builders ahead of consumer protection. She found that in 65 percent of cases between 2014 and 2018 builders failed to fix problems that should have been covered by the warranty. “Some builders had their licences renewed even after they demonstrated problematic behaviour and, in some cases, failed to reimburse Tarion for costs incurred to resolve defects,” she said. Lysyk in her report issued 32 recommendations to address these issues.

The Toronto Star reports that one homeowners’ group says Tarion is beyond repair. It quotes Karen Somerville of Canadians for Properly Built Homes (CPBH) as stating, “We know large numbers of Ontario’s new homeowners are suffering in newly built homes that don’t even meet the minimum Ontario Building Code standards.”

Tarion is funded through the licencing fees of 5,600 builders and the registration fees they pay on about 60,000 new homes a year. If a defect is not fixed by a builder, Tarion provides compensation and then tries to recover the costs of doing so from the builder. That process of either compensating homeowners or fixing the defect is supposed to take up to 180 days. But Lysyk found it frequently took 18 months.

Lisa Thompson, Minister of Government and Consumer Services, issued the following statement on October 30:

“Our government recognizes the importance of Tarion fulfilling its responsibilities to protect new homebuyers and owners when making one of the biggest investments in their lives – a home.

“My Ministry will work with Tarion to ensure the auditor general’s recommendations are addressed in a timely and responsive manner.”

Tarion is reported as saying that it accepts all of Lysyk’s recommendations.

 

 

Photo detroitfoundationrepair.com

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