I think more appropriately those would be called two missed opportunities, because the governments talk past one another. Ontario only recently revised its safety standard certificate but did not include a recall lookup or, as far as we know, did not even sit at a table with industry and the federal government to see what could be done about it. Probably the solution will come from the private sector, unfortunately. Once there is a widely available database that you could look up, I suspect there will be an aggregator, like a CarProof or a CARFAX, that would consider doing what the governments haven't done.
On September 28th, 2017. See this statement in context.