Mr. Speaker, I too am very proud of the member for Windsor West in his long uphill struggle with this particular issue. Having had a background myself in consumer affairs for 23 plus years in Manitoba, I recognized this issue right away upon being elected. I must admit it took me a couple of minutes to sort it out because I did not really understand it straight up. I talked to the member about it.
In Winnipeg I spoke to two General Motors dealers who are friends of mine. They were quite concerned. As a matter of fact one of them contacted me. When we sat down to get to the bottom of their concerns, we found there was a certain amount of misrepresentation. At the end of the day, they accepted that it was not a bad idea after all. It was interesting that General Motors was apparently the most cooperative company to deal with this.
When we think about it, the bill started with the member from the fourth largest party in the House. We can talk about rolling the ball uphill. Not only did the member start this two and a half years ago, but when Parliament dissolved the member had to start over again. After every election and with a new government everything has to be reintroduced. When one goes through that process, at a certain point one wants to throw up one's hands and give up in a lot of cases, but the member did not do that.
This particular issue was not as sexy as some consumer affairs issues, and I have dealt with a few of them over the years. Nevertheless it did have its appeal.
I knock on a lot of doors in my constituency and over the course of a weekend in the fall, this issue came up two or three times, as did the credit card issue and the air passenger bill. Interestingly enough, in a couple of cases it was put forward by teenagers, people who were 19 and 20 years old, which really amazed me. I asked how they knew about this right to repair. They knew exactly what it was all about.
I think the member had a terrific issue. He carried it as long as he could. He in effect was the cause of the final resolution of the problem. This is going to benefit consumers for many years to come.
When most members in this Parliament were young kids, we all knew the local garage could fix that '49 Ford and that '57 Chev. In fact I had one of those at one time. It cost me $35. Each door was a different colour, as I recall. That car could be fixed by anyone.
Today it is not possible to find a garage that will fix any car newer than 10 years. It boils down to the owner having to go back to the dealership and repairs by a dealership can cost a lot of money. If one has a lot of money, then it is not a problem, but if one is operating on a budget, going back and forth to the dealer can be a problem.
I want to lead from there into another area that many people are not familiar with, which is CAMVAP. CAMVAP is our answer to a lemon law which has become very popular. There has been a lemon law in all 50 of the United States for the last 15 or 20 years. I introduced legislation in Manitoba a number of years ago on the lemon law. There is the weak lemon law that can be found in the car belt in Michigan and there is the very tough lemon law that can be found in Florida.
Generally speaking, under the lemon law dealers are required to give consumers a book when they buy a new car so that they know their rights.
If the car has lots of problems and turns out to be a lemon, the manufacturer has four attempts to fix it. I have attended arbitration panels in Florida. By the way, they settle roughly about 50% for the public and 50% for the car companies. Of course, air conditioning is a big issue there. If the car cannot be fixed within four attempts, the car company will have to buy back the car with a depreciated amount so and the consumer will get out of the problem.
What did Canada's manufacturers do as an answer? They saw that the consumer groups and legislators were starting to introduce bills across the country and they were alarmed. They formed CAMVAP, an organization consisting of all of the governments across Canada. The head of the Consumers' Association of Canada sits on CAMVAP. The downside is that no one knows about it. The last two cars I bought, I prodded and poked the salespeople at the dealership about my CAMVAP book. I wanted the information on what would happen if the car turned out to be a lemon. I got blank stares. They did not have a clue about it.
Unlike the lemon law in most of the United States where consumers are given the book when they buy the car and the coverage is explained to them, in Canada we do not have any such procedure. We have the lemon law, but no one knows about it. As a matter of fact, when I gave this speech the other day, someone in the crowd asked me to spell out the name, CAMVAP. She said that her car was at the 160,000 kilometre mark and it was not acting very well and she wanted to check into the CAMVAP situation.
The general insurance companies and the life insurance companies have done a similar thing to what the member for Windsor West has succeeded in doing. The general insurance companies had bankruptcies 20 years ago which left consumers hanging. Their claims were not being paid because the little company which insured their house went bankrupt. The insurance companies recognized if they did not do something, government would step in and people such as the member for Windsor West would start introducing private member's bills, so they moved quickly. They formed an organization similar to CAMVAP whereby general insurance companies as a group would take responsibility for any failures within that group. If the insurance company in Manitoba for example went bankrupt and could not pay its house insurance claims, then the insurance companies would use the money they had been levying each other to pay for those claims. They would pay the costs of taking care of the problem and winding down the company.
That was happening almost 20 years ago. The life insurance companies did the same thing because they had the same sort of problem.
This points out the fact that MPs and MLAs in any jurisdiction in this country should not get discouraged. They tend to, but they should never be discouraged because it is private members' bills like this one that can end up with conclusions such as the member for Windsor West just achieved. He will be remembered for that for many years to come because he has done something that no one else was able to do. The problem did not start yesterday; it has been around for a number of years and he provided the solution when no one else did. He deserves full credit and full honours for that.