Bill 46,<\/a> a bill aimed at cutting red tape, also makes changes to the laws around reward points. <\/p>\n\u201cIt rewrites the Consumer Protection Act so that the premier and his cabinet can secretly write regulations that would allow reward points to expire,\u201d Blais said. \u201cNobody campaigned on this. Nobody is asking for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a play on the Dr. Seuss character \u201cthe Grinch,\u201d Blais added \u201cyou have to ask yourself, is the premier\u2019s heart really two sizes too small?\u201d<\/p>\n
Schedule 5 of the bill proposes amending the Consumer Protection Act to replace rules regarding the expiry of rewards points provided under a consumer agreement with \u201cgeneral rules governing consumer agreements under which rewards points are provided.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the legislation would further authorize the cabinet to make regulations governing consumer agreements, government officials said Monday they have no plans to \u201ctake away\u201d points. <\/p>\n
Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement Stephen Crawford said in Question Period the Liberals are wrong. <\/p>\n
\u201cLet me be very clear; absolutely nothing in our bill makes it easier for companies to take away your reward points,\u201d Crawford said. <\/p>\n
He said the legislation will in fact strengthen consumer protections. <\/p>\n
\u201cBusinesses will have to respond when someone asks for their points back. If your points were frozen, canceled or disappeared, companies will now have an obligation to respond back to that and for the first time ever, you will have the opportunity to take legal recourse,\u201d Crawford said. <\/p>\n
Blais touted a law the previous Liberal government passed in 2016 that prevented rewards points from expiring, though it did still allow for some points to expire. <\/p>\n
Points can still expire if the reward program closes accounts when a member is inactive for a long period of time and this is stated in the membership agreement; the program issues a voucher as a reward that is considered a gift card and cannot expire; or the reward points can\u2019t be redeemed for any single item over $50.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ontario Liberals are accusing the Ford government of being a \u201cgrinch\u201d at Christmas when it comes to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[712,45,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-319531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}