Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Common law for residential real estate requires that a seller disclose latent or hidden defects that he or she is aware of and that could not be seen in an ordinary inspection. Most real estate purchase contracts obligate sellers to disclose certain information, especially with respect to compliance with municipal regulations and appliances. While generally not legally mandated in Canada, seller property disclosure statements, also called property condition statements or seller property information statements, afford some protection to both buyers and sellers.
My questions today are for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. The Member for Yellowknife Centre also raised this concern in the recent past.
Could the Minister inform the House, what is our government doing to raise awareness of a home seller’s legal duty to disclose hidden defects and serious issues to potential buyers?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve done some research, and our research indicated that territories and provinces feel voluntary disclosure statements don’t provide meaningful consumer protection because they ask many types of questions to the homeowner. Here in the Northwest Territories, being a smaller jurisdiction, we rely, and people should rely, on the honesty and the integrity of the people that are selling the home. However, I mean, this is an issue that has been raised before. I can assure the Member that MACA is still doing some research into this particular subject.
If the Minister can inform the House, we know very well that other provinces do have measures to protect home buyers, and the voluntary disclosure statements are just one form. As I mentioned in my Member’s statement today, we do have other techniques or tools such as the requirement for realtors to require error and omission.
Can the Minister indicate to the House where are we on maybe providing certain measures to protect the home buyer and seller?
The sheer volume of home sales in some of the larger jurisdictions down south required it almost be mandatory for them to have this type of protection. However, here in the Northwest Territories we deal with this on a much smaller scale. However, we hear the concerns.
One thing we are planning on doing is our whole communications strategy, our consumer affairs website. We’re trying to enhance our content on that website to provide all different types of advice on different types of consumer protection, so any input we receive on how we can enhance that even further would be much appreciated.
We all know that there’s a growing trend towards private sales and not using a realtor.
Will the government, under MACA’s lead, review the consumer and protection legislation with a view to making changes to protect potential home buyers in the Northwest Territories?
We’d love to see the day where we have a lot of homes being bought because people are moving to the Northwest Territories, and I feel that day will come and we need to ensure that they are protected. There are some firms out there, one, possibly two, that will do home inspections on behalf of the potential buyer. I think the Member, in his statement before, talked about different training opportunities, and here again is another opportunity for us to have some people that are trained to do proper home inspections.
It is probably the largest purchase a person will ever make, so it would be to their benefit if they had a proper home inspection done and if they made sure that they were buying a piece of property that was well looked after and had no issues. We will continue to work on that and there are opportunities.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said in my Member’s statement earlier today, I was hoping the government would be doing more than just taking a look at things. We need to tighten up the belt in this area and we owe it to the public to do so. So, without seeing this mysterious population growth strategy from Cabinet that is trying to encourage more permanent NWT residents, has the government, under MACA’s lead, given any consideration to lowering the risk of buying a home in support of this strategy? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As I said before, we will enhance the information and communication that’s on our website. If you looked at stand-alone legislation for this particular issue, that’s almost a two-year process. With the priorities that this government has had in the 17th Legislative Assembly, we have received no complaints on this particular issue. It wasn’t considered a priority at this time. However, most of the work for the 17th Assembly is coming to an end, so this is one that they could possibly look at in future. Part of doing this is doing the research and seeing if there is a need for full-blown legislation or some ways we can advise consumers on protection and the services that are offered to them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
