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The November 3,2007 W-Five program dealing with problems faced by some purchasers of newly built homes provides a tremendous service to the public.
Listening to how purchasers are abandoned by the federal government's CMHC service, the provincial government's warranty providers, municipal inspectors, and builders made me wonder what motivated the Brian Mulroney government to require CMHC to get out of the home inspection business.
If the purpose of government agencies is something other than protecting the public from suffering harm, why have a government or government agencies at all? What we have right now, in the new home industry, is chaos. Chaos because we have vendors selling major products that hold the potential to severely impact family stability and the security of individuals, but these vendors are not accountable to anyone but themselves.
In our experience, the "system" has tried to make us feel we must beg our builder to fix the defects he left at the time of purchase. We have had municipal officials tell us to use kind words in order to win over our builder's favour, and be grateful if he offers to fix even a part of the structural problems he left in our home because there is nothing in the laws that require him to fix anything at all!!
I see major structural problems in the new home industry and I believe these problems are a product of immoral decision-making. I am immensely grateful to W-Five for exposing the fundamental lack of consumer protection available to new home purchasers. Some politicians sometimes blame their bad image on unbalanced media coverage, but when it comes to a lack of consumer protection for purchasers of newly build homes, W-Five provided a balanced program that featured testimonials from real people who are continuing to suffer as a result of the federal government's failure in its duty, plus the British Columbia government's position that it is doing a fantastic job of protecting people because it is letting homeowners pay to fix the defects caused by builders and the municipal government's inspectors!!
What will Stephen Harper do now that another serious error has been exposed on the part of his predecessor? Will he take real steps to correct it like the recent Tory step to correct Mulroney's GST error in judgment? In my opinion, Canadians have not returned the Conservative government to full majory power because of the far reaching effects of decisions made by the Molroney government. If Stephen Harper wants a majority government, I would suggest he take steps to correct the error Mulroney made when he removed home inspections from CMHC's mandate.
Let's start a campaign to demand the reinstatement of home inspections by CMHC, the withholding of funds from builders until defects are corrected, proper consumer protection by provincial warranty programs, and properly built homes!!!
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