Tarion is required to hold an Annual Public Meeting (APM). But in the past, some of Tarion’s in-person APMs have been - shall we say - “lively”.
Here’s what the Auditor General of Ontario reported in her 2019 report about Tarion:
“..Tarion stopped its yearly in-person public meetings in 2016. Tarion began holding a public meeting annually in 2009 to provide organizational updates and allow people to direct questions to Tarion management in person. The open meetings continued until 2015, the year when many angry homeowners showed up to voice concerns about “poor customer service” and difficult warranty administration processes. The following year, in 2016, Tarion switched to online public meetings, where people could not physically attend but could submit questions in writing. Questions were screened and selectively answered.”
In 2019, the Auditor General of Ontario recommended:
“..To improve transparency of and public access to Tarion Warranty Corporation, we recommend that Tarion hold annual open meetings where members of the public can physically attend to ask questions and voice concerns…”
In the last couple of years, Tarion could avoid an in-person APM due to COVID-19. Now that things have started opening back up, Tarion has scheduled its APM for July 12, 2022 and it will be a hybrid: both in-person and virtual.
But Tarion is severely limiting the opportunity for the public to ask questions/raise concerns at its July 12, 2022 APM, e.g.,
- the APM will only be 1.5 hours, which includes time for Tarion to make presentations;
- CPBH asked if those who register and attend in-person will have their questions answered. Here is the response from Tarion CEO Peter Balasubramanian: “… The meeting is scheduled from 7:00 to 8:30pm and, at the meeting, there will be an opportunity for in-person attendees to ask questions live on a first come first serve basis as well as an opportunity for virtual participants to provide questions. We will be alternating between questions asked in-person and online. We will address as many questions as possible during that period but we cannot guarantee that we will be able to get to everyone who attends in person…”;
- Tarion will only accept questions on-line during the meeting itself. This is on Tarion’s web-site: “…We address as many submitted questions as we can during our live APM webcasts. Due to time constraints, we are unable to respond to every submitted question. However, we do make general questions and their answers available to the public here on Tarion.com.”
Some questions:
- why has Tarion scheduled only 1.5 hours for its July 12, 2022 APM?
- why will Tarion not make more effort to respond to in-person questions/concerns?
- why is Tarion limiting the submission of on-line questions until the event starts?
- why will Tarion not respond to every question submitted after the APM if there is not time during the APM?
- why is it that Tarion is continuing to screen and selectively answer questions/concerns submitted on-line? (Something that the Auditor General of Ontario noted in 2019.)
- Tarion’s 2021 Annual Report boasts with self-congratulations and contains compliments and notes of thanks from anonymous homeowners. Yet Tarion seems to be afraid to face the public’s questions/concerns at its July 12, 2022 APM. Why is that?
#EndTarionMonopolyNOW