Does Canada need a lemon law? Labelling bad cars “lemons” is hardly new; Wikipedia dates it back to a Volkswagen ad campaign back in 1960. Twenty years ago, people were still adhering to a magic percentage – roughly ten – of cars that were truly lemons.

More recently, as people started weighing less subjective “facts” and actually started doing some math, that percentage has slid to one.

What’s the actual number of cars sold that are lemons? Who knows?

Part of the problem is perception. If a manufacturer finds a design or operating flaw and issues a recall, that doesn’t make the model a lemon. If they issue ten recalls, that doesn’t make it a lemon. In a perfect world, manufacturers act with haste to get ahead of problems, so consumers retain faith in their product.

Cars aren’t toasters or refrigerators. At the same time we’ve come to accept the planned obsolescence of appliances that once used to last for decades, we now know many things crap out the day after the warranty expires. Cars, on the other hand, have improved in terms of both reliability and efficiency, and we rightly expect them to perform long past their warranty date.

Buying a new car shouldn’t be a gamble, but as a British Columbia woman recently found out, even if you buy a popular model from a major manufacturer, it’s no guarantee you won’t be faced with some unique challenges.

Sarah Timmins bought a new 2018 Ford Escape Titanium not long ago, and has experienced a string of problems that would try the patience of Job. With just 14,000 km on the vehicle, it has been in the shop for four straight months.

She’s calling for a lemon law. “Warranty law is a provincial area of responsibility under our constitution. No province has a lemon law,” explains George Iny, president of the Automobile Protection Association (APA). He mentions that in the past, both Ontario and British Columbia had drafts of lemon laws made, but nothing got out of the blocks.

In Ontario, “the manufacturers got the dealers (always a powerful lobby because they’re in almost every riding) to help them. The automakers promised something better to the Ontario government, and we got OMVAP, which later morphed into CAMVAP,” says Iny.

Iny believes dealers shot themselves in the foot when they pushed back against establishing a lemon law. Buyers sometimes forget they may buy from a dealer, but their warranty is with the manufacturer. When everything is going well, that line is hazy and rarely questioned. But when something slides off the rails, it devolves into a game of who did what, when, so sorry, not my problem. Dealers should want a lemon law so they can effectively, definitively and quickly help their customers.

If you write to me asking for direction with a car you’re having issues with, looking to CAMVAP is one of the few things I can tell you to do. I also know as I say it how difficult it will be to get satisfactory results. The Canadian Motor Vehicle Arbitration Plan sounds promising, but it’s no panacea for several reasons.

CAMVAP is supposed to provide a fair sounding board for a consumer who believes they have a lemon, to have it bought back or to otherwise be made whole by the manufacturer. Their results show about 30 per cent of their outcomes result in a buyback (adjusted for depreciation); another 30 per cent results in further repairs or recompense for previous repairs; and the balance the manufacturers win, so the complainant goes home empty-handed.

It seems unfair someone who buys a new car may have to spend time and money addressing a problem that never should have happened

Manufacturers opt into the program, and money paid out for repairs or buybacks comes from that group fund. Keep in mind that Mitsubishi, BMW and Mini are not part of the program, so CAMVAP is not an option for those owners.

You can call CAMVAP and talk to a real person. They get to files quickly, but it can be intimidating to build a case on your own and present it to representatives of the manufacturer, even with an arbitrator at the table. They say you don’t need to have a lawyer; it just helps to have a lawyer. They say you don’t need to have a mechanic there who knows your issues; it helps to have a mechanic.

“CAMVAP is not a secure option for returning a defective vehicle, precisely because it lacks a definition of what a lemon is. CAMVAP is a good place to ask for a car repair,” says Iny. If you opt to go to CAMVAP for arbitration, you give up your right to sue in court.

It seems unfair – to put it mildly – that someone who buys a new car may be saddled not just with a vehicle they don’t trust or feel safe in, but also with the burden of the spent time and money it takes to address a problem that never should have happened. CAMVAP is a federal program, and the obvious place from which to start the ball rolling on a lemon law for all of Canada. Pushback from manufacturers shouldn’t be enough to stop a vital resource that consumers need. Iny is even more blunt.

“A lemon definition at CAMVAP could go a long way to addressing the existing unequal bargaining power,” he says. “I cannot fathom how the CAMVAP board with it high percentage of government and consumer representatives is so ineffective on this and other changes needed by the program.”

Many American states have lemon laws, so there is precedent for wordings and requirements. The Center for Auto Safety (CAS) in the U.S. ranks that country’s systems, and points to New Jersey and Washington as having particularly good lemon laws to learn from. Michael Brooks, CC and COO for the center, warns, however, “[a]utomaker lobbyists have worked to weaken lemon laws across the United States for decades, and some state lemon laws have been rendered almost completely ineffective, leaving consumers in those states with few avenues for redress when their vehicle purchase goes bad.”

What’s a reasonable number of times for a manufacturer to try to rectify the same problem? What’s an unreasonable length of time for an owner to be without their car? A clearly defined law, laying all these requirements out, would go a long way to helping consumers and dealers alike.



Nobody plunking down tens of thousands of dollars on a new vehicle does so anticipating they will end up involved in a financial and emotional brawl with the manufacturer over a consumer good that doesn’t come close to fulfilling its mandate.

Canada needs a lemon law.