What does Quebec's new lemon law involve?
What to do when irreparable defects accumulate and prevent you from using your vehicle? There is, of course, the Canadian Motor Vehicle Arbitration Plan (CAMVAP), in effect since 2001 in Quebec, but the results are hardly to the consumer's advantage.
That's why the province recently adopted a new anti-itron measure - a first in the country - along the lines of what is being done in the United States. This provision 53.1 in the Consumer Protection Act follows on from Bill 29 against programmed obsolescence, tabled in June 2023 and passed unanimously by the National Assembly three months later. More precisely, it came into force on October 5, 2023.
« Seriously defective car »
From now on, the Quebec government will use this term to officially designate a lemon. A consumer can ask the courts to declare a vehicle as such when the following conditions are met:
1. one or more defects affecting the automobile have been the subject of repair attempts made under the basic conventional warranty granted free of charge on this automobile by the manufacturer, i.e. :
- three unsuccessful attempts for the same defect;
- one or two unsuccessful attempts for the same defect when the dealer or manufacturer responsible for executing the warranty has had possession of the automobile for more than 30 days. Days for which the dealer or manufacturer demonstrates that it cannot carry out the repair due to a parts shortage and that it provides a replacement automobile to the consumer free of charge are excluded from the calculation of this period;
- 12 attempts for unrelated faults;
2. the defects appear within three years of the first sale or long-term lease of the automobile to a party other than a dealer authorized by the manufacturer to distribute it, and the automobile has not been driven more than 60,000 kilometers;
3. the defects render the car unfit for its normal purpose or substantially reduce its usefulness.
The presence of a latent defect is deemed to affect an automobile declared to be seriously defective.
A permanent title
The "seriously defective automobile" designation will follow the vehicle for the duration of its existence. Under the Consumer Protection Act, dealers will now be required to include this designation, where applicable, on the window label of every used vehicle for sale.
Section 237.1 states that "no person may advertise an automobile as a seriously defective automobile without disclosing that fact". Section 260.27.1 stipulates that "a dealer or recycler of road vehicles who sells an automobile to another dealer or recycler of road vehicles must disclose, where applicable, the fact that the automobile has been declared a seriously defective automobile."
That said, no register of lemons has been mentioned to date, unlike seriously injured vehicles (SAVs), which appear on registration certificates. This may change in the future.
