“For all practical purposes in Canada, we have no security for our credit files ” - Tony Ruprecht, MPP.

Tony Ruprecht, an Ontario MPP is trying to rally support for a private member’s bill that would bring Ontario legislation on credit reporting agencies up to international standards. “If this bill passes, it becomes the model for the rest of the country,” Ruprecht predicts.

Ruprecht’s latest Consumer Reporting Amendment Act, Bill 38, received second reading in December and is in line for review by a legislative committee.

“For all practical purposes in Canada, we have no security for our credit files,” says Ruprecht, who was himself a victim of identity theft. Someone opened a credit card account and billed $860 in his name. Ruprecht cannot say how the fraud artist managed to get his personal information, but one potential source could have been a credit report. These reports list a person’s address, date of birth, social insurance number and other information that can be used to create a false identification and an illicit credit application.

Some of the key features of Bill 38 are:

• Duty to delete unconfirmed information within 30 days.
Agencies like Equifax and TransUnion would have only 30 days to investigate disputed items on credit reports and delete anything that remained unconfirmed, incomplete or inaccurate.

• Duty to truncate vital information.
The Bill provides that a consumer report shall not provide information pertaining to a consumer’s address, date of birth, social insurance number and credit account number that is not in a truncated or disguised form.

• Duty not to penalize consumers for applying for credit.
The Bill provides that consumer reporting agencies and other persons may not consider, as a key factor in determining the credit score of a consumer, the fact that a consumer report has been requested. In addition, credit scores and the key factors used to determine them are added to the list of information to be disclosed to a consumer on request. Credit agencies could only report actual applications for credit, except to a consumer requesting his or her own credit report or credit score.

• Duty to provide full disclosure if credit denied.
The Bill provides that a person who takes adverse action against a consumer on the basis of information contained in a consumer report shall inform the consumer of the action and provide a copy of the report, including the name and address of the agency that prepared it, and shall notify the consumer of the right to correct incomplete or inaccurate information

• Duty to report in writing only.
The Bill provides that consumer reporting agencies shall only report information on consumer reports in written or electronically transmitted form, and not orally.

• Duty to report only summary information on discharged bankrupts.
Once a debtor is discharged from bankruptcy, credit agencies could only report their total debts at the time of bankruptcy and not an itemized list of debts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2006 at 7:40 am and is filed under Canadian Bankruptcy News, Credit Reporting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.