Quebec government faces calls to ensure identity theft protection will be free

Fraudsters stealing CERB payments A new version of identity theft is being used to steal CERB payments. Jeremy Thompson explains.

QUEBEC CITY — Quebec’s finance minister is facing increasing calls to ensure that consumers won’t need to pay to protect their own credit score from identity theft, though he doesn’t seem convinced yet.

Both the Parti Québécois, the provincial office to protect consumers and the group Option consommateurs asked on Tuesday, during the study for a new bill, for this service to be free.

Quebec’s government is studying Bill 53, which aims to supervise credit agencies in the wake of the data theft scandal at Groupe Desjardins.

Currently, the bill allows a “reasonable fee” to be charged by credit agencies to protect a person’s credit report.

At a press conference earlier Tuesday, the PQ MP Martin Ouellet said consumers shouldn’t be billed when they want to lock their credit files, thereby prohibiting access to it.

“It’s not true that to protect their credit, to avoid being hacked, Quebeckers will have to pay,” he said, adding that “there is enough money in the system” to cover the needs and that credit agencies “have been around for decades.”

In a parliamentary committee, Minister of Finance Eric Girard expressed his reluctance to guarantee free access in the law-to-be. He said that if the service is free, its quality will be lower.

In any case, he said, financial institutions that use credit agencies will ultimately pass the bill on to the consumer.

“Asking private companies to provide good service for free, I haven’t seen that often,” said Girard, who comes from the banking world.

Consumer protection office president Marie-Claude Champoux said that consumers shouldn't have to pay to exercise their rights.

She added that a charge that is considered reasonable by one consumer may not be by another one who is disadvantaged.

 This report was first published by The Canadian Press on Aug. 25, 2020.