Melanie Aitken, commissioner of Canada’s Competition Bureau, is once again setting up our industry for a fresh round of public stonings. Once more she is making generalized, insinuating and misleading statements through the national news, which are contradictory to the pillars this industry is founded upon. The effects of her rhetoric will only continue to compound the damages she has already done to the reputation and strength of our industry. We are tired. Our patience has worn thin.

This is not merely the diligence of our Canadian Competition Bureau at work; these are the legacy building actions and agenda of an individual who through her own statements displays an uninformed disregard for the intricacies and nuances of this industry or the legal foundations it functions upon. Whether she is right or wrong matters not in the eyes of the commissioner, who chooses to see herself as a sort of Robin Hood regardless of facts. She is in fact the equivalent of an arsonist who starts fires that continue to burn and spread through print, online and social media. No national marketing campaign by us has ever or will ever be able to counter the effects of her continuing statements to the media year after year.

I am only one licensed agent but I would wager my next years earnings (and the year after that if they are to be had) that I speak for the vast majority of our 100,000 or so Canadian membership when I say we must take an unprecedented stand once and for all or risk the continued and accelerating erosion of our profession.

To the CREA Executive Committee I ask: Please take any and all funds otherwise earmarked for TV and print marketing campaigns for this and the coming years and instead use those funds to recruit the best legal and investigation team money can afford.

Please do not once more allow us to assume the mere role of defendant against this latest attack. CREA must stand tall and aggressively seek vindication for every agent and their families across Canada. The public’s sympathy and understanding is not to be had however we attempt to ask for it, but we can and should be earning it back by demonstrating our confidence and determination as an industry from the platform of our federal legal system. The media is as much ours as it is Melanie Aitken’s.

I think of the statement I have heard at many industry seminars over the years, “If we can not show the public we have what it takes to protect our own financial investment, how do we then give them the confidence that we will protect theirs?”

Gather every public comment Aitken has ever made regarding our industry, compile the list of all the libellous statements and fabrications that have been made publicly in the last few years then put together a solid counter suit against  both the Competition Bureau and  Aitken. A legal suit will take years and may cost each individual agent $5 to $10 at the end of the day but it will show we have far too much invested to just roll over and play dead again.

I sent out the above comments to select Realtors and brokers across the country earlier in June. This letter invoked an overwhelming response and gained viral momentum in the past couple of weeks.

Aitken claims repeatedly to speak for the public at large on this yet it is the business interests of a few individuals that initiated it and have been the ongoing inspiration for her attacks against CREA and most recently TREB.  In responses from our industry’s leaders to my correspondence, “Rest assured we have your best interests in mind” has been used more than once. I know I speak for many thousands of Canada’s licensed Realtors when I say to our industry’s leaders, we are not resting, and in summarizing the response of our national association to attacks by the Competition Bureau to date, “assured” is the last word that comes to mind.

I just received a text message reminder that my MLS fees are due this month. $691.50, more than double what I paid a decade or so ago for a product our industry appears not to have the stones to go the distance to protect. Is it going to take a class action law suit by Realtors across Canada, or can I get some “assurance” that at least part of that $691.50 will be put towards taking long overdue, to-the-wall legal action against the Canadian Competition Bureau and Melanie Aitken? If we took this all the way to the Supreme Court perhaps we would also assure the public that the MLS is in fact a valuable service worthy of fighting to protect. The public hires us for our savvy, not our compromise skills.

Please send our CREA president your own thoughts.

Mike Montague

Sales Representative

Sutton Group Incentive Realty

Barrie, Ont.

It never ceases to amaze me how people on the government payroll can continue to use their unlimited resources and access to public funding to pursue personal agendas and to try and make a name for themselves. A news story says that Melanie Aitken, commissioner of the Competition Bureau, alleges that “the 31,000-member organization is uncompetitive and results in higher costs to the public.”  If she is so concerned about one small segment of the community being exposed to anti-competitive practises and excessive costs, then why doesn’t she go after the big boys in the oil industry who rake in billions of dollars in profits and negatively impact the lives of every Canadian, not just a select few? Since she has a bee in her bonnet, why doesn’t she earn her keep by going after the gas companies, who all charge the same prices on every corner and raise and lower their prices at the same time and by the same amount? If she doesn’t think that is anti-competitive then she has no business having her job. Where’s the “flexibility” at the gas pumps since she’s so concerned about flexibility in the MLS system and that agents are under restrictive practises, which is a complete crock.

But no, she would rather pander to the egocentricity of a colleague from her legal fraternity whose only and sole desire is self-aggrandizement and free access to a system developed and paid for by the many hard-working Realtors who, over the years, contributed, enhanced and modernized what today exists as an effective tool serving their profession.

Canadians? What a joke!

Joseph Panchyshyn

Century21 Heritage Group

Thornhill, Ont.