Ask a Canadian with George Iny

Introduction to the Podcast

Anthony: You are listening to There Auto Be A Law. The Center for Auto Safety Podcast with executive director Michael Brooks, chief engineer Fred Perkins, and hosted by me Anthony Cimino. For over 50 years, the Center for Auto Safety has worked to make cars safer.

Michael: Alright.

Anthony: Hey everybody. Just gotta let you know before we start. If you don’t buy a Tesla, you are a terrorist or you might be deported. Unlike our first guest who won’t be deported.

Welcoming George Iny

Anthony: Welcome to the show, George Iny of the Automobile Beale Protection Association of Canada. Also soon to be known as the first 51st State of America.

Welcome George.

George: That’s not a very auspicious introduction. No thank you nonetheless. Yes, either way. It’s a pleasure to be on your podcast.

Anthony: We’re glad to have you ’cause we wanna find out more about [00:01:00] Canada. ’cause essentially what, stop me if I’m wrong here, but essentially the Automobile Protection Association is similar to the center product safety, just with different bacon, right?

George: Yes. I, we’re lucky because we, benefit from the work that the center does and also the regulatory environment in the us. So we get most of the American standards without really having to fight hard for them. And the association, the a PA, is more involved in also looking at the marketplace, the retailing standards for cars, car repairs.

So be because in a sense you do the hard work on the standards and safety.

Anthony: That’s great. I want everyone to remind that we do the hard work, specifically me and Fred.

George: We do the other hard work. Ah, we take on the car, re car retailing. We’ve been quite involved in. And, i, and we sit on committees that regulate automobile retailing standards.

For a long time we were the [00:02:00] Canadian equivalent of Consumer Reports. We did the vehicle testing program for the French Language Consumer Reports publication. Oh. Yeah, so that, that was part of our activity and still, they still issue a, an annual car guide in April. That is that we prepare the vehicle reviews for.

Anthony: Very cool.

Comparing US and Canada Auto Safety

Anthony: So we’ve talked in the show about the differences in fatality rates between the US and Europe and how speed in this country affects crashes and deaths and accidents compared to what they do in Europe. And we talk about Europe and cap quite a bit in terms of different safety standards, strangely enough.

And we’ve never compared any of this to Canada. ’cause as good Americans, we just assume whatever. But there’s there’s quite a bit of difference between the US and Canada in the stats. Is that right George?

George: Yes. Basically if you’re looking at can Canada versus the us, the easy way is just divide by 10.

We’re about 10 the size of the market. Okay. And our [00:03:00] fatality rates are in the range of 2000 a year. So that is fatalities are in the range of roughly 2000 a year, actually a bit less 1800 a year. And so it’s significantly lower than the United States. That wasn’t the case when we started.

If you’re going back to the, the, when vehicle safety began to be regulated, Canada actually was worse as a percentage. What happened in 2008 with the, real estate induced economic downturn. Our rates went way down in that period. So if you look at the fatalities in 2008, 2007, 2,400 people, 2008 2100, 2009, 2000.

So it’s a big drop and it continued to drop after the economy began to improve. That was really against current thinking. That’s not how it usually works. Usually when there’s an economic uptick, fatalities [00:04:00] go up. Unfortunately, the last two or three years for reasons that aren’t fully understood we’re now seeing increases again.

And like you, I. Pedestrians and cyclists are, have the wor, have the worst have the largest increases.

Anthony: Okay. What’s the, any insight into why there’s been that steady drop? Because in the US we really haven’t had that. We had the bump during CVID where everyone decided to drive like a maniac which caused things to go bad.

Is did Canada have that experience or is there some different regulations in line or just Canadians, better drivers? I.

George: I don’t think Canadians are better drivers. Damn and the interesting thing is people sometimes say it’s because your climate is different. But actually our worst months for fatalities are July and August.

When the climate is roughly the same. My thinking that has more to do with exposure and time on the road. There’s may be a couple of things. Canada early on didn’t really have the muscle to take on the [00:05:00] automakers over airbags. So all of the pressure for installation of airbags really came from the US and we got the standards and we got the airbags.

Because of the American work. But what that did do is leave a space around belt use and seat belts. Wearing rates. Enforcement was higher. There were national programs, and it’s currently around, I think over 95%. So that’s part of it. Speed enforcement. Most places in Canada, you can’t really drive for sustained periods above 75 or 80 miles an hour without getting a pickup a ticket.

And I know there are states in the US as as a visitor where you really could do that, and I’m thinking that might have some impact. I’m not sure if the size of the vehicle fleet is an issue as well. The size of vehicles that is they’re smaller in Canada, although we also are seeing a bulking up, but a mid-size.

What’s considered a compact SUV, which has actually become a quite [00:06:00] large and heavy vehicle, but something like a RAV4 or a Chevrolet Equinox is the sweet spot in our market.

Anthony: Okay, Michael, what’s the seatbelt uptake in the US of Georgia saying it’s 95% and I

Michael: wanna say we’re close to 90. So I think we’re definitely a little lower, and that can explain a lot in terms of the data because seatbelt use is so critical to preventing fatalities and injuries.

So that may account for a large portion of it. It’s interesting when you look at maps. George was mentioning the summer being one of the most dangerous months. When you map out the. Traffic fatality rate across the United States. What is a lot of poorly performing states in the south, southeast, up through a belt.

Kind of that cuts through the Midwest and the Upper Northeast and, Washington State. Those areas that are near Canada seem to. Seemed to do a little better on the roads as far as traffic fatalities. At first when I was looking at the data between the United States and [00:07:00] Canada, you would think there would be slightly more dangerous driving conditions in Canada because of the more extreme winter weather that they have there.

But looking at the United States on its own, the states that get some of the worst winter weather are actually. And a lot they have a lower fatality rate than a lot of the southern states that never or rarely get snowed. So it’s interesting to take a look at the data when it’s mapped out like them.

Anthony: Michael, as a Southern American, you must explain this difference to us.

Michael: It’s we know that the number one cause of crashes and some of the number one causes behind them is speeding. Aggressive driving typically by males. I. And I’m assuming that simply, and a lack of seatbelt wearing and that sort of thing, I’m assuming that kind of behavior takes place more often in the states that we see.

Mississippi, Louisiana New Mexico, I think are some of the worst. I’m guessing there’s, a lack of, significant enforcement in those states around seatbelt laws and speeding and [00:08:00] aggressive driving and that sort of thing. And because of that lack of enforcement, like we saw in during covid, the lack of enforcement and how that impacted traffic deaths, I think that plays a major role in, in, in the state by state fatality rates.

Anthony: Could it be the mixed messaging that you get? I remember driving through Louisiana and it was very mixed messaging. ’cause one side of the road there’s billboards for repent now come to church. And the other side were all ads for strip clubs, sex and sex shops. Yeah. So it, as a young driver, you just might be like, am I going to hell or am I going to the clinic?

And it is

Michael: truly odd. I notice that still every time I go down there

Anthony: and maybe that’s why people are speeding. Sorry, Fred.

Fred: That’s all freedom. Hey George, I got a serious question actually. Oh no.

Canadian Licensing and Vehicle Standards

Fred: Is it the licensing standards in Canada, are they the same across the entire country or does it go province by province?

And I’m really looking for a comparison with what goes on in the us.

George: So [00:09:00] there are 10 provinces. It is province by province. Most of them have some form of graduated licensing. The skill required the number of hours of training would be similar, I think, to what you have in the us.

I don’t and certainly not like earning a driver’s license in England or Ireland or Europe, where the hurdle is quite a bit higher because

Anthony: each US state does its own thing too, because having gotten licenses in three separate states. I’ll tell you, getting a license in DC just show up and shake someone’s hand.

There you go. Here’s a driver’s license. Wow. Yeah. That explains why people can’t drive there. So the cars in Canada, you guys are using the exact same cars that we have in the us. It’s not, you’re not, you don’t have any different models. You’re not getting like something that it’s only for sale in Europe or only for sale in Canada.

George: No, only for sale in Canada, but there are very occasionally a small vehicle that might not be sold in the us. Nissan did it with their littlest car. The [00:10:00] micro called, it’s made in Mexico. They sold it in Canada and not in the States. Okay. But it’s very much the exception. Where the difference occurs is in the mix, particularly in French Canada and in, in our Atlantic provinces.

The ones that are north of Maine. The vehicle fleet is made up of smaller vehicles than we have elsewhere in the country. As you go west and to the prairies, the, you have a higher percentage of full-size pickups and larger vehicles.

Fred: Okay. Because are you excuse me. Are you importing the lower price Chinese electric vehicles now?

Or do you have the same kind of barriers we’ve got here?

George: Mainly I think out of fear. Because the government has invested heavily in future battery production, which may now be threatened, and also electric vehicle assembly. They’ve they introduced the tariff at the same time as the Americans.

I personally thought it was a mistake. There are rules against dumping and there are ways to deal with it, and maybe the tariffs that should have been arrived at would have been one that [00:11:00] would’ve been done after a proper economic analysis. When Hyundai came to Canada, they were selling vehicles.

I. At a General Motors challenged them. The car they had at the time called the Pony, general Motors. That was too cheap.

Anthony: And

George: there, there was an extensive study impact on the impact of it. And ultimately they decided that, I think Hyundai was dumping, but no one was selling a $6,000 car at the time.

So they weren’t actually taking away, the perception was market share from an equivalent North American model. And I don’t think they had to pay penalties. I would have liked to see because we have a very strong electric vehicle mandate, which here is not threatened. It probably will be around or something close to what it is now.

That’s my guess. There should have may, maybe a place to consider for that kind of production.

Fred: You just had a change of leadership of the federal government, is that? Change related are gonna drive any particular change in the automotive industry that you can see? Or is it [00:12:00] policies pretty much carrying over from the previous administration?

George: So we actually, as of a day or two ago, in a general election, so the government hasn’t changed. What did happen is it’s a parliamentary system, so the leader of the guy of the party that’s in charge. Has resigned. He’s been replaced by someone else, chosen by his party. That’s the liberal party. And they’re running we’re, we have a short election campaign, but it’s just a few weeks long.

And then we’ll know which is the government in charge. So right now it’s, you could call it a form of caretaker, government.

Michael: Has Elon tried to join your government yet, like he did ours or is he staying outta Canada for now?

George: You can’t say staying out of Canada as far as the US is concerned.

I think they will have a an it’s because of the invitation to join the us. It’s rather muscular.

The it caused a kind of an existential. I don’t know you what you would call it, but feeling can, it’s taken quite [00:13:00] seriously and I think yeah. Will be a feature of the next election.

The party in Power. Now, the liberal party was widely perceived as Take, gonna be taking a big fall in the next election, but actually because of the, I guess we could call it noise from the us it’s given them new wind in their sails. So we’ll have to see if in fact they may come back perhaps on the argument being that they’re perceived as a more centrist, less radical solution than our conservative party, which whose leadership is a little modeled on Donald Trump on doing a radical sort of reboot and the.

In the US right now have made it perhaps a little harder for that kind of message to be taken up.

Anthony: So when a government changes in Canada, is it gonna be the thing where the Canadian equivalent of Nitsa has an opportunity to be like, Hey, let’s throw everything out. Let’s change all these rules like we’re suffering with right now in the us.

George: The leaders of our road and Motor Vehicle [00:14:00] Safety Directorate are not necessarily people from industry. They’re career bureaucrats managers. In the old days, I liked it because they actually were people from Inside Transport Canada, so they were often engineers, people who had delivered papers at conferences and academics.

It hasn’t been that way in a while. I think the government perception is that if you’re like a senior manager, you can learn anything and manage. And we don’t have the same level. Of, and I don’t know if many other democracies do after an election of just chopping all the heads at the top and bringing in other people.

So it’s less of a feature here. What you do, what you can have a difference is if you’re Minister of Transport is interested in road and motor vehicle safety, then you get a more active development of standards and regulations as well. That’s better. Our, I should say our standards for the most part are American standards that are, they’re copied and that’s generally been a very good thing.

We ride on your coattails. We get a free ride to some degree because of that. [00:15:00]

Anthony: Brett, if you were born in Canada, your life would be so different. You could be in, you could have been in government overseeing safety for cars.

Fred: I don’t fit it well into government C I’m afraid I tried that once. But you are quite well.

Hey, just your information. I have hitchhiked all the way across Canada from Halifax to is it Long Beach out on the west coast of Vancouver Island? Yes. Yeah.

George: Wow. That’s more than I’ve, you’ve seen more of it than I have, and I’ve seen a lot of it. Wow. Bravo. That’s a long ride. That’s what, three, 4,000 miles?

Fred: Yeah. A lot of it’s awfully flat, so you can just if you’ve seen a pool table, you can skip over Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Huh. That’s right.

Anthony: Alright. Back to serious things.

Auto Theft and Immobilizer Standards

Anthony: So the question I was asking before is if you have different types of cars and whatnot compared to the US. ’cause something we’ve talked about not for a while on this show we talked about repeatedly for a while, was the Hyundai Kia cars being stolen in the US constantly.

Kids were doing this because the cars lacked in a mobilizer. [00:16:00] And now when I met you a couple weeks ago, you’re like, we didn’t have that problem in Canada because we have free healthcare. You suck. You didn’t say it like that but apparently in Canada it’s the exact same car. It’s not like a different vehicle.

But Canada by law required an IM mobilizer. Is that right?

George: Yep. Yes, we had a we’ve had I would say three or four epidemics of auto theft. One in the nineties, one in the early two thousands. We’re going through one right now. And in the early two thousands there was a perception that in fact, vehicles had become very easy to steal.

I sat on task forces at the time, and the police were telling us that certain Mazda models, you could pop the door lock with a Popsicle stick. Wow, was that easy? So the locks were really cheap and the cars had become a form of I would say low cost transportation for teens.

And so the perception was we need to make ’em a little harder to steal. The car. Industry pushed back very hard. There are two arguments they made. The first is if [00:17:00] we can’t have a unique standard for Canada, it’s too small a market, it will make vehicles in Canada very expensive to produce. The second one is we don’t steal cars, thieves steal cars.

And that’s a turning a blind eye to the societal cost of automobiles. That, by the way, is still the case with the car makers now in the current epidemic. So our government. Actually drafted a an immobilizer standard, a very simple one that was developed by the insurance companies in 2007, and almost immediately, joy riding went way down across the country.

So it was a it resolved it to the point that, the special police task forces that had been brought out to combat auto theft, the insurance industry, working groups. I remember one of them the chair of it who was a very experienced person from the insurance industry. We had our last meeting roughly in 2008 or [00:18:00] 2009, and he said we’ll see you all in 10 years.

Because he knew that nobody would be watching the store. The standard at the time, everyone knew wasn’t, was gonna be good for about 10 years. So when the TikTok video came out, all of our cars, including Hyundais and Kias had at least a rudimentary electronic tech theft protection. And so it, it didn’t really play out in Canada in the same way.

The big benefit from that, we are now trying to deal with auto theft yet again. It’s a much more international business in Canada. Theft recovery rates are low. They’re around 40% because it’s really rings that are doing it. And vehicles are put in containers and sent to, mainly to the port of Montreal to be exported or chopped into parts.

And so we’re, our government is actually working on a new anti theft standard, and the car makers have made the same arguments. Again, the cars will be too expensive and we don’t steal cars.

Anthony: So how much did the price of cars [00:19:00] go up when this law was put into place in 2007?

George: I think it was estimated to cost about at the time between 10 and $15 a vehicle.

And I’ve seen estimates later that were as low as four or $5, ah, if you wanted just the basic rudimentary system. The other thing they didn’t consider in those days was that the mechanical key was about to disappear. So you also lost one, another line of defense. Someone it’s now done electronically, right?

As opposed to having to actually bust locks. If you’re sophisticated,

Anthony: Michael what’s been the argument against legislating and requirements of mobilizers in the us?

Michael: There, it was mainly a cost decision for Nitsa not to do it. Really it’s they, the industry came in and said, we don’t want to do this, and Nitsa said okay.

What you can do is either put an immobilizer on the car. Or label certain parts in your vehicle so that the car is stolen. We can track where they’re going and so all the manufacturers you know [00:20:00] are Hyundai for sure, and Kia chose the parts labeling requirements. Some manufacturers did put a mobilizer, the vehicle.

That’s why during this Hyundai Kia thing, it was mostly Hyundais and Kias getting stolen because every other manufacturer ultimately has put Immobilizers in their vehicle by the time the TikTok hack started. Bad. What happened actually? Bad decision. Yeah.

George: Yeah. What happened was a case of where the Canadian standard kind of got everyone to step up their game for North America.

Yeah. Which was nice. It was. And no one, at least not anyone I knew, thought that Hyundai and Kia had finessed the system and had spec different a different anti-theft standards for the two markets. The other brands basically did it North America wide, ’cause it was cheap and probably the simpler solution.

I

Anthony: I don’t get it. So it costs, let’s say on the high end, we’ll say $15 per vehicle to do this? I

George: think once you get rid of a mechanical key, probably less than that because it’s electronic by then. When you started it, it was a, you were replacing a metal key with a metal key with a chip [00:21:00] or no key.

But I think once you’re into push start, I with a, like a remote. I’m guessing that’s not the cost anymore,

Anthony: But even still, so that’s the consumer paying this. And if all cars just want up $10, $15 or $5, whatever it costs, is someone gonna be like I’m not buying this car, I’m not buying a new car anymore.

I’m not, that’s $10 on a $20,000 vehicle. Is that, was that their argument?

George: Oh yes. They said it’ll make us uncompetitive. They threatened uncompetitive to who? I wa I was in, in a meeting where they argued that they might have to close assembly plans because of, if Canada’s a hostile market.

Michael: This is par for the course for the industry. A fif, they’ll scream bloody murder over a $15 change. There’s some changes like Seatback strength where it’s been estimated that the cost to make seatbacks better is between two and $5, and they’re. Fighting it tooth and nail.

George: So yeah, but I believe the genesis of that am I correct that it’s still the [00:22:00] standard from the 1970s or eighties? This was, that the seats were flopping have been flopping for 40 years? Most car makers presumably make the vehicles to a better standard. But yet there’s still pushback from the industry to I think I’m right about that.

I’m not I’m not sure if it’s been changed, but I remember that it has not. Yeah. So the first debates around that were from the eighties, the standard, which was an industry standard, I think from the SAE was already perceived 45 years ago as being inadequate.

Anthony: Wow. Okay.

Tesla and EV Rebate Controversy

Anthony: Let’s jump into my one of my favorite subjects, Tesla.

From an article on electric titled Tesla is banned from Canada EV rebate program. Government sus freezes suspicious $43 million in rebate. According from the article, Tesla has been banned from upcoming federal evra rebate programs in Canada, as the government sus freezes the suspicious $43 million.

Tesla claimed days before the program was paused. Earlier this year, the move was suspicious as it would’ve required Tesla to deliver [00:23:00] over 8,000 vehicles at just four locations on a weekend. Which is physically impossible. So why do you guys hate Tesla? Why? Why do you hate our freedoms? Why so what’s going on?

So is this EV rebate program, is this similar to what the US has where if you got an ev, do you get $7,000 or something like that and make Fred angry?

George: Oh, that’s correct. Okay. So there was a federal government after tax rebate of $5,000 and it was budgeted up to a certain amount and the government issued a, an advisory that it would possibly run out during this model year and would have to be renewed in a new budget.

People did the math and figured there was a few weeks, maybe a couple of months left, and then suddenly, poof, it disappeared. And it turned out it was it’s a, either, either Tesla were really way behind. In other words, they had failed to file for a bunch of cars. They already delivered like over months.

Or alternatively, this was a [00:24:00] dazzling heist, like incredible. So it’s one or the other. Actually filling out your claim as a car dealer is not fully automated. Most people have to, it, it actually takes time. So even just entering 8,000 claims would take time. So what we learned from that is that Tesla probably has some automated, like super software to make the, make those claims that other car dealers who are franchisees, they’re not the car maker, they’re making the claims themselves.

Don’t have access to. And what ended up happening is on a Monday or Tuesday, everybody woke up to see that their, the cars that they were about to deliver before this ran the rebate ran out suddenly no more rebate, including people who had already offered the rebate to their customers. So some dealers were left holding the bag because of it.

You’re not supposed to do that. Theoretically it has to be a car that’s licensed. Deliver to a retail customer. It can’t be a car that you’re holding inventory. Know car dealers have a long history of what’s called punching [00:25:00] cars to qualify for automaker rebates. So if I’m afraid that if I don’t meet my target, I’m gonna lose my per vehicle bonus I.

Then I’ll, I’ll put in someone from the administration department or my dealership, or my cousin or my brother as a vehicle, and I’ll register it as sold so that I can collect from Hyundai or STIs. I can collect my Jeep rebate or 4,000 bucks. What happens then? The warranty starts running from the date.

That you punched the car. So that’s how we end up hearing about it, because a person who buys it eventually might not be given the full $4,000 rebate. The program’s already ended, but the dealer took the money some cases a car might be sold three or four months later,

Anthony: wait, sold. And that can

George: create issues down the road.

If you tell the customer and you say, listen, we got you a rebate that expired at the end of November, let’s say a clearance rebate from the car maker. So you’re paying a lower price, but bear in mind that your warranty started running from that day.

Michael: So

George: this is insane. So

Michael: Tesla’s proving yet again that it’s [00:26:00] really good at sniffing out government cheese, right?

George: Yes. Or alternatively, they were really super late. I. And rushed to apply for their rebates. But I’m guessing it’s not the case because the government has now frozen, apparently frozen fro frozen. And I don’t know if they can actually how you reverse charge those things. I don’t know how it revol resolve itself.

Tesla’s Exclusion from Government Program

George: The other surprise, though, in the announcement was that when the program is revived Tesla won’t qualify. Even though it is an ev and that’s something that we there’s no precedent for.

Anthony: Why don’t they qualify now? I think it has to do with the tariff

George: issue.

Anthony: Ah,

George: it’s a form of selective retaliation.

Canada’s has imposed tariffs on some imports from the us but they’ve tried to focus on products that are made in Republican states, for example. Got it. So the idea is that we know, it’s impossible. [00:27:00] The US economy is 10 times our size, way more manufacturing than Canada has. It’s only a limited amount you could do by having retaliatory tariffs.

Anthony: Okay.

Canada’s Stance on Tesla’s Self-Driving Claims

Anthony: Continue with the the Tesla theme, or this applies to a number of companies, but really let’s focus on Tesla. How does Canada see Tesla autopilot, Tesla full self driving and things that that are clear lies that they say, Hey, this car drives itself. This car makes roadways safer in the US It’s been like okay, is Canada, is there stricter requirements of.

Companies that make these claims?

George: No. There are not stricter requirements. The requirements would be similar. We don’t have a federal standard to cover full self-driving, and it’s a complaints based system where they look at crashes after the fact. Most of the activity around this initially was that it was like considered a brave new [00:28:00] thing.

If anything probably Ontario, which is our province that does most vehicle manu, all the vehicle man assembly in Canada, it was considered really leading edge in your municipality if you had like a self-driving project with a university or with a car maker was and so any sort of. What you could call reawakening or hangover from that most likely will come from the us.

Also, the risks for an automaker are much greater in the states because we don’t have juries in civil cases. So you would never get the kind of awards after a fatality, serious injury that you might get in the us.

Anthony: You hear that listeners? Maybe Canada’s not the greatest place on earth. Okay. So reconsider moving there and instead take that money and go to auto safety.org and click on donate.

How’s that for a weird transition?

Autonomous Vehicles in Canada

Anthony: Continuing with this, what is what’s Canada’s approach to, autonomous vehicles? Do you guys have Waymo’s running around? Any sort of robot [00:29:00] taxis?

George: So not anywhere near the, level that you have in the States ’cause

Anthony: of snow?

George: Snow would be an issue, but I don’t think that’s a reason.

I think the investments are being done by American companies closer to home. And the tests as well. There have been some in Ontario and there were university programs as well. But my sense is that a university researcher is not going to be able to make the spend. That private companies can do.

So they, they were involved early on. They, there probably still are projects going on as well, but we’re talking about onesies and twosies, not vehicles in commercial operation as cabs, as far as I know.

Fred: Is there anything equivalent to a nationwide vision? Zero in. Canada. The US of course, has done a very poor job of stepping up to systematic safety, but what is the complexion of that in Canada?

George: There is first of all, some of the cities have adopted [00:30:00] it to, I, I don’t. I don’t think that any Canadian city was as successful with it as say, Manhattan. But there have been I say New York City, but there have been those same changes, around intersections, sidewalk design restricting parking, near intersections.

And definitely there have been national strategies both on drunk driving and on seatbelt use, for example. And they did deliver effective results, originally they were called step programs, selective traffic Enforcement Priority, I believe.

Anthony: Okay.

Open Recalls on Used Cars in Canada

Anthony: I’m gonna jump topics a little bit and let’s focus on more of, I think what the automobile Protection Association does open recalls on used cars.

So you said your organization works a lot with consumers, dealing with dealers.

George: Yes, we look at the retailing environment. Okay. For

Anthony: vehicles, do you guys work on used used car dealers, I guess Used car dealer? Yeah, sure. There we go. Great. Yeah, we were absolutely. So how does that work in Canada with, if there’s an open recall on used cars?

Do the dealers have [00:31:00] to inform the consumer or is it just buyer aware, or does it vary from province to province?

George: It doesn’t work at all.

Anthony: Yeah. All right. Just like us. So

George: the car dealer associations actually lobbied against requiring open recalls to be corrected on vehicles they offer for sale.

They just think the whole concept of talking about a safety recall would spook a buyer. And

Anthony: I’m so sorry. This is insane.

George: That’s what they say. And the other issue is that it insisting that a recall actually be corrected is a more involved thing that you might think, because in some cases the parts are not available.

Takes Lantus a Ram truck. You could be waiting a year. For an emissions recall part to show up. There’s plenty of other companies. Nissan also terrible, two or three years for a hood latch repair part to show up. The vehicle would then become unsellable. It would not only be a hardship on the dealer, but it would be a hardship [00:32:00] on the customer who wants to trade it in ’cause no one would offer much for the vehicle.

So what we end up doing, it’s a kind of a collective amnesia. We, you know what we’ll be. Complaint when there’s 10 or 15 incidents around a safety failure on a particular model. And yet there could be hundreds or thousands of ’em driving around uncorrected for months or sometimes years because recall completion rates are in the range of 80%.

The other thing that hurts completion rates in Canada as the correction rate is required to be reported by the car maker to the government by law for eight quarters. That’s it. So the thinking the thinking was you’d be done after two years. That’s a long time, right? In the 1970s, that seemed, when those standards came out, those requirements, that seemed like a good long time.

In fact, some car makers now take a year before they even supply the first recall part, so that’s a problem. The second is they have argued that it’s competitive information. Wait,

Anthony: that, that,

George: It should be hidden from customers [00:33:00] because it might benefit their competitors. It’s just nuts. It’s totally self-serving.

And the consequences is that the government is a bit hamstrung. They know which cars are not corrected because they get the data, but they’re not allowed to publish it. Publish a list. They will send Transport Canada sometimes send out an advisory for particular brand of car model to say that you need to bring it in.

But, you don’t have, on the, for example, on the recalls database where you look it up, they don’t tell you what percentage of the cars are have been corrected. And that would be pretty easy to do.

Michael: That would be no nit nitsa does it. It’s in the recall. That’s right. System and we only got, I think it was five quarters of information up to the year 2021 when the infrastructure hours passed.

And I think that made it eight quarters. So we’re now on equal footing as Canada, but we can click in and see our reports and figure out where, the recall percentage is on each [00:34:00] recall. However, I think our recall repair. Is coming in around 60%, so you’re beating us there. It’s really bad in the United States as far as the percentage of complete completed repairs.

Anthony: Michael, do not admit failure in front of the Canadian. Whatcha doing

George: well? You know what? It’s amazing because many jurisdictions are able to collect unpaid parking tickets. They’ll hold up your renewal, right? Yeah. Not renew the vehicle. So you could easily if the the, if the provinces were more committed it’s recall laws federal, but there would be some way that two could interface so that when, your license came up, maybe they’d give you a year or six months to take your car in, but you’d know before the next renewal.

Yeah. It’s gotta be clean.

Michael: In Germany, they come to your house and take the license plates off your car. Seriously? Yeah. All that’s awesome. That’s what my German intern told me. That is the, that is one side of the spectrum on how to make people get their re open, recalls [00:35:00] repaired.

However, that. That opens some questions. When you have, for instance, the Nissan Hood latch issue where people are waiting three years for repair. What does the government enforcement agency do then, when it’s clearly not a consumer’s fault?

Anthony: Wow. George, can I go to a new car dealership in Canada and purchase a vehicle that has an open recall on it that has not been fixed?

George: I don’t think it happens. In that case, the manufacturer usually issues a stop sale order. And so it would be the automaker’s decision. I don’t know that the tra, in, in theory transportation, it’s prohibited, but I don’t know that the transport reg regulator has boots on the ground where they could actually check that and know of it.

And certainly the provincial registration system wouldn’t flag it if you had a brand new car with an open recall. So it’s really up to the car maker to issue it. And I haven’t had heard complaints about it, about vehicles with stop sale orders being sold by dealers.

Anthony: Michael, that is illegal in the us, correct?[00:36:00]

Michael: Yes. You can’t sell a new vehicle with an open recall, and you have to basically shut down sales of all those vehicles. That’s one of the first things that manufacturer does when there’s a recall issued. They don’t immediately go run into their customers and tell them about it. That usually comes a few weeks later, but they alert their dealers to suspend all sales of those vehicles in their inventory until they can be fixed.

Anthony: Alright then. So I think, the total score between the US and Canada, I think Canada’s got the slight advantage there. US definitely got a point there for the end. ’cause it’s definitely illegal. Wait, no. You don’t think so?

Michael: What about something we haven’t discussed yet, which might put Canada over the top clearly.

Public Auto Insurance in Canada

Michael: Is it public? Public auto insurance? What is that?

Anthony: What is, wait, what is public Auto, because I just got my renewal for my auto insurance and every year it keeps going up and it’s really expensive. Okay. Do you guys have better auto insurance too?

George: We have different auto insurance. Again, because in the public li the liability [00:37:00] area, we, there isn’t a risk of those staggering, like very large awards.

They can be significant. But anything in the single digit, millions is very high in Canada.

Anthony: Okay, so what is. Public auto. Like how do I insure a car? Because like in the US there’s all these private companies and they’re all like, Hey, let’s hug. How far can we dig into your life to take every cent you have and then never pay out,

George: right?

So three three and a half really of our provinces have a public auto insurance system. So if there are serious injuries, you’re not suing the other guy’s insurer or the other guy because you’re both insured by the same person. So it cuts out cost. It’s a bit faster in terms of getting your claim approved.

In some cases they look at if you’re disabled or your life quality is diminished. Instead of giving you a lump sum, you might get a monthly, like a stipend or an award. The perception being that that may. You’re more likely [00:38:00] to use to use it, I guess it’s more likely, you’re more likely to be able to manage it and it’s cheaper in the system as well.

So those are the benefits. I would say also the public auto insurers, unlike the US we don’t have an IIHS, for example. The public auto insurers are more serious about safety research and because they’re paying the bill they’re, and they’re closely, they’re usually separate corporations, but they have the ear of the government.

They’re able to get involved in safety programs in a more sustained and systemic way, for example, than a hundred private insurers through the insurance bureau. Which is the way the, the private insurers work. Also, the provinces with public auto insurance have much fewer rate swings.

And they don’t have the same crisis that we have with private insurance where one year they’re losing a ton of money and then another year they’re making a bit of money. So it’s managed a bit differently. I would say we have fewer complaints. About insurance in those provinces, but there are, they have [00:39:00] detractors as well, and Quebec is interesting.

It’s a mixed system. So bodily injury is one insurer, it’s a government insurer and it’s generally very respected. And collision looks like anywhere else. So the messy part, which is administering relationship body shops, estimates, appraisers, courtesy cars, is all handled by private insurance and most of the time they make a decent return.

So it actually turned out to be not bad for the private sector as well.

Anthony: Wow. Do you have any idea of what the cost of insurance is? Say I live in Montreal. What would it cost to insure, let’s say a 2020 Toyota Corolla?

George: You’d be part of it would be paid on your driver’s license renewal and your vehicle registration.

So there’d be a couple of hundred dollars there.

Anthony: A couple hundred. And that covers me for a year.

George: Yeah. But that’s only part of it. And then about the collision and other parts would maybe be 800 to a thousand dollars.

Anthony: For [00:40:00] a year,

George: In a, yeah, in a private, in, in a private insurance.

The next neighboring province, you’d be paying 16 or $1,700 for that car, possibly

Anthony: for an entire year.

George: Yes, because it’s a private insurance province and it has a relatively inefficient insurance system that the insurance industry has. Repeatedly blocked from changing. What ends up happening when there are calls for public insurance, the insurance industry goes ballistic, the private insurers, and so they preserve the system as it is in some cases.

There are obviously caps on certain kinds of benefits. There are efforts to limit recourse to the courts a little bit, but it doesn’t go to the core inefficiencies of the system. And I think the hybrid system in Quebec where they kept collision. But the liability and injury side sorry, the injury side was the single payer has proven to give good results for both.

Anthony: Alright. I have to readjust the scores. ’cause Canada wins By far.

George: No, the [00:41:00] only reason why we win, literally, we, our cars would probably look like vehicles from the 1960s. We win because all that development, all the push, ralph Nas and Clarence Ditlow, anything they did for you ended up benefiting us over the years at low cost.

Anthony: That’s yeah. So you win ’cause my insurance is for an entire year is like $3,400.

George: Yeah. So no, that would, unless you’ve had three corollas stolen from your driveway. No. And drove another one into a pole. No, you would be, you wouldn’t be paying those rates. Yeah. In most of Canada.

Anthony: And you get free healthcare too in Canada?

George: We pay for it, yeah. But yes. But yeah.

Anthony: Okay. How hard is it to learn the language? Which one? Canadian, whatever. You guys there morning? Yeah. Alright. Alright. With global warming, I think it’s a winner.

Fred: Hey, no unrelated question.

Unlicensed Drivers and Immigration Issues

Fred: I guess [00:42:00] unlicensed drivers.

So in the US we have a problem where a lot of people migrate here with various degrees of documentation. And what happens is if they don’t have proper documentation, they cannot get a driver’s license, but they need the car to drive anyways. So they, there’s a fair number of illegal drivers who were undocumented.

And is there anything you can say about the comparison between the. Ability of unlicensed or new immigrants or however you want to talk about people like that in Canada versus the United States. This is a, it’s a political issue here. People rail about the unlicensed drivers, but they don’t allow ’em to get the documentation that’s required for them to get a driver’s license, which makes no sense, but there it is.

It’s a political issue.

George: I believe it’s probably a much smaller issue for us that we have a smaller [00:43:00] percentage of unlicensed drivers per se on the road. The I do know that the province of Quebec has recently tightened up its rules for new immigrants. What they discovered is that people from, for example, certain African countries with a driver’s license just were not considered, they’re not driving fast enough for our roads.

So you’ll see, you might see them on the highway at driving at 45 or 50 miles an hour. In the slow lane, presumably with white knuckles. And the, what they’ve said is that and these are driving schools who are who, who have pointed it out. They said people need a refresh.

And they’re being required now to take a course, whereas before they wouldn’t, but that’s not unlicensed. Those are people who are licensed and who are here legitimately, but where the driver’s license they earned is just not appropriate for the driving environment here.

Anthony: How’s that work, Fred?

George: It’s a half answer. It’s a, partly an evasion.

Anthony: Yeah, no, that’s what I was wondering. [00:44:00] It’s just less of

George: an issue in Canada. As far as I know, unlicensed drivers are not as common, and perhaps partly be, certainly we haven’t had the, probably level of migration that you’ve had of people who are undocumented.

And probably the pathway to immigration here is a little different once you’re already in the country. That’s my, that’s a guess.

Anthony: Oh, thanks. Once we cross the border, we’ll start figuring out how to become citizens. And lower our insurance rates. And then we can take all that extra money and go to auto safety.org and click on donate.

Oh yeah. Time has flight.

Weekly Recalls and Tesla Cybertruck Issues

Anthony: We’re gonna jump into recalls and I wanted to get into some things around Waymo, but I’ll save Waymo for next week. So let’s let’s do some recalls. George, you wanna stick around for our recalls? Great. So I’m convinced as a conspiracy gentleman ’cause Okay, we recorded the show typically on Wednesday mornings and invariably Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, there’s some big auto news.

There’s some big recall. Last week we talked about the [00:45:00] cyber truck, about how it’s falling apart because they use the wrong kind of glue and after we record, we post this, what happens? Cyber truck recall. That’s right. What is it? Is this cyber truck recall number eight, Michael.

Michael: And this is the eighth time cyber trucks have been recalled.

However, to poke a little hole in your theory, I didn’t check the nitsa recalls on the Wednesday morning of last week. And so that cyber truck recall was sitting there ready for me to notice and I didn’t see it. So that one’s on me.

Anthony: Oh, minus two, Michael minus. Okay. So Tesla 46,096 vehicles. The 2024 to 2025 Tesla cyber truck.

I. Basically like we said, they didn’t glue it correctly, but remember this was something that Elon said, it’s gonna be a, an exoskeleton. It’s gonna be so cool man. It’s gonna be great. All the chicks are gonna dig it. And it turns out none of this is true. It’s just a normal car and they glued on some stainless steel to it that magically rusts.[00:46:00]

And so yeah, the, they they’re letting you know, in May,

Michael: that’s not gonna be an over the air update owners are gonna have a couple of months until they come up with a better glue and glue it back on. For you, it looks like owners are gonna hear more late May.

Anthony: Yes. And if you’ve spent a hundred thousand dollars and you’re wondering, why can’t they use element’s glue?

You could have used that money. Go to auto safety.org and donate. You don’t listen to the show. Next up, Nissan 1,430 vehicles. The 2025 Infiniti QX 60, the 2025 Nissan Pathfinder. The Nissan Murano due to a supplier production issue their front brake caliper may have reduced strength and could break.

Oh, that’s not good. And then you can get a warning of low brake fluid. Fred, how could a low, what is a, why would I have a brake cal? I thought a brake caliper was used just when they measure my brakes to see if there’s still material there.

Fred: Brake caliper is the thing that squeezes, [00:47:00] excuse me, the pads against the disc and makes your car slow down.

So if the caliper breaks. It’s not squeezing the discs, so your car isn’t gonna slow down, and because it doesn’t have that resistance, it’s gonna, the piston’s gonna push way too far, which is going to absorb a lot more liquid right behind the piston, so that’s gonna cause your fluid to go down. So that’s what’s going on there.

Anthony: Hey, this is the first recall I’ve seen where in the description of Remedy, it says, all repairs, whoop all, let’s try that again. All repairs will be performed free of charge for parts and labors, and may take one hour to complete. All recalls are free, but I’ve never seen them actually write that out and then say it’ll take one hour to complete.

That’s, is that normal Michael?

Michael: This is Nissan. Keep in mind they’ve got a couple of recalls out there where it’s taken them two to three years to get the part available. So they wanna make you feel like you’re getting [00:48:00] everything you can get as part of this, including a short repair time.

George: I think also the concern is that people are worried if they’re going in for a sort of a break job. That they might be stuck with a bill, so maybe that’s also part of why they’ve specified what’s gonna happen and that if in fact, your front brakes are worn out, you might be charged extra for new pads and rotors if it’s needed when you bring the car in,

Anthony: because I know tomorrow I’m bringing my car in for new oil and put’em to rotate the air and the tires, and that’s gonna take at least two hours.

So maybe I’ll get a Nissan instead. Next up, Chrysler 3,919 vehicles. The 2024 to 2025 Jeep Wagoner. S Just that one, huh? If a headlamp aim is improperly adjusted, it may reduce forward visibility for the driver and create glare for oncoming vehicle drivers, which may cause a vehicle crash without prior warning.

I agree. I think all headlights are designed just to blind me and we should remove them all. No driving at night, no [00:49:00] headlights anymore. I think I’m the only one.

Michael: Oh, this is a weird one because it, it looks like they built, almost 4,000 vehicles where. The vertical headlamp aim adjustment.

So you can, I think you can basically, you can adjust your headlamps side to side or vertically and there is no mechanism or there is a mechanism, but it’s completely inaccessible to anyone who wants to aim their headlight. So essentially they built a headlight that can’t be vertically. Modified. If you go in for an inspection and they find out that your headlights are aiming too high or too low, you can’t change it.

So I believe they’re gonna have to go in and put away for the headlights to be adjusted vertically into these vehicles or create some type of access to it which seems like a. It’s a, seems like a kind of a difficult recall to get done. So I’m interested to see how they accomplished it. There’s not a lot of information on that.[00:50:00]

Anthony: Alright, that was our final recall. I didn’t realize that.

Conclusion and Farewell

Anthony: And with that thank you for listening to another episode of Ask a Canadian. And thank you George, Annie, for joining us and letting us know all about Canada. You didn’t explain to us how we can become citizens, but we’ll figure that out for a future episode.

Yeah, I

George: think that’s outside of my bandwidth. Wow. But thank you. It’s a delight and I love your show. So very glad to be here.

Anthony: Excellent. Glad

Fred: to have you. Thank you, George. Thank you George. And thank you listeners.

Anthony: All right. Till next week, maybe we’ll talk about Lightning next week.

Bye.

Fred: For more information, visit www.auto safety.org.