When Dalton McGuinty stepped down as Liberal leader and
prorogued the Ontario legislature on October 15, 2012, any bills
that had not received Royal Assent before prorogation were
terminated and essentially "died". Among these was
Bill 96, a private member's bill introduced to the Ontario
Legislative Assembly to amend and modernize the Electronic
Commerce Act, 2000 (the "Act"). The bill had
only received First Reading; however its co-sponsors, Conservative
MPP Todd Smith and Liberal MPP Yasir Naqvi, along with many in the
real estate industry, continue to push for changes to the
Act.
The purpose of the bill was to facilitate the use of electronic
signatures in real estate transactions by removing the exception in
the Act which prohibits land transfer documents from being signed
by an electronically generated signature. The bill proposed
that these land transfer documents would be subject to the
reliability requirements contained in section 11(3) of the
Act. These requirements are intended to ensure that an
electronic signature is reliable to identify the person signing and
reliable to associate the electronic signature with the relevant
electronic document.
Some are hopeful that electronic commerce and electronic
signatures are becoming more widely accepted. The Ontario Real
Estate Association ("OREA") supported Bill 96 and the
initiatives to delete the existing exemption of real property
transactions from the application of the Act and continues to work
with MPPs to have the exemption removed. Others remain
sceptical as to the reliability of electronic signatures and as to
whether the Act adequately prescribes what constitutes a reliable
signature.
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