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Secondary Ticket Sales

Ms Blakeman: Thanks very much, Mr. Speaker. The prohibition against ticket resales has been removed from the new Film and Video Classification Act with the government arguing that consumers are protected under the Fair Trading Act, and this is simply not true. The Fair Trading Act only ensures that tickets are legitimate and that there is disclosure for why they’re charging such high prices. This is not the same thing as protecting consumers from the ticket reselling practices of Ticketmaster. I’ll ask again to the Minister of Service Alberta: what is the minister doing beyond daily monitoring to protect Alberta ticket buyers?

The Speaker: The hon. minister.

Mrs. Klimchuk: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Indeed, daily monitoring is ongoing. As well, with respect to the Fair Trading Act there is protection for consumers under that if a consumer has been misled or been sold a fake ticket or other unfair trade practices. What’s really important here is that the conversation is happening. We need to hear from people out there who are being misled or consumers who are not getting the right information. That’s why this conversation needs to happen, so we can do the right thing and handle it properly.

The Speaker: The hon. member.

Ms Blakeman: Well, thank you. To the Minister of Culture and Community Spirit. Ontario’s act actually protects ticket buyers and artists and workers by prohibiting secondary ticket sales, so why doesn’t the minister introduce legislation to do the same thing here?

Mr. Blackett: Well, Mr. Speaker, right now we’re going through the regulations as opposed to Bill 18 before we have it proclaimed. What we have done is that we’ve talked to Ticketmaster, and we’ve had indications from them. We asked them to cease and desist. We did that months ago. TicketsNow is not operating in Alberta. None of our artists or our consumers are at risk on this particular issue.

Ms Blakeman: Boy, did you get taken.

Back to the same minister: if he doesn’t want to bring in legislation that prohibits ticket reselling, why doesn’t the minister take the same steps that the Attorney General from New Jersey took; that is, to stop Ticketmaster from steering customers to its secondary sites, they legislated that Ticketmaster could not resell tickets on TicketsNow until after a delay of up to one year. Why don’t you consider that?

Mr. Blackett: Well, I will take that under advisement. Thank you.