Print Canada An Independent Quarterly  ·  Stitched, Posted, Kept Letters: letters@printmag.org

PRINTCanada
All the noise that is not fit to feed. Letters from a country that still reads.
PRINT Canada · Writer

Helen Chen

Digital Producer and Consumer Reporter · Brampton, Ont.

CBC Digital 2019 to 2024. Auto industry and consumer protection. Covered the rise of dealership add-on financing, the collapse of several independent dealers, and the OMVIC compliance audit of 2023. Manages the PRINT website alongside her reporting.

Beats: auto industry, consumer protection, digital rights, Ontario dealerships
Contact: h.chen@printmag.org

Reporting by H. Chen
Know Your Rights · H. Chen · Jun 27, 2026

When a vet raises a frightening diagnosis, here is what you can do.

A serious word said in an exam room, cancer, a mass, something that cannot wait, lands on you while you are holding an animal you love and cannot question. That fear is real, and it is also the moment you are most likely to agree to anything. You have rights that exist precisely for this moment: to the records, to a second opinion, and to ask what is confirmed and what is only suspected. This is general information about Ontario, not veterinary or legal advice.

Consumer Protection · H. Chen · May 8, 2026

Four days from the lot to the failure.

A recent-model electric vehicle is sold as roadworthy in Brampton on a Thursday in November. The safety inspection on file runs eighteen minutes. By Monday morning, four days later, an independent shop in Cambridge has found suspension defects that the safety inspection did not. The buyer's small-claims file is now sitting on a Zoom assessment hearing date. The brand the country has been admiring for a decade is about to be asked, in writing, what it thought it was selling.

Consumer Protection · H. Chen · May 1, 2026

Eighteen minutes is not a safety inspection.

An Ontario buyer takes delivery of a new electric vehicle. The delivery process, from arrival to handover, takes less time than a haircut. The pre-delivery safety inspection, on the dealer's own time log, is recorded as eighteen minutes. The buyer drives the car off the lot. The buyer is back at the service desk before the week is out. This is not the worst single delivery this magazine has on file. It is the modal delivery for the brand the country has, on insufficient examination, decided to admire.

Infrastructure · H. Chen · Apr 5, 2026

The contractor that owns the country's potholes.

Drive any major Ontario highway in spring and you will be driving on the same surface, repaired by the same contractor, billed at the same rate, on the same multi-decade contract. The country is paying the highest road-repair prices in the developed world for the slowest road repair in the developed world. The reason is that one company, in most provinces, has been allowed to own the work.

See the full masthead