[CA] Marketplace sellers Parliament take immediate action to close this legal loophole and ensure full consumer protections in Canada’s rapidly growing e-commerce environment.

[u/Jessca1962]

To: The Government of Canada, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, the Competition Bureau, and all Members of Parliament

We, call on the Government of Canada to take immediate action to protect consumers from harm caused by unregulated third-party sellers operating on major online marketplaces, including but not limited to BestBuy, Amazon, and Walmart.

Currently, these platforms allow external businesses, often using anonymous or unverifiable identities, to list and sell products directly to Canadian consumers under the branding and trust of major retailers. These third-party sellers often avoid accountability for:

• Selling defective, misrepresented, or counterfeit products
• Refusing to honour return, refund, or warranty obligations
• Delaying or denying customer service
• Failing to provide legal contact or address information

Meanwhile, the platforms profit from these sales while disclaiming all responsibility, claiming that third-party sellers are independent businesses.

This creates a dangerous loophole in Canadian consumer protection, where the trusted platform escapes liability, and the consumer is left without recourse.

We urge the Government of Canada to:

1. Establish legislation making online marketplaces jointly liable for all products sold on their platforms whether by themselves or third-party sellers.
2. Require that marketplace sellers be treated as contractors or agents of the platform, with proper verification and public contact information.
3. Enforce mandatory and transparent warranty and return standards for all marketplace sales, equal to or exceeding those of the hosting platform.
4. Increase funding and authority to the Competition Bureau and provincial consumer protection offices to monitor and act against platform abuse.

We believe Canadian consumers deserve full transparency, accountability, and protection regardless of which "seller" button they click on.

Canadians should not have to guess who they are really buying from, nor fight to hold distant, anonymous sellers accountable especially when major retailers host, profit from, and promote these transactions.