OMVIC fines Prio Auto Sales $4,000 after a 2003 Hummer H2 bounced between repair shops and was declared unfit by the MTO

In a decision dated July 8, 2026, OMVIC’s Discipline Tribunal ordered 9578862 Canada Inc. o/a Prio Auto Sales to pay a $4,000 fine and Zahra Niran, its sole director, Person in Charge and salesperson, to pay $1,000. The vehicle behind the order was a 2003 Hummer H2, sold in September 2022, that the dealer could not get into roadworthy shape across months of attempts. The finding rests on s. 9(4) of the Code of Ethics, the duty to provide conscientious service with reasonable knowledge, skill, judgment and competence. Earlier orders covered here have included that section among a stack of disclosure and documentation breaches; this is the first where it is the only Code section the dealer was found to have breached.

The matter proceeded on an Agreed Statement of Facts dated March 26, 2026, with a jointly proposed penalty and no oral hearing, the Rule 1.07 route, before the same reviewing panel that decided the other July 8 matters covered here: Deb Mattina, Jon Lemaire and Paul Eros. OMVIC withdrew a substantial slice of the original May 2024 referral, including every allegation against a second individual named in it, Nawshad Syed. What remained was the Hummer.

From delivery checklist to an unfit ruling

The agreed timeline reads like a service-department log. The consumer bought the 19-year-old Hummer on September 21, 2022; the delivery checklist already flagged two door repairs, so the dealer kept the truck to fix them. At delivery on October 17, the engine light came on during the drive home and the driver’s door still was not right. Back it went on October 26. Ready again on November 17, and again problems surfaced on the drive home.

Then the consumer went around the dealer. A Ministry of Transportation inspection on November 29, 2022 found the Hummer unfit and its plates were removed. Two weeks later the consumer complained to OMVIC. The dealer kept trying into 2023: a repair-facility inspection in February, a Canadian Tire safety in March that the truck was said to have passed, and four days after that pass, another MTO inspection that still produced a $2,193.88 repair estimate. In the end it was the Canadian Tire location, not the dealer, that undertook the outstanding repairs for the consumer and completed them.

A competence case, not a disclosure case

The panel accepted that the dealer “failed to ensure all necessary repairs were completed and failed to exercise reasonable knowledge, skill and competence”. That is a breach of s. 9(4), which requires a registrant to provide conscientious service during a trade and demonstrate reasonable knowledge, skill, judgment and competence in providing it.

It was also a breach of the dealer’s own registration terms. Condition 21 of the terms and conditions Niran executed in January 2017, shortly before the dealer and Niran were registered that March, commits the dealer to “accept full responsibility for the quality of any repairs or alterations” completed by its personnel, agents or affiliated repair facilities. Sending the truck out to a string of shops did not dilute that responsibility; the condition expressly reaches work done by others on the dealer’s behalf. Niran, as the person who ran the dealership day to day, personally breached s. 6(2) for letting it happen.

The order gives both respondents nine months to pay, a notably longer runway than the 90-day clocks common on the July 8 docket. Education came with it: Niran must complete the MVDA Key Elements Course within 90 days, and the dealer must offer to fund the course for all its current salespersons on the same clock.

The MTO-unfit thread connects this case to Aurora Chrysler, where a ministry inspector condemned a vehicle the dealer’s own inspection centre had certified, and to Hakim Auto Sales, where an unsafe rebuilt Subaru carried a fresh safety certificate. The difference is the rule engaged: those cases were about certificates and disclosure at the point of sale; Prio is about the work itself.

What to learn

• Repair quality is a Code of Ethics obligation. s. 9(4) turns incompetent or incomplete repair work into a disciplinable breach, independent of any misrepresentation. A dealer who keeps handing back an unfixed vehicle is accumulating liability with each return trip.
• Your registration conditions can make you the guarantor of outsourced work. Condition 21 made Prio responsible for repairs done by agents and affiliated facilities. Farming the job out to a repair shop, or three, still leaves the dealer holding the outcome.
• An MTO unfit finding is the evidence that ends the argument. The consumer’s independent inspection, which pulled the plates, is what transformed a lingering service complaint into an OMVIC file. Once a ministry inspector has condemned the vehicle, the dealer’s own assurances stop counting for much.