LAT bars Ghafoori from safety-certifying Gardiner Motors' inventory but keeps the dealership registered despite 11 consumer-protection convictions

Asmat Ghafoori runs a high-volume used-car dealership, holds a mechanic’s licence, and safety-certifies the vehicles he sells. On February 20, 2026, the Ontario Court of Justice found him guilty on 11 counts of unfair practices for false, misleading or deceptive representations about those vehicles. Five months later, the Licence Appeal Tribunal agreed with the Registrar that this record gives reasonable grounds to believe he will not carry on business in accordance with the law. It still let him and Gardiner Motors Ltd. keep their registrations. The decision, published by CanLII as Ghafoori and Gardiner Motors Ltd. v Registrar, Motor Vehicle Dealers Act, 2002, 2026 CanLII 77452 (ON LAT), was released July 30, 2026 after a four-day videoconference hearing before Adjudicator Gurleen Thethi in early May.

The convictions carried the Registrar’s case

The Registrar’s Notice of Proposal, dated November 9, 2025, sought to revoke Gardiner Motors’ dealer registration and Ghafoori’s salesperson registration. Ghafoori is the dealership’s sole director and officer.

The provincial-offences trial that anchored the NOP involved the sale of 15 vehicles to 14 consumers. The charges came in two kinds: failing to disclose material information about a motor vehicle, which the decision cites as s. 42(25), paragraph 25 of the disclosure list in s. 42 of O. Reg. 333/08, and engaging in unfair practices contrary to s. 14(1) and s. 17(1) of the Consumer Protection Act. Gardiner Motors was found guilty on 11 unfair-practices counts plus one disclosure count; Ghafoori was found guilty on 11 unfair-practices counts covering many of the same transactions. The Registrar led evidence on six of them: a Jeep Cherokee, a Ford Explorer, two Ford Escapes, a Chevrolet Equinox and a Dodge Caravan.

Consumers testified that they bought vehicles represented as safety certified, roadworthy and in good condition, then watched them develop serious mechanical problems, in several cases learning the vehicles were unsafe outright. Regulatory witnesses from the Ministry of Transportation and OMVIC testified that certain vehicles connected to the convictions should never have passed a safety inspection, and that Ghafoori, as a licensed mechanic, issued or participated in issuing the relevant Safety Standards Certificates himself.

Intent did not matter

Ghafoori did not dispute the convictions. His counsel argued they were regulatory offences with no finding of intent or knowledge, a limited subset of a business that has sold thousands of lower-cost vehicles, and pointed to satisfied customers who described him as honest and referred friends to the dealership.

The adjudicator applied the reasonable-grounds standard from Famous Flesh Gordon’s: the Registrar does not need to show future non-compliance is more likely than not, only that its belief rests on compelling and credible information with a nexus to the business. Eleven convictions for misrepresenting vehicles as safe cleared that bar comfortably. On the missing-intent argument, the decision is blunt: “Whether arising from intentional conduct, carelessness, or inadequate compliance practices, such conduct undermines consumer confidence and is inconsistent with the standards expected of registrants under the Act” ([21]). The satisfied customers did not tip the scale either, because “the issue before me is not whether the appellant has conducted some transactions properly” ([30]).

The dealership’s fate followed Ghafoori’s. As sole director exercising control over day-to-day operations, he and Gardiner Motors are interested persons in respect of each other under s. 6(4), so his conduct disentitled the corporation under s. 6(1)(d)(iii) just as it disentitled him under s. 6(1)(a)(ii).

Winning on s. 6, losing on the remedy

Proving disentitlement is not the end of a Notice of Proposal appeal. The Tribunal owes the Registrar no deference and can substitute its own opinion under s. 9(5), including by attaching conditions. That discretion decided this case.

The adjudicator observed that every conviction traced back to one process: “the concerns established on the evidence arose primarily in the context of vehicle safety certification and representations concerning vehicle roadworthiness” ([39]). There was no evidence of misconduct unrelated to safety certification. So instead of closing the dealership, the order takes certification of the dealership’s inventory out of Ghafoori’s hands:

• Ghafoori shall not issue, sign, participate in issuing, or otherwise be responsible for any Safety Standards Certificate for vehicles offered for sale by Gardiner Motors.
• Any vehicle sold by Gardiner Motors that requires a certificate must get it from an independent licensed Motor Vehicle Inspection Station in which neither Ghafoori nor Gardiner Motors has any ownership, employment, management or financial interest.
• The Registrar may add reporting or monitoring requirements to ensure compliance.

The decision is careful about what this outcome is not: “the Tribunal’s role is not to impose a punitive outcome or to balance economic hardship against regulatory compliance” ([40]). The conditions survive because they neutralize the identified risk, not because revocation would have been too harsh on the business.

The outcome lands between the poles of the site’s other condition cases. Jandu and Pourtehrani also traded revocation or refusal for conditions, while Chaudry shows the discretion cutting the other way. What is new here is the surgical shape: an activity-specific carve-out, with no end date stated in the order, aimed at the exact function the registrant abused.

What to learn

• A dealer who certifies his own inventory owns the conflict that creates. The convictions here grew out of certificates Ghafoori issued for vehicles he was selling. OMVIC’s discipline panel reached a similar fault line in Aurora Chrysler, where the dealer’s own inspection centre certified a vehicle the MTO later declared unfit. An arm’s-length inspection station is cheap insurance by comparison.
• Provincial-offences convictions follow you to the LAT. The Tribunal did not retry the charges; it took the 11 findings of guilt as near-complete proof of the s. 6(1)(a)(ii) ground, and the absence of an intent finding changed nothing. A registrant who pleads out or loses at trial in provincial offences court should expect the convictions to do the Registrar’s work in any later registration fight. Hakim shows the same conduct profile, an unsafe vehicle behind a fresh safety certificate, at the discipline stage.
• Conditions have to map to the source of the risk. Under s. 9(5), the question is whether the public can be protected without revocation. Here the answer was yes because the misconduct had one locus and the conditions sealed it. A registrant whose problems spread across the whole business cannot expect the same lifeline.