The Attorney General, Hon. P. Mitchell Murphy, signed an agreement with Unisys Canada Inc. on December 15, 1997, to implement a new computerized province-wide Personal Property Registry system. The electronic registry will support the new Personal Property Security Act (PPSA) passed by the PEI Legislature in the spring of 1997. When proclaimed, several existing acts - including the Bills of Sale Act, Conditional Sales Act and the Assignment of Book Debts Act - will be repealed and many others amended. This legislation follows the legislative model which is currently effective in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
"The new PPSA is a fundamental change to the way security agreements are registered for personal property," said Mr. Murphy. "The reform of the personal property system is both a technology solution as well as an improvement in the legislation and business process."
The new province-wide, electronic registry will give clients the capability to enter and search registrations from their place of business. "This will greatly enhance the efficiency of registry operations and make it more accessible to business and consumer clients in this province," continued the Minister.
The new system, anticipated to be in place in Prince Edward Island in the spring of 1998, will be delivered through Atlantic Canada On-Line (ACOL), an on-line service providing access to information maintained by the four provincial governments in Atlantic Canada. This agreement builds on the agreement reached between the Premiers of the four Atlantic provinces and Unisys Canada establishing ACOL, which was signed in Charlottetown on May 10, 1996. The first ACOL application, the Personal Property Registry System for Nova Scotia, went live on November 3, 1997. The response from both the business users of the new system and the government client department has been very favourable.
The Personal Property Registry System for PEI is the next phase in moving toward an Atlantic regional system where the four provincial governments will operate within a similar legislative, technological and business framework.
"Unisys is pleased to be partnering with the Government of PEI in providing the latest technology to improve access to government services and information," said Al Shatford, Vice-President and Regional Manager of Unisys Canada. "It responds to the needs expressed by the financial and legal communities and is in keeping with goals of the ACOL public/private partnership to benefit from the effective application of electronic commerce technology."
The agreement provides for a training and educational component to assist external government clients and registry staff in understanding the impact of the legislation and the new procedures to be followed. The benefits of the new system include: a reduction in paper burden and storage costs for Registry operations; self-entry of information by clients, enabling them to have better control over information transfers into the system; improved search capabilities; improved security and control over personal property records; and an increase in the level of service to clients via the institution of electronic registration and search, a particularly important feature to the business community.