CADA issues COVID-19 safety guidelines for dealers

The Canadian Automobile Dealers Association (CADA) has released guidelines for how dealerships can safely operate during the pandemic, including recommendations on how to sell vehicles in-store and offer test drives when allowed.

The CADA document is designed to showcase to both the public and governments ways dealerships can be proactive against COVID-19, CADA CEO Tim Reuss said. He added that provincial associations are going to use the report and tweak it to provide guidance to their members based on a province’s unique rules, regulations and emergency orders.

“Dealers have had to start looking for solutions across the country to their different realities,” Reuss said. “We have a situation across Canada where each province is approaching things quite differently, and dealers across the country were looking for solutions, ideas and guidance.”

According to the document’s legal disclaimer, the CADA did not seek guidance from health professionals in putting together the guidelines, instead relying on previous publications by the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) in the United States and provincial dealer associations in Quebec and Ontario.

“We were very, very comfortable and confident that that sort of heavy lifting had already been done, including by the NADA,” Reuss said. “The idea wasn’t to reinvent the wheel but to put everything in a cogent fashion together in an easy-to-read guide that dealers can be used.”

Recommendations outlined in the document include having dealerships designate “a COVID-19 champion to monitor social distancing and the overall health of the building and staff,” limiting the number of customers involved in a sales meeting to two and limiting the total number of customers in the building at one time. It also outlines safety measures for service departments, many of which are similar to those in a recent report by the Quebec dealers association, as well as how to conduct test drives safely in provinces where they are allowed.