Industry committee  I think that can be explained by two factors. First of all, spam has been reduced by the new technologies that consumers can use. Moreover, there has been a reduction in the number of emails from companies that have not obtained consumers' consent. I think both of these factors are at play.

Industry committee  I'll ask my colleague to chime in on that one.

Industry committee  With respect to the first question, as I said in my opening remarks, the origination for CASL in and of itself was Canada's appearance on the top five countries for origination of spam. As I said, we are now out of the top 10, so in terms of whether it was the result we were aiming for, I'd say that in general, it's a positive outcome as a whole.

Industry committee  I think it's clarification around compliance. You'll hear from a number of witnesses over the course of this study about what that could or should look like. I think you'll hear from some who say, “It's pretty clear,” and you'll hear from others who say, “No, we really need to have a much more refined understanding and prescriptive understanding of what consent would look like.”

Industry committee  I think it's twofold, On the one hand, on the malware, ransomware, other sorts of factors, that's by its very nature malicious. It's intended to do bad things to your computer system and to do bad things to users. That's an international problem. I think we really are working in collaboration with other enforcement agencies to take down botnets and take down malware and ensure that we can take appropriate action.

Industry committee  I'll start, and then I'll turn it over to my colleagues from the CRTC. To the point that was made earlier, in general, because the law was framed as technology neutral, by and large it has been able to keep up. I think our own sophisticated understanding of the tools and techniques that are being used by entities requires quite a bit of constant study and work on our part, but the law itself has generally been able to continue to allow for enforcement to be carried out.

Industry committee  On international enforcement, we have had some success in the international space. I'll turn to my colleagues in a second and they can tell you their own success stories. The enforcement agencies that are empowered by CASL have the capacity to work in the international zone with their peers.

Industry committee  We've relied on a number of third party reports to be able to get an assessment of the degree to which spam makes up the email flows of Canadians. We get it in two ways. One is the degree to which we can rely on the senders to understand their practices, for instance, working with folks on the “Canadian Digital Marketing Report” or others that tell us about senders as well as some information related to recipients.

Industry committee  Canada is no longer in the top 10, and according to some sources, since CASL came into effect, it is no longer a top 20 spam-producing country. Again, we have to triangulate lots of information to get at that, but by rankings, we're not in the top 10 and maybe not even in the top 20.

Industry committee  Causality is always challenging in these situations, but I think the fact that we have a robust anti-spam legislation that has significant compliance requirements for all senders is a useful mechanism to be able to highlight that spam is important and that we want to cut it down.

Industry committee  Yes, I would say there are elements of CASL that stakeholders have told us need to be clarified to support increased compliance, and that has taken some effort.

Industry committee  With respect to the private right of action, the number one concern that we heard from stakeholders across a wide variety of areas—academia, industry, and broader stakeholders—was that the private right of action upped their initial concerns around compliance. Because the PRA would introduce the possibility of significant monetary penalties and legal risk, absent clarity on exactly how to comply, and to ensure that they were able to pursue CASL in its fullest form, they would be subject to significant risk.

Industry committee  Thank you for the question. I think there are two elements to that. One is that CASL has been successful at reducing the amount of spam that originates from within Canada, and that's been quite helpful, but to your point, spam is very much an international domain, in that there are a number of other spam-producing entities that exist outside of our borders.

Industry committee  First of all, I would like to thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee for the invitation to appear before you this morning. My name is Mark Schaan and I serve as director general of the marketplace framework policy branch in the strategic innovation and policy sector of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.

Transport committee  The proposal is to have public interest expanded upon in the guidelines to allow for an evolutionary understanding of public interest, because it changes, and to allow for a full and robust consultation on what that is.