Justice committee  The credit card system is not my particular area of expertise, but I do know that there are additional levels of security and verification. In some case, people are asked to give out only the numbers appearing on the back of the card. Occasionally, they are asked to provide the l

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you mentioned, my name is Bernard Courtois. I am the President and CEO of the Information Technology Association of Canada, the national association of the information technology and communications industry. We are very interested in seeing our economy d

Industry committee  In the definition, paragraph 10(4)(a) refers back to subclause 10(3), and it says: the purchase or lease of a product, goods, a service, land or an interest or right in land, within the 18-month period immediately preceding

Industry committee  I think I expressed the fact that I find it awkward that people I've either had a contract with...or certainly that people wouldn't buy a product more than 18 months ago. I think 18 months might have been useful in other contexts, but here, I think, what you're trying to distingu

Industry committee  Yes, I think a five-year review will be useful. These are things that change significantly. I would say, however, that you have to put flexibility in the bill right now, because there can be a lot of harm caused on one side or the other during those five years that you don't want

Industry committee  In the sense that you can define “implied consent” in a way that at least you know you haven't covered the bad stuff. You can define the types of bad behaviour that you're going after so that you know you're not going to catch some of the good behaviour. That's why I'm saying you

Industry committee  I would just like to add some practical examples. Since the bill was put forth, I have observed that a couple of people who I've known for many, many years have left, say, the government or another firm and started a business on their own. I've never had a contract with these peo

Industry committee  I think that best practices can be reflected in the legislation. If I, for example, have downloaded a program that enables me to open certain applications or see videos or hear sounds, that's what I see now. When there's an update ready, I am asked if I want that update. The best

Industry committee  I have to admit that I'm not expert enough to know that, but I know that if the kinds of attacks and the kinds of problems that can occur were predictable, then obviously all the software would do it. You might want to be doing something to the program other than to say broadly u

Industry committee  I'm not sure that one approach is the right one for all the elements of the bill. For example, when it comes to spam, you could either narrow the definition of spam and make sure you catch all the bad behaviour, or you could take a broader definition of spam but work quite a bit

Industry committee  Yes. That's why I'm saying that these are very specific changes that need to be made. When you define the spyware provision, you can then put the specific items. That's not a big change to the legislation. It doesn't affect the principle. In the case of spam, you can define those

Industry committee  Merci, monsieur le président. Mr. Chair, I am delighted to be here this afternoon to voice our support, as a business association, for this anti-spam legislation. I'd like to begin by telling you about our association. We are well known, but it might be a good idea to remind y

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  Well, I would say that's been one of the underlying problems of the thinner venture capital markets and lesser maturity in Canada. People do have to keep sharpening their pencils, and not just the lenders or the investors, but also the companies coming and preparing their busines

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  On the whole issue of knowledge infrastructure, I want to commend the government for recognizing in its February 2009 budget that infrastructure goes beyond bricks and mortar. Broadband, which we've talked about, looks like a civil engineering project, but it's obviously an econo

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  I've been seeing this as a phenomenon for quite some time, and to some degree, our technology enables that. People can retire early or they can leave a job with a larger organization, and they can start a consulting practice or start another business. It's a lot easier today than