Bill C-27 (Historical)

Electronic Commerce Protection Act

An Act to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities, and to amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Telecommunications Act

This enactment establishes a regulatory framework to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities.
It enacts the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, which prohibits the sending of commercial electronic messages without the prior consent of the recipient and provides rules governing the sending of those types of messages, including a mechanism for the withdrawal of consent. It also prohibits other practices that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities, such as those relating to the alteration of data transmissions and the unauthorized installation of computer programs. In addition, that Act provides for the imposition of administrative monetary penalties by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, after taking into account specified factors. It also provides for a private right of action that enables a person affected by an act or omission that constitutes a contravention under that Act to obtain an amount equal to the actual amount of the loss or damage suffered, or expenses incurred, and statutory damages for the contravention.
This enactment amends the Competition Act to prohibit false or misleading commercial representations made electronically.
It also amends the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act to prohibit the collection of personal information by means of unauthorized access to computer systems, and the unauthorized compiling of lists of electronic addresses.
Finally, it makes related amendments to the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act and the Telecommunications Act.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-27, An Act to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities, and to amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Telecommunications Act, as reported (with amendments) from the committee.

Electronic Commerce Protection Act

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

There being no motions at the report stage, the House will now proceed without debate to the putting of the question on the motion to concur in the bill at report stage.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

moved that the bill, as amended, be concurred in.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

When shall the bill be read the third time? By leave, now?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

moved that the bill be read a third time and passed.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to begin third reading of Bill C-27.

At the outset, I would like to put this bill in the broader context of a global digital economy. In a little more than a decade the Internet has become a powerful factor in the competitiveness of the Canadian economy. It is an essential feature in all of our daily lives.

Digital media is poised to transform the economy and our society in ways that we have not yet imagined. It will increase in importance as an engine for economic growth. Worldwide the digital media sector is expected to grow to U.S. $2.2 trillion over the next five years. There is enormous potential and Canada must tap that potential, but Canada has lost ground over the past decade.

When the Internet was new, Canada was at the forefront. We were the first country in the world to connect our schools and libraries to the Internet, for example. We were at the forefront of redesigning our framework laws to acknowledge the new technology. We led in the deployment and uptake of broadband. Our ICT companies were among the world leaders. But we have fallen behind.

As we have gone into this global economic slowdown, several commentators have talked about how Canada will lead the way out of it. The OECD and the IMF have talked about Canada leading the way out of this global recession. The World Economic Forum recently said that Canada will be one of only two industrialized countries to come out in a more competitive position than we went into this global slowdown.

Our falling behind in terms of our ICT laws and legislation puts this progress and increased competitiveness at risk. This pattern is deeply disturbing. To remain at the forefront of a global economy where digital technologies and competencies are increasingly important, we must reverse this slide.

We need to reboot our national strategy for remaining competitive in that economy. Given the complexity of the digital economy, we need to move on many fronts. We are consulting on how best to achieve this to realize its benefits for the economy.

We want to grow the ICT sector to be an even larger share of our economy, because it is a source of high-paying jobs and high R and D intensity. We need to increase the smart use of ICTs in the other 95% of the economy to make them more efficient and profitable, from public services through manufacturing and service industries and natural resources.

We need to close the productivity gap with the United States and increase our global competitiveness through the smart use of these technologies.

These goals rely on certain fundamentals, such as a high-speed network infrastructure and an online marketplace that has the trust and confidence of consumers and firms. We are working closely as a government with businesses to encourage sectors and firms to use information and communications technology more effectively.

Even as we wrestled with the worst economic crisis in a generation, Canada's economic action plan targeted a number of specific actions to energize the ICT sector. All told, nearly $1.5 billion was devoted to this effort. Among those initiatives was $225 million to provide broadband coverage to unserved Canadians. This money will leverage additional investment to expand access for many Canadians to important economic and social benefits, including online health services, business opportunities and distance learning.

Our action plan also provided a 100% capital cost allowance rate for computer hardware and systems software for two years, which is helping companies realize the benefits of adopting new ICT solutions.

These investments are part of a much broader agenda to put Canada once more at the forefront of the digital age, but we will not do this by investment alone. Government has a responsibility to create the economic conditions that will help build the digital economy.

One of the ways we are doing this is by creating the right framework laws to build trust and confidence in online transactions and communications. Rules that counter unsolicited email are critical to that framework.

Spam represents between 80% and 90% of email traffic around the world. It is estimated that a total of 62 trillion spam emails were sent last year. This bill is about removing a major barrier to electronic commerce. Canadians see spam as a major problem. The Canadian business community sees it as an impediment to productivity.

Spam is more than a nuisance. When unsolicited emails, websites and even freeware programs such as screen savers contain viruses or other forms of malicious programs, they inflict considerable damage and undermine the confidence of consumers in the electronic marketplace. They discourage businesses from relying on the Internet to reach their customers in new markets. This is harmful at the best of times, but it is particularly damaging during an economic downturn. More people go online to look for job opportunities or the best deals and better ways to manage their finances. It is in these tough economic times that consumers are most susceptible and more likely to fall for the get-rich-quick schemes offered on various websites.

More than ever, we need to maintain consumer trust and confidence in an online marketplace as a tool to help build the economy and eliminate deceptive marketing practices that can cause grave economic harm to Canadians. Spam and related threats impose heavy costs on network operators and users. They threaten network reliability and security and they undermine personal privacy.

Canada is the only G8 country and one of only four OECD countries without legislation dealing with online threats, such as spam, spyware, computer viruses, fraudulent websites and the harvesting of electronic addresses. These electronic intrusions are unacceptable. Some invade privacy and some are used to infect and gain control over computers. Most Internet service providers use filters to try to screen out spam. These filters tie up bandwidth and slow the system down. Even with these defences, spam still manages to get through.

One of the best ways to combat spam is through effective legislation. Bill C-27 puts in place important provisions that would protect Canadian consumers and businesses from the most damaging and deceptive forms of electronic harm. It provides a regulatory regime to promote compliance and protect the privacy and personal security of Canadians in the online environment. It provides a clear set of rules that will benefit all Canadians. It will encourage confidence in online communications and e-commerce.

This bill combats spam and related online threats in two ways. It provides regulatory powers to administer monetary penalties and it gives individuals and businesses the right to sue spammers. Bill C-27 makes use of the federal trade and commerce power rather than the law enforcement authorities in the Criminal Code. A civil administrative regime such as that in the ECPA is consistent with the approach taken internationally. The law will be enforced by the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

A significant responsibility for enforcing the bill falls to the CRTC, which has a mandate to ensure the reliability, safety and effective operation of telecommunications networks in Canada. This includes the Internet. The CRTC will enforce the provisions against sending unsolicited commercial messages and will have responsibility for the provisions that prohibit the altering of transmission data without authorization.

It will further prohibit the surreptitious installation of programs on computer systems and networks by requiring consent for the installation of all computer programs. In this way, we can help stem the flow of malicious computer programs such as spyware and key loggers. The Competition Bureau will also have responsibilities in stamping out spam under this bill. The bureau has a mandate to ensure fair marketplace practices for businesses and consumers.

The bill before us will extend the Competition Bureau's powers to address false and misleading representations online and deceptive marketplace practices such as false headers and website content. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has responsibilities to protect personal information in Canada. This legislation will prohibit the collection of personal information without consent through unauthorized access to computer systems and the unauthorized compiling or supplying of lists of electronic addresses. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada will have the authority to enforce these provisions using its existing powers.

All of these are important elements in restoring confidence and trust in online communications.

The bill provides for administrative monetary penalties for those who violate the law by sending spam, making false and misleading representations in commercial electronic messages, installing spyware and viruses on computers, and for stealing personal information.

These laws have sharp teeth. For violation, the maximum administrative monetary penalty is $1 million for individuals, and up to $10 million for businesses. In this way, we provide government authorities with the power to fight spam and related online threats.

The second way to fight spam is for consumers and businesses to combat spam to pursue a private right of action. This private right of action has been very effective in the United States. We heard much testimony during the course of the hearings. Obviously a lot of the research and a lot of the work that has gone into this has relied on efforts by other countries to address the very same issues that we are dealing with today. We have learned some things about what to do and what to put in the legislation. We also have learned some things about what maybe does not work so well in the legislation. We have had the advantage of looking at what other countries have done well and using that to inform our own legislation.

The private right of action will allow individuals and businesses that suffer financial harm an avenue of recourse to be compensated and awarded both actual and statutory damages. Network operators will be able to prosecute spammers in civil cases. This would allow them to take action against spammers that make use of their facilities without the threat of subsequent legal action from a spammer.

Whether through the regulatory agencies or the private right of action, our message to spammers is clear: We do not want them. We will not tolerate them, and if they try to operate in Canada, we will come after them either as private consumers and businesses or as regulatory authorities that make Canada a safe place to communicate and do business online.

At the same time, I want to assure hon. members that legitimate businesses will not be negatively affected. The regime allows for consumer opt-in and some exceptions for implied consent so that legitimate businesses can continue to market through email.

The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology studied this bill very carefully. It heard from many witnesses, and as a result of some of the testimony, we introduced amendments to this bill. I want to emphasize that the government remains steadfast in its commitment to reduce spam and other computer-related threats that discourage the use of electronic commerce and that undermine privacy. It will protect both consumers and Canadian businesses from unwanted spam.

As we saw during the debate at second reading in this House and as we saw in committee, there is widespread support for the spirit of this piece of legislation and what we are accomplishing. Canadian businesses know that spam costs them money, in the billions of dollars. In this House and in committee, we saw all parties support this legislation as well, and that is important to note. The time is due for this type of legislation.

At this time I would like to thank the members and senators from all parties who have helped make this bill more effective. I would remind this House that this bill has been guided also by the recommendations of the spam task force. We heard from many of the members of the task force as witnesses before the committee as we discussed this important legislation.

This legislation has also been inspired by the now retired senator Goldstein, when he introduced his bill in the other place. I would also like to recognize the hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East who has been a long-time champion of anti-spam legislation.

Finally, what I would like to do is assure this House that the bill before us is one step toward a much broader agenda for the digital economy. Our goal is to see a Canadian business climate and social climate that are innovative, adaptive and able to participate fully in the global digital economy.

We as a government will continue to seek input and advice from stakeholders. We will reassert our leadership. As a necessary first step, we want to shut down the electronic threats that are such a source of concern to businesses and consumers.

The challenges are clear, but the potential is enormous. By getting this right, we can do more than simply participate in the digital economy; we can lead. But let us begin by joining our trading partners and neighbours in closing down the inappropriate and harmful use of Internet communications. Let us pass this bill as amended.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. The New Democratic Party has been pushing for some time to have a larger framework of understanding that innovation in the 21st century has to have a full, holistic view of where we go in terms of digital innovation. That is where the new economy rests.

I listened to a number of the issues my colleague brought forward, the need for broadband and to protect us from spammers and the criminal element that is out there to undermine digital innovation.

I was interested in his comments on how Canada has lost its way somewhat in terms of broadband. I am sure he has read the recent FCC report that just came out, which looks at the OECD countries. Canada has gone from a world leader just five years ago to a world laggard in key areas of innovation. We are paying some of the highest Internet rates in the world and getting some of the lousiest service. I do not think any Canadian consumer needs to confirm this. They know this.

The FCC points to the fact that the CRTC, although it does not mention the CRTC by name, talks about the lack of competition, the fact that there is a very small cabal of cable companies that see no interest in further innovation and expanding their broadband access. Therefore, we have a market that is stuck. People have to pay high fees. We get slower service. Competing countries are moving far ahead of us.

Since 2003 until 2009, the big change I have seen is the Conservative government has come to power. We have now gone from leader to laggard. What would the member tell the House to assure Canadian businesses and innovators that the government will get back on track and start to gain some of the ground that it has lost?

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member points to one study. As usual, the study he chooses is probably the most negative one. There have been several studies and many of them point to leadership in terms of Canada's approach to digital issues.

That said, obviously in this area, the area that the bill addresses, we have needed to do more. One of the challenges we have had, and we discussed this in committee at one point, was the fact that through successive minority governments, and we are in our third minority government situation, it is difficult to see legislation such as this pass through the entire process.

We saw a concern early on in this process, and that was we would wind up in an election and this bill would die before it could actually go through. This is why we urge members from all parties to ensure the legislation gets passed, as amended, gets on to the Senate and gets passed there.

On the issue of leadership and competitiveness, I would point out that in terms of the overall economy, the World Economic Forum just recently stated, and I stated this in my comments but I will highlight it again, that Canada would be one of only two industrialized countries to come out of this global recession in a more competitive position than we went in.

Legislation such as this to solidify our digital economy and to strengthen it can only help that circumstance. I encourage all members to pass this.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-27.

The Internet first came into being about 15 years ago, and since then has grown exponentially, showing no signs of slowing down. We are all using the Internet more and more in our daily lives. It should enhance our productivity. We use it every day, whether to look for work, to shop, to communicate with our friends or to do business. We use it every day, yet there are still some barriers that prevent us from benefiting from the Internet's full potential.

Today, I would like to speak to Bill C-27. Simply put, Bill C-27 is an electronic commerce protection act that intends to prohibit sending of commercial electronic messages without the prior consent of recipients. This is what is more commonly known as spam email. The bill also looks to prohibit the use of false or misleading statements that disguise the origin or true intent of the email, the installation of unauthorized programs and the unauthorized collection of personal information or email addresses.

Studies show that of the total email traffic that exists on the Internet today as much as 85% can be considered spam. The hon. member who spoke previously spoke of different levels. There is some as low as 60% and some as high as 90%. At any level, those levels are unacceptable and something has to be done to correct them.

When we consider the time that is spent sorting through in boxes and deleting unwanted email at work and at home, it does not take long to figure out that spam kills productivity.

How many times, whether at home or at work, have we started reading emails only to realize that many of them are unsolicited and cause problems? Such emails can make us waste half or a good part of our day. At any stage, these emails are a waste of time in terms of Canadian productivity.

A 2003 report estimated that fighting spam cost businesses and consumers $27 billion annually in information technology spending, including increased expenditures in the Internet bandwidth, the storage costs, anti-spam software and user support.

This does not take into consideration the numerous hours that people waste just sorting through and finding out what they want, what they do not want, what they have asked for, what was sent to them without their request and getting rid of it. Again, it kills time that we could be using more productively as Canadians. It limits us from taking full advantage of the Internet, whether it is for personal or commercial purposes.

To say that spam is a serious problem to Canadians and Canadian business is an understatement. Spam is a large source of computer viruses, phishing programs designed for identity theft and deceptive and fraudulent business practices that target the vulnerable.

At these times, when the economy is faltering, when people are losing jobs and looking for hope, unscrupulous people are putting emails out there, putting ads on the Internet that are fictitious. They are causing problems. For people looking for somewhere to hang their hat, hang hope on something, what do they get? They lose their hard-earned money or what little they have left.

In May 2004 the Liberal government recognized the danger of spam and established a task force to lead the anti-spam action plan for Canada. The task force held public consultations and led round tables with key stakeholders in the industry.

In 2005 the task force tabled its report outlining 22 major recommendations, including key recommendations to strengthen legislation.

Specifically, the task force recommended Canada implement legislation to prohibit the sending of spam without prior consent of recipients and prohibit the use of false or misleading statements that disguised the origin or true intent of email, better known as phishing, prohibit the installation of unauthorized programs, otherwise known as spyware, and prohibit the unauthorized collection of personal information or email addresses. Bill C-27 looks to implement these recommendations.

Bill C-27 introduces fines for violation of the acts up to a maximum of $1 million for individuals and $10 million for businesses. It establishes rules for warrants, for information during investigations and injunctions on spam activity while under investigation. Bill C-27 also establishes the private right of action, allowing individuals and businesses the ability to seek damages from the perpetrators of spam.

At committee stage, flaws were discovered in the original bill. Clause 6, for example, was found to have been written too broadly and could have suppressed some legitimate business communications over the Internet. Clause 8 also defined computer program very broadly and could have suppressed legitimate business software development and impeded legitimate Internet functions.

After considerable work, many amendments were made to the bill, refining measures for electronic messages, computer programs and the protection of privacy rights.

The bill, however, maintains a very heavy-handed approach, which is not always the most effective approach. We looked at different options. We thought for now, with this broad, heavy-handed approach, which seems to be the way the Conservative government likes to do things, we would let it go through in the interest of protecting Canadians, with some options for modifications later on by the people who administer it.

Bill C-27 takes a broad approach to defining a very wide definition of electronic messages that puts the onus on individual businesses to seek exceptions if they believe their activities to be legitimate. The proposed Liberal approach was to define known spam irritants as illegal, with the flexibility to add further definition as electronic messages on the Internet evolved. The concern with the Conservative approach is that an overly heavy-handed approach could stifle electronic commerce in Canada.

I want to remind Canadians that we want to look at the Internet as a tool that will make our lives better, more efficient and allow us to work more effectively. We have to be careful when a bill has a very wide span and catches everything. Overall, however, many changes were made to the bill at committee stage to make Bill C-27 acceptable to the Liberal Party.

We are pleased that the Conservative government has finally decided to act on the recommendation of our task force. At committee stage, many flaws were exposed in the bill and many changes were made. Is this bill perfect? Simply put, no.

One of the areas that is still of concern and will continue to be monitored is the issue of materiality. Materiality comes up in clauses 71 and 73 of Bill C-27. The issue is under the Competition Act's new sections 54(1) and 74.01(1), which cover false and misleading representations. Bill C-27 would make it a criminal offence or a reviewable practice under the Competition Act if sender information or subject matter information in an electronic message was false or misleading, regardless of whether it was false or misleading in a material respect.

The material respect standard is important to retain in respect of electronic sender information and subject matter information.

First, it provides the Competition Bureau with the necessary discretion to brush aside complaints that are raised about purported misstatements that are trivial, and there are many of them, especially from business competitors.

Second, it provides businesses in Canada the comfort of knowing that an honest mistake in an electronic business communication that does not materially affect consumers will not automatically face potential criminal prosecution or civil action under the Competition Act.

Third, it is a standard under the Competition Act that applies to representation that business makes in all other places, whether it be print, in store, radio, TV or, as we see here, in the body of an email.

It is incorrect to say in advance that anything included in the sender information or subject matter information is always material. If it were correct, then including “in all material respect” could do absolutely no harm because any representation would still be caught as if “in a material respect” were not there.

While the Liberal Party believes the bill remains unnecessarily heavy-handed in its approach, we would support the bill at third reading as action must be taken against spam.

It is important that we continue to monitor the legislation closely going forward to ensure it does not stifle legitimate electronic commerce in Canada. The Liberal Party further notes that the fight against spam is much more than just legislation. The Liberal task force also recommended resources to be put toward coordinating enforcement of this law.

Legislation will only go as far as the willingness to enforce the law. Will the government put the appropriate resources into enforcement? Will the government put resources into working with other nations to stamp out spam? Will the government dedicate resources to work with ISPs and Canadian business to establish the codes of practice? These questions will be answered in the fullness of time.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. I was particularly interested because the issue of spam should be supported by all parties. Yet we have seen a number of articles that were written about the Liberal Party bringing forward a number of amendments that would seriously water down this bill, including an amendment to tighten up the provision on false subject headers.

The Liberals wanted to introduce a provision to limit the scope of spyware. There were motions being promoted by the copyright lobby to allow the surreptitiously installed DRM from being covered under the bill and an exception to a ban on the collection of personal information through any means of technology, if the collection was made by assessing a computer system or causing a computer system to be accessed without authorization. This would be in cases related to investigations, a breach of agreement or laws.

The NDP was very clear in fighting spam and even the Conservatives, who tend to roll over for the lobbyists, at least were willing to hold the line, but the Liberals were the fifth columnists in bringing forward many motions that, fortunately, were voted down or they decided to pull at the last minute, which would have very much undermined this.

Would my hon. colleague tell me why the Liberal Party brought forward those motions, which clearly would have gutted the bill from having any strength at all?

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was there during the discussions that took place. We have to look at Bill C-27 as a wide net that captures absolutely everything in its path. It is very important to look at Bill C-27 and ensure that it is functional.

One of the concerns that we had with the bill was that it would be so broad that Internet use and all possibilities would come to a grinding halt. We had to explore all the possibilities so that business could continue to operate. We wanted to ensure that when we see a false statement being made that it actually is a false statement. What I believe the hon. member was referring to is materiality and that comes into play within the subject matter that he was talking about. If the subject matter says something and it is an omission or an error, then there should not be an automatic criminal charge put forward.

We have seen that in other laws which I know the Conservatives are very concerned about, but it is important that we look at the bill and look at all possibilities, listen to all the people who have a vested interest in this, and look at what is best for all Canadians, so the Internet can continue to be a tool that we can use and grow with into the future and make it work to the full ability that it was intended to be.

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first, I want to thank all the groups that appeared before the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. I also want to thank members from all political parties who sit on the committee.

When I spoke during second reading of Bill C-27, Electronic Commerce Protection Act, I said that this legislation would address several issues facing many Quebeckers. The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology heard a number of witnesses during its hearings on Bill C-27.

Several groups raised more contentious issues relating to the bill, or asked for some justification. But all in all, witnesses told us that it was necessary to move forward with such legislation. I note in particular that when we compare our situation to that of other countries, we find that this bill is necessary. I would even say that Canada is a step behind some comparable countries. Therefore, the Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-27, as amended by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology.

Incidentally, the clause by clause review of the bill did not really trigger a debate between the various parties, because all seemed to agree on its merits. However, I want to point out a contradiction by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice in the Conservative government. Last week, he said, in this House, that opposition parties had put up roadblocks to delay the passing of Bill C-27. That is absolutely false. That member surely did not ask for a report from his party colleagues on the committee, because he would have found out that the Bloc and the other opposition parties worked positively. I want to confirm that my party, the Bloc Québécois, and members representing the government and other opposition parties on the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, did work in a constructive fashion.

I sincerely believe that, during the hearings of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, all members worked hard to find a solution to the issue of spamming, while also meeting the needs of those businesses that voiced their concerns. Clearly, for some businesses, there is a natural fear about how legitimate businesses can continue to reach consumers and customers if the bill becomes law. I suspect that it will pass, because all the political parties at the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology unanimously supported it.

Bill C-27 clearly spells out that organizations will not need the explicit consent of their own customers to communicate with them in the context of what can reasonably be called “existing business relationships”. However, if they want to reach potential customers to market a product or a service, or to expand their activities, businesses will not be allowed to communicate by email directly with these people without their prior consent.

Based on the testimonies of a number of groups, it became clear to the Bloc Québécois that an amendment was needed to extend from 18 to 24 months the period during which a business can communicate by email with a consumer without his prior consent. Members of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology agreed with the amendment proposed by the Bloc Québécois.

Even though the bill contains a number of legally complex clauses, its aim is to improve the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain fraudulent commercial activities that use electronic mail. With all of the communications tools available today, we are constantly being solicited. We must have effective tools in place to protect the public.

In this regard, the Bloc Québécois expressed concern with regard to clauses 64 and 86 of Bill C-27, the electronic commerce protection act. It would amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act. In reality, these two clauses would give the government permission to eliminate the national do-not-call list. Implemented just over a year ago today, this legislation governing telemarketers has been a big success. Today, no fewer than 7,000 telephone numbers of Quebeckers and Canadians are on the list. This means it is working well.

In the Bloc's opinion, the current list is doing its job and is used by millions. For a number of businesses, complying with the requirements of the national do-not-call list has meant reorganization of resources and considerable financial cost. In Quebec, for the Desjardins financial security group, which accounts for 10% of the business of the Desjardins movement, whose head office is in Lévis, a portion of the costs has been calculated at over $500,000. As this is 10% of the business of the Desjardins movement, it means that meeting the requirements of the national do-not-call list has cost the Desjardins group some $5 million. We can imagine that a new structure would mean additional costs for businesses that have had to comply with legislation that is one year old.

We understand that Industry Canada wants to keep the door open to replace the list with a new system. We have been given assurance by government officials that there will be no change to the do-not-call list without public hearings and consultation with those concerned to establish how it should proceed.

The link I wanted to create with the national do-not-call list is simple. All email users know about spam. In recent months, the amount of spam appears to have increased significantly. We might ask ourselves whether businesses might have changed their means of contacting consumers before Bill C-27, the electronic commerce protection act, comes into force.

As an MP, I am concerned about the way businesses obtain consumers' consent to transfer or pass on their contact information or email addresses to other organizations. The new legislation will enable us to reduce spam and go after unsolicited commercial emails.

The Bloc has expressed support for another provision of the bill, which aims at prohibiting detrimental practices to electronic commerce, protecting the integrity of transmission data and prohibiting installation of computer programs without consent. It makes sense to avoid the use of consumers' personal information to send them spam.

Bill C-27 thus prohibits the collection of personal information via access to computer systems without consent and the unauthorized compiling or supplying of lists of electronic addresses.

We can hardly be against motherhood and apple pie. The Bloc Québécois feels that companies that want to send consumers information by email should get their consent first. Companies should get prior consent before communicating by the Internet or sending email.

This bill has a noble objective, but it will be a complex law to apply. According to the officials in Industry Canada, though, the CRTC, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the Office of the Information Commissioner are all going to work together in perfect harmony to figure out how to do it.

The three agencies that will be affected by this change to the law will have to work closely together on the implementation of it. The CRTC will have to do what is necessary to stop unsolicited commercial electronic messages from being sent. The Competition Bureau, for its part, will have to deal with practices like misleading representations online, such as emails falsely claiming to be from financial institutions. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner will have to take measures to prevent the collection of personal information by means of unauthorized access to computer systems and the unauthorized compiling of lists of electronic addresses.

I know the government wants to tackle spam as well. It accounts for 80% of all communications sent over the Internet. These are all the unwanted and unwelcome messages that consumers receive. I certainly agree with that. The committee has convinced me of the need to proceed with this kind of bill.

A number of countries have already passed measures similar to those in Bill C-27 and seem to have had positive results. The various laws passed in Australia, the United States and Great Britain to combat spam have apparently been quite successful.

Bill C-27 will make it possible to develop measures to dissuade as many people as possible from sending spam involving false representation, unauthorized software and exchanges of email address information.

The Bloc Québécois is in favour of Bill C-27. It should help solve a lot of problems that our constituents are encountering and help protect their privacy. Over the years, unsolicited commercial electronic messages have become a major social and economic problem that reduces the personal and business productivity of Quebeckers. As I said before, spam accounts for 80% of all the email that is sent to people. Thus, communications over the Internet are much less efficient than they could be.

Spam is a real nuisance. It can damage computers and networks, contribute to fraudulent and misleading commercial practices, and infringe on our privacy. Spam poses a direct threat to the viability of the Internet as an effective means of communication. It undermines consumer confidence in legitimate electronic commerce and hampers electronic transactions.

This is a constantly growing problem and, after years of study, it is time to pass a measure like this. In 2007, the Liberal government established a working group following the tabling of a report in 2005.

The two elections held between 2005 and 2009 have delayed the project. We are now at the important stage of discussing and adopting the electronic commerce protection act.

Essentially, this electronic commerce protection act governs the sending of messages by email, text messaging or instant messaging without consent. Transmission of spam to an electronic mail account, telephone account or other similar accounts would be prohibited. The only time spam may be sent is when the person to whom the message is sent has consented to receiving it, whether the consent is express or implied.

There are other prohibitions as well. No person may alter the transmission data in an electronic message so that the message is delivered to another destination. Nor may they install a computer program on any other person's computer system or cause an electronic message to be sent from that computer system without the owner's consent. This bill clarifies consent before sending. Naturally there will be a timeline for implementation. It was 18 months at first, but it has been extended to 24 months following an amendment presented by the Bloc.

Bill C-27 proposes a private right of action, modelled on U.S. legislation, which would allow businesses and individuals to take civil action against any wrongdoer. Any organization covered by Bill C-27 may, on its own initiative, transmit to the CRTC, the Privacy Commissioner, or the Commissioner of Competition any information in its possession if it deems that information to be related to a violation of the electronic commerce protection act.

These three bodies must also consult each other and may exchange any information in order to fulfill the responsibilities and activities they carry out under their respective statutes. Under certain conditions they may also provide such information to the government of a foreign state or to an international organization.

Canada is not the only country to legislate the protection of electronic commerce. Other countries have passed laws in this matter. France's legislation is known as the law to support confidence in the digital economy. It was adopted in June 2004 and was phased in over six months. Apart from specific rules set out in the postal, electronic communications and consumer legislation, France is required to ensure that solicitations by email, no matter what their nature—business, creative, political, religious or membership, for example—are subject to personal information protection legislation.

Therefore, Bill C-27 is not unique when we look at what other countries are doing. However, having considered the evidence heard by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology and having carefully read the bill, the Bloc Québécois is in favour of this bill. Therefore, at third reading, we will be voting in favour of this bill.

To conclude, I would like to summarize the main aspects of this bill: to prevent the receipt by consumers of unsolicited business e-mails; to prohibit certain practices in order to protect the integrity of transmission data and prevent the installation of unauthorized computer programs; to prohibit the collection of personal information by unauthorized access to computer systems and the unauthorized compiling or distribution of electronic address lists.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-27, An Act to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities, and to amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Telecommunications Act, be read the third time and passed.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's explanation of the Bloc's position on the bill.

One of the issues that has been of concern to us for some time is differentiating. We all know that spam is an irritant but the levels of spam are infecting computers to the levels of international fraud. They use people's personal computers as zombie bots to spread further spam.

We saw that in the U.S., in 2007, Robert Alan Soloway was a arrested and charged with 35 criminal counts including mail fraud, wire fraud, email fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. The Americans went after him on the aggravated identity theft because of his taking over other individuals' Internet domains and computers.

The United States has taken this issue very seriously. Up to now we have been the only G8 country without spam legislation. I would like to ask the member, does the member think this bill is enough to put us in line where other G8 partners are going in terms of dealing with spam?

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question.

I think he understands that the current system is inadequate. It makes electronic communication really inefficient and the purpose of Bill C-27 is to clean things up. So I will respond with a brief answer. Yes, Bill C-27 would put us on a level playing field, to some extent, with countries that have passed similar legislation.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as always, I am very honoured to rise in this place as a representative of the people from Timmins—James Bay, and I take that role very seriously. One of the roles that I am given as a member of Parliament is to review and speak on legislation. This legislation is something that we as members of Parliament need to see in terms of a larger vision. This is not just a one-off bill.

In order for Canada to go where it needs to go in terms of a 21st century economy, we need to have a full vision in terms of the potential for digital innovation and also the pitfalls that are facing us. In terms of a large vision of where we need to be as a country holding its own and being a leader, we need to look at a number of initiatives. Earlier the issue of digital broadband access was brought up in the House. For a country that is as defined by geography as we are, to remain competitive, we need digital broadband.

The FCC report last week, which would be one of the world leaders in terms of its credibility on this issue, it says how much Canada has fallen behind. We have gone from being a world leader in 2003 to a world laggard. Anyone watching this back home does not need the FCC to tell them that we are paying some of the highest fees for Internet access and we are getting some of the lousiest service.

The FCC talks about how it is that Canada went from being a world leader in terms of making sure broadband access was happening, where just in 2003 we were the country to watch, to now being in 20th, 25th, or 26th place on various parts, depending on what indicators we look at.

The FCC points out the lack of competition in Canada. It is not pointing out the CRTC's dropping of the ball on this, but it speaks to something again that we are seeing, that when there is a very small cabal of companies that are basically now running the infrastructure of the Internet, unless there is innovation being pushed forward by small third-party ISPs, we will have a situation where development begins to ossify and that is what has happened. The FCC reports show how much we are falling behind because we are not getting that level of third-party competition from the smaller players. That is one of the elements we need to look at in terms of a larger vision.

Second is the issue of net neutrality, which plays very much into the access of broadband. When there are a few giant players who are deciding the development of speed on the Internet, we cannot have them making the decision as to who is going to be in the fast lane and who is going to be in the slow lane. There needs to be a sense that, in order to have development on the Internet, net neutrality is a key cornerstone. This is not a principle of the so-called computer geeks. Talk to anybody in business and they will say that if they cannot get fast access, they are going somewhere else. They are very concerned about deep packet inspection, for example. They are very concerned that when they put information through VoIP, or through BitTorrent, it could be unfairly slowed down. So that is the second element of an innovation agenda that we need to look at.

The third part of an innovation agenda is upgrading our copyright laws to the 21st century to ensure that we are moving forward and encouraging innovation and encouraging new ideas that may threaten some existing business models, but the only way we are going to have innovation is if we bring our copyright laws up to the 21st century agenda. I spend a great deal of time on the copyright file and I can say that we are finally at the point where we are agreeing that trying to implement laws that would work in 1996 is not going to get us anywhere. We need to be enacting laws that will bring us into the next 20 years.

The other element in terms of a digital strategy is dealing with the irritant factor. That is how most people see spam. They see spam as an irritant. It affects all of us. Every time I go on my computer I have someone offering to sell me a product that is going to make certain parts of my body much larger than they otherwise would be. I think my ears are large enough as it is. I do not need any help, thanks very much. Nonetheless, they will not leave me alone. They are always offering to sell me real estate when I am still paying for the house I bought many years ago in northern Ontario. I could have used the help then, but I certainly did not need the help of spammers.

We laugh about the silly and stupid things we come across in spam day after day, but we need to see the effect that it is having in terms of not just our ability to do our work but the very nature of the threat it is posing to average citizens. Spammers are very tied into a growing level of Internet fraud. They undermine confidence. We do not want to go to a website and leave our email information, because we do not want it to be taken and misused.

If we do not have confidence, it undermines our ability to move forward. Certainly the issue of spam is very serious. Canada has been singled out as the only G7 country without spam legislation. That puts us in a really bad light, because spammers will use our jurisdiction to push for spam. It is all well and good to say that we will get the emails of the spammers and hunt them down. If anybody has ever tried to track one of them down, they know that these emails do not go anywhere.

What ends up happening is that there is a much more insidious move afoot. They move very quickly in terms of their technological innovation. They do not send the spam from a home computer, so they cannot be tracked. They use a number of techniques to basically act as a parasite on other messages going out, to the point where they can actually take over a person's computer without the person using it and download malicious software. They create these zombies or bots.

The threat to privacy and innovation and the threat of fraud become compounded on a massive scale. This needs to be addressed and taken seriously.

For example, just last year, the U.S. came down with some of the heaviest attacks on spammers. I was referring earlier to May 31, 2007, when they went after Robert Alan Soloway. They charged him with 35 criminal counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, email fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. Prosecutors were alleging that Soloway was using these zombie computers to distribute spam across wide networks.

I will give an example of how this plays out. It is classic in terms of the development of the Internet. The greatest strength of the Internet is the ease with which one can get information out there. Of course, the greatest threat is the ease with which spammers can undermine it.

We can talk about the famous Nigerian 419 scam. Back in the day when the fax machine was the most exciting cutting-edge technology and I was working at a northern magazine, we used to get these emails from this guy. He was a former colonel in the Nigerian army. He was being held prisoner. If only I could send him $500, he would send me $100,000. It was very crude. It cost them money every time they sent that out. It went on a fax machine. It made tracking these guys a lot easier.

The 419 scam was a very marginal scam in the 1980s when it was first developed in Nigeria. It is interesting that Insa Nolte from the University of Birmingham said that the development of email turned the 419 scam from a local fraud to one of the largest export businesses in the country of Nigeria. That is how effective it has been.

For every million people who click delete, one person in a million might respond. That is how the fraud happens. I am sure that my colleagues here can tell similar stories, but I am now starting to see email requests for help coming much closer to home, where similar last names of family members of constituents and local references are being used.

This comes from the trolling of information that has been enabled under these massive networks of zombie computers. They can track and pick out names from the email traffic. They are picking out bits of stories and they are able to tailor the stories of personal need and personal threat. My daughter received one yesterday from someone who she thought might be a student who was lost in London. They had two or three key pieces of information about her and she could not figure out how they got that.

That is the kind of computer fraud that is now being perpetrated. Again, many of us will click through and delete. The problem is that there are enough people out there who will respond. So we are looking in terms of basic computer protection and basic civic protection. We need to do that.

However, we need to look at it in a larger area, in terms of what basic rules we are going to put down so that developers, innovators and citizens can use this wonderful new medium that we have, without fear.

I think some of the basic provisions in Bill C-27 are fairly straightforward. We should be asked for consent before any computer program is downloaded on our computer. That should be basic. The idea that spyware could be put into our computer without us knowing should have criminal consequences. We know, for example, there are various forms, such as Trojan rootkits. Sometimes legitimate companies think that by being able to put this spyware into our computer it is going to protect them. But it does not. It undermines consumer confidence.

I just have to refer to the famous Sony rootkit disaster, where Sony decided that on its CDs it was going to put spyware and not tell the consumers. Consumers were buying these CDs, thinking they were buying a piece of music, putting them into their computers, and their computers were crashing and they could not figure out why. It turned out that Sony, one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world, had put in the spyware thinking it was going to go after copyright infringement and what it did was undermine its credibility in the marketplace to a great degree. Companies should never have been allowed to think that kind of move should have been able to take place. No citizen who buys a CD or any computer product to put into his or her system should have to worry that there is spyware in there.

So the issue of asking consent before any computer program or any spyware is put into our computer is a very reasonable provision and a necessary provision.

I think the other thing we need to speak to is that companies cannot take personal information without consent. That is another primary element of the Internet. When we go on the Internet and we go to a website or when we respond to email from someone we might not know, we want to know that our records on the computer, our data on the computer, is not being accessed, and that when we go to a website our information is not being passed on to someone who is then going to come and try to sell us some kind of scam product that we do not want.

If we do not have that assurance, it starts to undermine the ability of consumers and companies to make the most of what they need to make the most of in terms of moving forward.

Earlier a Liberal colleague said he was worried that this was a big hammer that was going to shut down business, and we know there was certainly a big backlash against the Liberals when they seemed to be led around by the nose by some lobbyists on watering down provisions of this bill.

I have looked at the provisions and I have looked at what the Liberals were trying to sneak through, and I do not think it is in line with the 21st century digital innovation agenda. Fortunately, the Liberals are not in the position to run a bill like this, where they would be able to undermine it and ensure that the corporate lobbyists got their way. There are citizen provisions that have to be addressed and this bill is looking at that.

It was the Liberals who wanting to limit the scope on spyware. I am astounded by that. I do not know if they think it is okay to spy on my computer, but I certainly do not think it is. And I, as an average citizen or a legislator, would not support that they wanted to exclude surreptitiously installed DRM from the gambit of the bill.

Once again, when I go to a website or when I respond to an email, I do not want to have to worry that some company thinks it is okay to bury mechanical means for spying on what I am doing.

I was surprised by my Liberal colleagues on this bill, but I think there was certainly a large backlash, because the consumer public is very aware in terms of where we need to go with a digital agenda. So I am glad to see that we have moved forward with all parties on this bill.

The bill only addresses commercial electronic messages. This is not an attempt to shut down individuals who maybe want to do mass emails to their friends and to their friends' friends. There is no provision in the bill to go after people who send out those emails. Personally, I find those emails rather irritating. I do not think I have ever reached the bottom of one of the long lists of cc and cc and cc. I do think it is okay for individuals to do that. The question here is electronic messaging for commercial use. That is the main focus of this bill.

A personal relationship, a family relationship, a pre-existing business relationship would not be stopped. Companies would still be able to send information with respect to previous business dealings, such as someone buying software or something from a company.

I ask the simple question: What is the problem with asking the person for consent to continue? I do not see that impeding in any manner. If I purchase goods and I develop a relationship with a company, that is perfectly fine. But I want to know that my Parliament and legislation will back me up if I am not interested in receiving mass emails, that I can say I am not interested. That is not an unreasonable situation. Contrary to what the Liberals are saying, it is not going to grind business to a halt in Canada. It might if we were still back in the age of the fax machine, but this is certainly not going to grind innovation to a halt.

We worked at committee on this. This is a big bill. We had to look at many areas in terms of ensuring that spam legislation would actually address the problems. I am hopeful that this is the proper first step because we need to start addressing this.

We need to address this in terms of lost potential. We need to address this in terms of interference with competitiveness. We need to address this in terms of fraud. We need to address this in terms of the fundamental issue of consumer rights.

Our computers should not be open to some third party that we do not know, a third party who could be dropping spyware into it, or using it to send out harassing emails, possibly fraudulent emails. When we are plugged into the web, we should not have to worry about what is going to come back down the pipe that we do not want.

Bill C-27 takes some steps toward addressing that. Does it do everything that is necessary? I do not think that is possible at this point. We are going to have to amend and change it as we go because the Internet changes quickly, fraudsters change quickly. We have to run just to keep up as legislators, but this is a good first step.

I am proud of the work of my colleague from Windsor West who worked on this bill at committee. We will be supporting it as it goes ahead.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Timmins—James Bay has taken a leadership role relative to the Internet and the impact that it has had culturally. Being a bit older than my colleague, to listen to him talk today and give us his thoughts on this helps a person of my generation deal with some of the issues that are happening.

One of the things that I am concerned about is phishing. It strikes me that is a very significant issue.

In my little more innocent time, when I first started going on the Internet, I was asked to take an IQ test, which I should not admit publicly. I had to change every password on my computer after that because I realized that I had made a mistake, especially when the first email showed up at my address. I wound up changing my email address as well.

Does my colleague think this particular bill deals with that situation appropriately?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the issue is of how phishing is used to send out a simple email. Someone responds and then basically they have got that person. They have information. They can use that information against that person. That is a huge concern.

I would like to put it in a broader context. Where it is being used now in a very dangerous way is on Facebook. The Privacy Commissioner has certainly come out, as a result of the excellent work of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa, and raised the issue of privacy concerns on Facebook.

Every one of us is on Facebook, I am sure. Our kids are on Facebook. They do not see that posting their names, their cellphone numbers, all kinds of personal information about themselves, can hurt them down the road, because there are scammers out there. What is our solution? Is our solution as legislators to say, “Bad, bad, bad. We have to shut this down”, or is it to say that, no, we need to have the laws in place to protect people and to go after the people who misuse it.

Second, I think it is as important, not within the confines of the bill and it would not fit within the bill but I think it is something we need to look at, is the need to educate young people. Until people have been scammed, they will never get scammed so they do not have to worry about it. But as I said earlier, I used the example of a young student who received a scam yesterday and it had three pertinent pieces about her and her personal identity that she figured it had to be someone she knew.

All we have to do is go on Facebook. I could tell a people what high school they went to. I could tell them who their first girlfriend was. I could tell them their date of birth and their star sign. If I am looking to scam a person, going on Facebook is the first place I would go. It is the ultimate phishing expedition and people will see some long-term implications from that kind of free flow of personal, private information that people think is protected because it has just been seen by their friends, but third party applications are using it, and all kinds of corporate entities are getting in and getting access to this information.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member for Timmins—James Bay on his speech today in the House. I found it very interesting in terms of the scamming and so on that is going on.

Today, I actually received two requests for information from what I believe are people trying to scam me, and those are from organizations trying to get banking information. One of my friends back home was scammed on that very technique and provided this individual with information on banking and got scammed for just over $3,000.

I am wondering if the hon. member thinks this legislation would help prevent that sort of situation.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's example is very pertinent because it actually speaks to another level.

I spoke of Facebook and young people getting scammed. The banking information tends to affect older people because they are very concerned about their bank credit. They receive an email, and I have received a similar email which looks just like it comes from my bank, and the email says it needs my banking information because there has been a fraud committed. That is how it happens. A person believes they have had a relationship with their bank, but if they look at those emails closely, they will suddenly realize there is something not quite correct. The hon. member raises an excellent point.

Within the confines of the bill, it will be able to go after the scammers who are sending these kinds of messages out. It will allow for people to sue, which is an important provision. The bigger issue, though, goes back to the issue we face with Facebook. We really need a larger information campaign about the rights of the digital citizen and what people need to do to protect themselves. It is not about locking the Internet down. That will not happen. It is about giving people a level of assurance, whether they are senior citizens who are getting on the Internet for the first time or whether they are young people or whether they are people like us who press, press, press, click, click, click all day long. We never know when we will make that mistake.

We do need to have this discussion. It is not a partisan discussion. This is a discussion we need to have as a Canadian legislature in terms of looking at some of the problems out there that are not being addressed. Education will be one of the key ones in stopping these kinds of scams.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this has been a very informative discussion today and I was quite intrigued by a number of my colleague's points. First and foremost, he talked about the threat to innovation, that if we do not get a handle on using the Internet in its most positive way and avoiding the pitfalls, as it were, we are going to lose out in terms of innovation.

I was hoping that he would expand on that notion of innovation.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Clay Shirky has just written a book entitled Here Comes Everybody and what he says in it is that we are on the verge of an absolute transformation in industrial design in terms of economic ordering.

Clay says that when new technology comes in is not when the revolution happens. The revolution happens when the technology becomes boring and every day. When everybody is posting pictures of their babies online and emailing back and forth is when the real, new transformative powers begin to happen.

What Clay talks about is cognitive surplus. For example, if most of us go online and basically treat it like TV, there is no difference. However, if 5% of us are on maybe a genealogical site putting information online or doing something like Flickr where there are millions and millions of photos being built up, there is power in so many people putting just 1% or 2% of their time into building something bigger, like Wikipedia, which has enormous transformative power.

If we look at the success of Wikipedia, Clay is positing that this is the beginning of this sort of wiki building of all kinds of people coming together. That is the new model for design innovation. That is where we are going to begin to see the whole transformation of the industrial complex.

Whereas before, it was hierarchical, top down; now, there is going to be a whole movement. However, in order to make that happen, there has to be confidence and people have to know that as they are sharing information, they are not being ripped off, that they are not going to be getting hit with tons of emails and subjected to fraud. There has to be a sense that they can go online to transform and build new economies, new ideas, and new systems of working together. There has to be confidence and one way to get that confidence is to get the scammers, the spammers and the fraudsters off the Internet.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to the third reading of Bill C-27, Electronic Commerce Protection Act, or as it is also called the ECPA.

As chair of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, I want to recognize the constructive work of all the members of the committee from all parties in improving the bill.

The bill, as amended, from committee has benefited from the work over the past months of the members of the committee. As a result, a number of key elements in the bill have been strengthened, clarified and have been done in a way without diminishing the core principles of what the government has been trying to achieve.

Email is a wonderful technology, and it has only been just over 10 years that we have all been using email broadly. In just over 10 years, it has completely changed our lives. However, many of the benefits of email have been offset by the problem of spam, which is unwanted and unsolicited commercial emails.

According to a MessageLabs report of September 2009, which is a division of Symantec Corporation, spam accounted for as much as 86% of all global email traffic. Unfortunately, Canada is in part responsible for this problem.

Canada ranks as one of the top originating states for spam. In Cisco 2008 Annual Security Report Canada ranked fourth on the list of spam by originating country list.

Late last year in the United States, Facebook won $873 million U.S. in damages from an American court arising from the activities of a spammer based in Canada. That case was prosecuted in the United States and not in Canada. That speaks to the lack of Canadian legislation in place to prevent this kind of activity.

The high volume of spam in recent years has negatively affected the productivity of the Internet and all the technologies associated with the Internet. When a high volume of email is spammed, many people spend hours deleting unwanted messages, networks slow down and companies are forced to spend millions, if not billions of dollars, upgrading their systems, their networks, their backbones, their routers, their pipes to the Internet in order to accommodate the additional bandwidth and network capacity needed to handle this volume of email traffic.

The high volume of spam has impeded the full potential of the Internet as a platform for both personal and commercial use. Spam is more than just unwanted email. It is often used as a vehicle to perpetrate fraud on Canadians. It can lead to online fraud by luring individuals to counterfeit websites, also known as phishing. It can lead to the theft of personal data to rob bank accounts and credit card accounts, called identity theft. It can lead to the collection of personal information through elicit access on one's laptop or on one's computer, known as spyware. It often is used as a vehicle to perpetrate fraud on Canadians

Not just Canadians suffer but Canadian businesses suffer and often this is an overlooked fact of spam. Canadian businesses suffer because they are the victims of the counterfeiting of their corporate website to defraud individuals. We all know of examples of getting emails from spammers or from other people who wish to perpetrate fraud. They ask for people's banking information. They send an email that contains a page that looks like a Royal Bank website or a TD Bank website and often many unsuspecting individuals give their information to these spammers, the people trying to perpetrate this fraud.

It also leads to spam borne viruses and other malicious software called malware, which are used to create networks of zombie computers known botnets without the knowledge of their owners. This undermines confidence not just that Canadians have in the Internet but that Canadian businesses have in the Internet as a platform for commerce, as a platform for doing business in the 21st century.

I do not think it is hyperbole to say that spam is costing Canadians and Canadian businesses billions of dollars a year in fraud, in network capacity and in the need to upgrade systems to handle the volumes of email which we are seeing. It costs the economy through malicious programs such as malware, spyware, phishing, viruses, worms and Trojans that enter computers. It costs the economy in terms of undermining Canadians and Canadian businesses in their confidence of the Internet, often having to rely on old-fashioned ways of doing business because the Internet is not seen as trustworthy enough to conduct certain types of business transactions.

In response to this problem, the Government of Canada launched a task force on spam to consult Canadians and their businesses. The task force was given one year to consult and report. In May 2005 the task force reported its findings and recommendations in a report to the Minister of Industry. I want to thank the members of the task force for their valuable work in this regard.

Our government has acted on the recommendations and findings of the task force by introducing Bill C-27, anti-spam legislation entitled “The Electronic Commerce Protection Act”, or the ECPA. This legislation will deter the most damaging form of spam from happening in Canada and will help drive spammers and their associated activity out of Canada.

The legislation addresses the recommendations of the task force on spam, which brought together experts from industry, academia, consumers and other business experts to come together to craft a comprehensive set of measures to combat threats to the online economy. Successful legislative models in other states were also examined and taken into account when drafting the bill.

The legislation will allow Industry Canada to act as a national coordinating body to educate consumers, track and analyze statistics and trends and lead policy oversight and coordination.

The legislation will also facilitate the establishment of a non-governmental agency, the spam reporting centre, which will receive reports of spam and related online threats, allowing it to collect evidence and gather intelligence to assist the three reporting agencies, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, with the investigation and prosecution of offences.

It is important to note that the ECPA does not apply to non-commercial activity. Political parties and charities, other organizations that contact Canadians through email will not be subject to the ECPA, provided these emails do not involve selling or promoting a product.

Bill C-27 will protect Canadians and their businesses from the most damaging and deceptive forms of electronic harms and provide a regulatory regime to protect the privacy and personal security of Canadians. The rules will encourage confidence in online communications and e-commerce on the Internet.

The bill before us provides the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner with the tools they need to pursue those who undermine our online economy and to work with one another and their international counterparts. The bill has sharp teeth, administrative monetary penalties of up to $1 million for individuals and up to $10 million for businesses.

The bill in front of us today resulted from a great deal of work from several different sources. On the one hand, we had the recommendations and findings of the 2005 Task Force on Spam. On the other hand, we have also benefited from some of the work that former Senator Goldstein did in Bill S-220 in this regard.

Some of the features in this bill differ from what Mr. Goldstein had previously proposed. One of the most important is the use of the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to enforce the provisions, in other words, using regulatory agencies to enforce the provisions of the spam bill rather than using police enforcement agencies as Bill S-220 had proposed.

The RCMP has other urgent law enforcement responsibilities, and I believe we should not redirect those precious resources to the monitoring of unsolicited commercial email. I believe that regulatory authorities are better positioned than law enforcement authorities for this kind of white collar problem.

In drafting Bill C-27, the government also drew on a wealth of experience in other states in combating spam. The bill drew on work that had been done in New Zealand, Australia and in the United States. The bill also benefited from the approach taken by other states as well. The bill before us is based on the best and most effective aspects of those legislative regimes in those states.

By being consistent with the approaches of other states, by using regulatory approaches and regulatory agencies in effecting this anti-spam bill rather than law enforcement agencies, we will help promote greater international co-operation to combat spam and other online fraud.

As members of the House know, Bill C-27 adopts an express consent regime designed to give businesses and consumers control over their inboxes and their computers. It requires that the individual's consent be sought and obtained in order to permit an ongoing commercial transaction. Once consent has been expressed by an individual, it remains until the individual opts out or revokes that consent. The industry committee took a careful look at how to ensure that the companies that used email could keep in touch with consumers so they did not inadvertently find themselves in violation of the law.

Members of the House will also know that the bill contains implied consent provisions that have been expanded to include suspicious publication of an electronic address. If someone publishes his or her email address on a website or in a print advertisement, he or she is considered to have consented to receive unsolicited commercial messages, provided the sender's message relates to the business or office held by the person.

Consent is also implied when a person gives out a business card or provides an email address in a letter. Similarly, the amended bill clarifies that when a business is sold, the purchaser has an implied consent to contact the customers of that business. Following the initial transaction between a business and a consumer, the period of implied consent has been expanded to 24 months from the original 18, as first contained in the original bill. This gives businesses even more time in which to obtain the express consent to further commercial transactions.

Another area in which the bill has been amended is in ensuring that updates to computer programs are not adversely affected by the protections we have put in place against malware and spyware.

The committee looked at the impact the bill would have on the installation of computer programs. It has been amended in the situation where the installation of updates, as it is understood as part of an original contract under which the software is installed, is not prohibited by the bill. Most of these programs call for automatic updates, such as daily or weekly updates, to anti-virus software. These updates will not require fresh consent for each instance. Running programs such as JavaScript or Flash programs will also not require express consent each time they are run.

Let me say a few words about the private right of action before I conclude. Some hon. members have questioned whether a private right of action is necessary. I believe it is. The private right of action enforces and complements the enforcement efforts of the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. I would remind the House that this feature has been very effective in other jurisdictions in shutting down those such as spammers who have caused to the electronic economy. I believe it will be equally effective here in allowing groups or individuals to pursue violators. The private right of action will allow individuals and businesses suffering financial harm an avenue of recourse to be compensated and awarded damages.

Finally, the bill is technology-neutral. Bill C-27 recognizes that the convergence of voice and data is happening and will eventually be complete. It will allow the Government of Canada to prevent spam and associated threats regardless of how the technology evolves. Therefore, the bill will remain current in the future as technology evolves.

If Bill C-27 is passed by the House at third reading, Canada will go a long way to combatting spam and spam-related threats. Based on the experience of other states with similar legislation, a reduction in spam is quickly expected. When Australia adopted similar legislation in 2004, it dropped out of the world's top 10 spam-originating states and major spammers in Australia closed their operations altogether.

While the legislation will not eliminate spam entirely, Canadians will see a reduction in the amount of spam in their inboxes. Equally important, the legislation will decrease the most damaging forms of spam from originating in Canada and will help drive spammers and their associated illegal activities out of Canada.

The Internet has become the primary platform for online commerce and general communications. Canada has had a long history of global leadership in the telecommunications sector. E-commerce is now a part of the Canadian economy, with billions of dollars of goods and services being sold over the Internet each year in Canada.

If adopted by Parliament, this legislation would allow Canada to continue in that leadership, ensuring that we remain a secure locale for e-commerce and for Canadians. It is time for Canadian law to catch up with the Internet age. All parties in the House have expressed their desire to strengthen confidence in online commerce. All parties are opposed to spam and see the danger of it.

We have studied this bill at great length in committee and have emerged with important amendments that clarify it. The time has come to pass it at third reading.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we often talk about individuals and their individual experiences on the Internet. However, there is also this extremely important aspect of commercial business and what it can do from the other side to protect itself and the important practices it can follow to help Canadians understand and recognize legitimate commercial communications.

I wonder if the member would care to comment about the importance of engaging business on the other side. We can legislate only so much, but we really do need partners in this if we are going to deal with it effectively.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, part of this debate that is often overlooked is the cost to Canadian businesses and the problems that Canadian corporations have in managing their email networks. From personal experience, I can say that it costs billions of dollars for Canadian corporations to handle the volumes of spam that we are now seeing.

As the House knows, we in Parliament have size limits on our inboxes. The simple reality is that the volume of email coming into the House of Commons and Senate computer systems is such that a great volume of these emails are spam. While companies can put in place firewalls, routers and other forms of software on their servers to redirect or block spam, at the end of the day, a lot of this spam still makes its way through those firewalls and routers and into the email servers, which then become completely clogged and saturated with this spam. As a result, legitimate transactions and emails are often slowed down or mailboxes are restricted in terms of the amount of email they can handle in order to deal with all of the spam that is being received.

Backup systems have to be enlarged. Bandwidth has to be enlarged. Email systems have to be expanded. All of these represent hidden costs to Canadian businesses. Many times, the senior management of these businesses does not realize the number of dollars that are being wasted on IT departments and chief information officers to handle the volumes of spam that we are seeing.

I think this bill is a move in the right direction because it is going to help Canadian businesses combat the time wasting and resource wasting that this problem creates, despite the efforts taken to put network security in place and expand data storage systems.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-27. PIPEDA falls under the jurisdiction of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics with regard to personal information.

A number of members have been involved in one aspect of this and that is identity theft. It is a very serious problem in our society and the stories are horrific. The impacts it can have on people are very tragic.

I certainly want to speak in support of the bill, basically to start the process of educating legislators, because this is a starting point from which we need to continue to grow due to the velocity with which the information and technology are growing, as well as some of the tricks and things that we have seen and the way the envelope is being pushed.

Most members will have seen things in their inboxes from people identifying themselves as representatives of their bank. The emails say that the bank is doing a security check and requires members to provide their account numbers or something like that. They look very official. As a matter of fact, often the logos of a bank or the proper or stylized name of the bank will appear. Yet Canadians should understand that banks do not do business related to security and privacy over the Internet. It is just not a secure environment in which to do that.

This bill would establish a regulatory framework, which I think is a very good start. Our economy is changing. Our kids grew up with computers. Their ability to move very quickly through the electronic world is absolutely fascinating.

I actually have a degree in computer science from the University of Western Ontario and at the time I took that degree, we were using punch cards, which will give everyone an idea of where I came from. This is a very serious issue, and I am glad that we are at least at the point that this bill is at third reading and this electronic commerce protection act would prohibit the sending of commercial electronic messages without prior consent of the recipient.

It brings to mind the do not call list system that was established, which Canadians will say does not work very well. It is problematic and we should probably learn from the experience of the do not call list that notwithstanding the mechanisms that have been put in place, somehow things slip through. There is a caution that as much as we legislate, we are not going to be able to anticipate all the pitfalls that may transpire.

This act would also amend the Competition Act to prohibit false and misleading commercial representations made electronically. As I have indicated, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, referred to as PIPEDA, prohibits the collection of personal information by means of unauthorized access to computer systems and the unauthorized compiling of lists of electronic addresses.

That is a reasonable indication that the bill addresses this from sufficient directions. However, I asked a question earlier of the previous speaker. The role of business in this also comes into play.

Last week I just happened to receive a document called “The Canadian Privacy and Data Security Toolkit”. This is for small and medium size enterprises, many of which are active. These are the ones that are extremely active, scouring the bushes, looking for that bit of business, that niche for their businesses.

The foreword is by our Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, and the introduction is by Ann Cavoukian, Ph.D., Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. This was actually produced by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, which is trying to educate its clients about some of the important things.

I want to start off from a business perspective looking back. Some of these businesses may very well be the businesses that are improperly using information they receive from individuals over the net. It states that:

Information privacy is the right of an individual to exercise control over the collection, use, disclosure and retention of his or her personal information. Personal information (also known as personally identifiable information...) is any information, recorded or otherwise, relating to an identifiable individual.

It includes such things as credit card numbers, debit card numbers, social insurance and security numbers, driver's licence numbers, and health cards, all of which deal with a fair bit of sensitive information. This leads to the whole situation of things like identity theft.

A constituent wrote me an email over the weekend to thank my staff for giving her some hints and tips on what she could do to protect herself because she had lost her wallet with all her information in it and had in fact had an indication that someone was already using some of that information. Things happen quickly when information gets into the hands of the wrong people.

The report talks about a privacy breach. On page 83 it says that:

A privacy breach is unauthorized access to, collection, use, or disclosure of personal information. The breach could be the result of an inadvertent act such as the loss of a laptop or by a deliberate act such as an attack from a computer hacker. Both, however, are considered breaches since the information is no longer under your protection.

Other examples of privacy breaches [include] misplaced fax, CD-ROM, or USB drive key[,]...sales receipts with credit card information thrown into recycling bin instead of the shredder[,] old computers reused with personal information still present on the hard drive[,] or customer files stolen during a break-in.

The consequences of a privacy breach could be a number of things such as:

damage to reputation or brand[,] loss of consumer confidence[,] reduced revenues [and] unexpected costs to compensate victims.

The potential damage to reputation or brand can be severe. In a survey of individuals who had received notification of a breach, almost 20% of the respondents terminated their relationship with the company, and another 40% were reconsidering their relationship.

We can see that this is not an inconsequential item we are dealing with for either side. The individual's private information needs to be protected, and a business whether small, medium or large has a role to play in protecting that information which they legitimately acquire through business transactions. There is often the temptation to utilize that information for unauthorized uses.

There was a case recently within the Government of Canada involving, and I will try not to be too specific, a program to do with a grant for doing something energy related. People who applied for that grant started to receive information on other areas of the government. When someone applies to the Government of Canada for a grant, I would suggest that they do not expect to find themselves on a mailing list and getting information to do with other matters related to the government.

The government itself is also strongly targeted here with regard to its practices. We have to be vigilant to ensure that none of the information the government collects, regardless of the department, is inadvertently or advertently used for a purpose which was unauthorized by the person who made contact with the government in the first place.

There is one other thing that I thought was kind of interesting. Under privacy impact assessment, there is a quick privacy self-assessment. I thought it would be interesting to let members know what small and medium-sized businesses might do.

The first item is, do we know our privacy obligations?

Some businesses are busy. I must admit, from an accountant's perspective, most people who run small and medium-sized businesses are more interested in doing business than they are in keeping the books and dealing with the myriad of paperwork and legislative reporting, but this is about knowing the privacy obligations, both federal and provincial, because there are some differences.

The second item is, has the organization assigned responsibility for compliance with privacy legislation and policy?

This is an important aspect, because it is an indication of whether the company is taking it seriously, that it has a serious responsibility to comply with provincial and federal legislation and to be proactive in terms of protecting the information of individuals.

The third accountability and management assessment question is, has the organization conducted an inventory of personal information to identify what information has been collected, where the information is collected from, who has access to that information and to whom may be the information be disclosed externally?

That is extremely important, because as we well know, one of the ways that people get on mailing lists is that people who accumulate personal information tend to share it or sell it to others. All of a sudden, like a pyramid scheme, it just continues to expand to where all information seems to be in the hands of all people.

The fourth assessment point is, does the organization make use of online privacy resources, for example, websites of the privacy commissioners or the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, to assist with privacy compliance and awareness of privacy developments?

Keeping on top of it is clearly very important, and it will be important for us also to readily assess the evolution of this electronic vehicle that is being used and has caused a great deal of difficulty and problems for individuals and for businesses.

The next point asks, has the organization adopted a privacy policy that addresses collection, use, disclosure to third parties, secure disposal of personal information and retention of personal information as it applies to particular operations?

With regard to that last point about the retention, there is a shelf life for information. For instance, if we have information about someone who is deceased, all of a sudden, if it is made known, that information has to be destroyed.

Our committee has dealt with even something like Google Street View. There are some privacy implications there. There are a couple of others where we have provided information to offshore parties as well, being able to control that or make sure of that when we are complying under obligations we have, for instance, with the United States, which requires that for any aircraft that even just flies over any its air space, documents have to be provided as to who the passengers are and where they came from, et cetera.

Those are extremely important because our private information, our personal information, is everywhere.

I must admit that I tend to keep thinking about whether I should just report as lost and not recoverable all my cards and the other things that have my personal information on them and get new numbers, simply as almost a reaction to what can happen.

Just last week I got a phone call from my bank. I have a U.S. credit card because I have family in the United States, and we travel sometimes to visit them and I use that card. I have not been to California in about 10 years because that is not where my family is, but I was advised that there were two $1,000 charges to my U.S. credit card. The bank took all the information and advised me that those charges would not be left on my account, and I have a new card today.

Some cards do protect us, but not all of them. It is incumbent on people to understand what can happen when their personal information is used or stolen. Do they have coverage in some fashion? Some of the instruments we use do provide protection.

There are two more questions on the privacy policy side.

The sixth question asks, is the privacy policy made available to individuals prior to or at the time that the personal information is collected? Basically, do employees know what is going on and are they aware of all of the policy related to the activity they are undertaking?

Finally, the self-assessment asks, are your employees aware of the privacy policy and able to direct individuals to it?

I found this to be an excellent document. It also has a checklist on privacy procedures, training and disclosure to third parties. One could even score oneself on this.

I would certainly recommend this document to hon. members or others who might want to know a bit more from the perspective of business and how it would be able to interact with this legislation. This legislation would help businesses understand the kinds of things they must be aware of and cautioned not to do. It would also make businesses aware of the kinds of things they could do proactively, and that is a complement to the legislation.

Again, this document is called “The Canadian Privacy and Data Security Toolkit for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises”, and it is published by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. I am sure that hon. members would be able to get it.

I appreciate the fact that this legislation has come forward. I think there will be good support from all hon. members. We need this bill to give us the foundation or the basis on which to be able to assure Canadians that we are taking all reasonable steps to provide an environment in which personal information is protected from those who would misuse it or use it for other wrongful purposes.

The bill itself is fairly straightforward. I appreciate that this was a lot of work for committee. I commend committee for going through it. I did notice the breadth of the work that has been done not only at committee, but by others prior to committee work. A long evolutionary process has brought us to this point.

It is extremely important that members also familiarize themselves with this. I hope members take an opportunity in their householders to advise their constituents about important legislation such as this, as well as some tips for Canadians at large to help them safeguard their personal information.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I see it, there are two problems that this legislation is trying to address.

The first is obviously the problem of spam as a vehicle to perpetrate online fraud, whether that be phishing or identity theft, spyware, spoofing, counterfeiting, malware, botnets and the like.

The other part of the problem that this bill is attempting to address is the fact that even if spam were not a vehicle for online fraud, even if spam were not a delivery mechanism for all these malicious types of computer programs, even if spam were not doing anything malicious in terms of what it is delivering to people's computer inboxes, it has a second major problem that is often overlooked, which is that it chews up a huge amount of bandwidth, of storage space on corporate and other computer systems. It is reported that up to 85% of all email traffic in the world is spam, and that costs a huge amount to Canadian businesses in terms of bandwidth usage, in terms of storage space, and that is often overlooked.

Much of the spam cannot be blocked by firewalls or routers or other forms of technology. The proof is that when we go into our Hotmail account or Yahoo! Mail account or Gmail account, there will be a folder for spam, because spam cannot even be blocked from entering into their systems and their networks. This has a huge hidden cost for the Internet, both for consumers and for Canadian businesses.

I wonder if the member would comment on that.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I must admit, the first thing I thought of was Bill Gates saying that all anyone would need is 64 kilobytes for their Commodore 64 and nobody would ever need anything more.

On the weekend I picked a little memory stick that has 16 gigabytes of memory on it. The cost of this is coming down very substantially.

On the commercial side, the member is absolutely right. This is a tremendous amount of information. On a personal level, our computers get filled up pretty quickly. I think members of Parliament have all experienced the same thing, where they can go into their office after having left late at night and find somewhere between 100 and 200 emails in their computer. This is such an easy facility to use, so we can understand that so many of these are people from around the world.

The member is quite right that the risk to us is that we have the intelligence or maybe the misapplication of intelligence of virtually the entire world looking at ways in which it can intrude, looking at ways in which it can take advantage of our information, destroy our information, share it with others, or park itself for activation later on.

Some of the Norton software for bugs and the like cannot keep up. Every time I go to Future Shop, there is another version of Norton there.

Certainly businesses need to get engaged here. They have a significant role to play. I do not know how many small and medium-sized businesses, though, have been engaged to protect their information, to protect their software from invasion, and whether they can or even know how to detect it, and this concerns me.

Eventually what is going to happen is that business information will be modified in ways in which there is such a high volume of traffic through it that ordinary businesses that are operationally focused will never be able to see it until there is substantial damage.

Again I thank the committee. I hope we will be able to continue to improve upon the legislation as the risk continues to evolve.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to say that we support this bill. I see the committee chair nodding his head that, yes, it is an excellent bill. I must say, this bill is a good start. This new legislation specifically targets unsolicited commercial electronic messages. Citizens have been demanding such a bill for some time, and it is sorely needed. Not only are commercial emails sent with the prior consent of the recipient important to electronic commerce, but they are also essential to the development of the online economy.

By drafting legislation prohibiting spam and protecting personal information and privacy, as well as computers, emails and our networks, the proposed legislation is designed to allow individuals and companies to sue spammers and hold any businesses whose products and services are promoted using these means partially responsible for spamming activity.

As well, email marketers would be required to obtain informed consent from recipients to receive emails; provide an opting-out mechanism for further emails; and create a complaints system. That is the main purpose of the bill. Since most spam Canadians receive comes from other countries, international anti-spam measures are needed. The government should continue its efforts to harmonize anti-spam policies and encourage countries to work together on enforcing anti-spam legislation.

I would like to talk about this a bit longer. We know that spam comes from all over the world. That is one thing. But Canadian law applies only to Canada and Canadians, not to other countries. How might this affect us as consumers? What sort of commercial impact might it have? Businesses here in Canada will not be able to distribute advertising on the Internet using software or other ways of communicating with a computer.

The biggest problem is that because other countries are not subject to this law and their legislation is not harmonized with Canada's, they can keep on sending messages. If I have a business and I decide to send advertising over the Internet for doors, windows and other things, I cannot send a mass mailing. But a business in another country can.

We have to be competitive with industries around the world, because we are part of a global economy now. So what reason do we have to protect consumers? Protecting them against phishing or hacking is one thing, but we must not forget business. That was the committee's main concern. We must not prevent businesses here from continuing to make a profit. Eight billion transactions are carried out on the Internet. I believe that Canadian businesses should enjoy a share of this growth with all the people here in Canada.

It is vital that we ask ourselves whether we want to protect our industries or consumers. Should we let others continue to do business without our being able to participate? These are the questions that should be raised, and they have been raised. They have not received a full answer, but this bill is a major step, because it proposes a concrete measure within a timeframe. It took four years to come up with this legislation, because we wanted something better. As we know, things change much more rapidly with the Internet, where six months is an eternity.

So, fairly soon after this bill is passed, we will have to take time to see how things are unfolding and to make adjustments, as cyberpirates target us.

By the way, how do we define spam? Spam is any electronic commercial message, any text, audio, voice or visual message sent by any means of telecommunication—whether by email, cellular phone text messaging or instant messaging—without the consent of recipients. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that its purpose is to encourage participation in a new commercial activity, and that it includes electronic messages that offer to purchase, sell, barter or lease a product, good, service, land or an interest or right in land, or offer a business, investment or gaming opportunity.

I mentioned what spam is. It has to do with commercial activities, including offers to purchase, sell, barter or lease a product, good, service, land or an interest or right in land. All these are commercial activities that exist here. With this legislation, these people will no longer be able to use the Internet to send their messages.

What is left for these people to be competitive? Not much. They could use mail services. However, this can be costly, considering that, as I mentioned, such costs will not be incurred in other countries. We always hear—as one member said—that spam requires a lot of work. It takes someone to prepare these emails. If, all of a sudden, we prevent our industries from using the Internet to sell or rent all the products that I listed earlier, what are they going to do? As I just said, they will have to rely on mail services.

Just think how clogged up the system could get if every industry decided to send a mass mailing to all the other businesses, or to households. How much time would businesses spend opening mail, instead of emails? Of course, Canada Post would be pleased, since postal rates are exorbitant, but businesses would no longer be competitive, because of these costs. We should not forget that, because this is a significant economic consideration.

Having said what is considered spam, it is also important to point out what is not. What is not spam are messages sent by an individual to another individual with whom they have a personal or family relationship. For instance, I have no personal ties to you, Mr. Speaker. Imagine I send you a message, not as a member, since that is not allowed. So imagine that someone from outside the House sends you an email, he or she could be subject to fines, since this legislation no longer allows emails from one person to another. The bill reads:

—a message that is sent to a person who is engaged in a commercial activity and consists solely of an inquiry or application related to that activity.

Regarding commercial activities, witnesses came to testify that, initially, the bill required 18 months of contact with the other person. Let me give an example. I know that about every four or five years, family situations and incomes change, so people could be selling their house and buying a new one. With this new law, the real estate agent who sold me my house can no longer contact me after 18 months. In fact, he would be subject to a fine, if the 18-month time limit has passed. In committee, we were able to change that timeframe to 24 months. We would have preferred it to be even longer, to allow businesses and individuals to continue communicating with their existing clients.

As I said, the purpose of this bill was to restrict commercial activity, which is important here.

(a) that is, in whole or in part, an interactive two-way voice communication between individuals;

(b) that is sent by means of a facsimile to a telephone account; or

(c) that is a voice recording sent to a telephone account.

...

(c) that is of a class, or is sent in circumstances, specified in the regulations.

This bill will completely define the issue. There will surely be some flaws, as with any bill, whether it is good or bad. Since this is a new bill, there are always flaws because we forgot something or did not think to regulate something. Over time, we will have to re-examine the bill, more quickly than any other bill, to ensure that we have not left anything out.

The only circumstances under which spam could be sent would be if the person to whom the message is sent has consented to receiving it, whether the consent is express or implied. So, if I send a message and the individual agrees to receive it, a relationship has been established.

Let us take that same real estate agent, and let us assume that I heard from one of my colleagues that his brother-in-law has a house to sell. I would not be able to send that brother-in-law an email to let him know that his brother-in-law had informed me about the house for sale, or to tell him that I know someone who would be interested in buying the house. I could not do that.

I could only do it over the telephone. I could directly contact the individual via telephone or meet them in person. I would have to establish contact before doing business with this person.

So therein lies the problem. Anyone who wishes to establish a business relationship with another person must now do so via the telephone or mail, or meet the individual in person. They could not send a simple email.

We are setting limits. That is the message I want to get across. We are setting limits, but we cannot limit other countries in sending us these messages. We have to consider doing that and count on the goodwill of other countries such as the United States, Australia, France or other European countries. This type of legislation needs to be harmonized. Many countries do not have such regulations or laws. They can therefore do what they want because they are not subject to such legislation.

In addition to being in a form that conforms to the prescribed requirements, the message will have to make it possible to identify and contact the sender. The message must include an unsubscribe mechanism, with an email address or hyperlink, so that the recipient can indicate that he or she does not want to receive any further commercial electronic messages from the sender. If I send a message or an email, at the end of that message there specifically needs to be a box to check or a note explaining to the person how to stop receiving further messages.

I think this is the right approach, but in order for it to be successful inquiries would be necessary. The CRTC would have interesting powers. It could require a person to preserve transmission data, produce a copy of a document that is in their possession and prepare a document based on data, information or documents that are in their possession. It could also conduct a site visit in order to gather such information or, if necessary, to establish whether there was a violation.

Because it cannot do that itself, note that it will have to get a warrant from a justice of the peace prior to entering premises. It cannot do that by itself; the CRTC cannot do it by itself; the Competition Bureau has certain powers, but there again its powers are limited. Today, the Competition Bureau has no powers of inquiry. That is why there is Bill C-452, which will give the Competition Bureau three types of powers of inquiry: an exclusive power of inquiry, a power of inquiry to summon and protect witnesses, and a power to search. That is what is important.

How can agencies conduct inquiries and do the work for which they have been created if they have no power? I have introduced Bill C-452 to give the Competition Bureau this power so it can conduct inquiries and do the work we expect of it.

If the court believes that a person has violated any of those provisions, it may, which is not to say that it will have to, order that the applicant be paid an amount representing the loss or damages suffered, or any expenses incurred. If it is impossible for the applicant to establish those amounts, the court may order that the applicant be paid a maximum of $200 per contravention, up to a maximum of $1 million. I am choosing my words carefully: not “shall order”, but “may order”. That is very different.

As I said earlier, the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner must also consult one another, and they may share any information with one another in order to carry out their activities and responsibilities pursuant to their respective powers.

So there are three agencies: the CRTC, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the Competition Bureau. Together, they have certain powers under the bill. However, they must be capable of communicating with one another. We know that these agencies have their private preserves and they are not prone to disclosing information.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner is another thing again. The Liberal member referred to this earlier. That Office is an important player in this regard.

Unsolicited commercial electronic messages are becoming a serious social and economic problem that undermines the personal and commercial productivity of Quebeckers. Not only do they hinder email use for personal communications but they also threaten the growth of legitimate e-commerce. As I mentioned earlier, when people are assigned to open these emails, time is lost and businesses become less competitive. That causes a problem.

I would like to point out something else. The minister, or another organization somehow involved in Bill C-27, has managed to ensure that a clause in this bill could jeopardize the National Do-Not-Call List (DNCL). A door has been opened because one of the clauses states that the DNCL—set up by this government and containing the telephone numbers of seven million people who do not wish to be unnecessarily pestered by telemarketers—could be deactivated. They have now made it possible, within one year, to eliminate a list that cost millions to set up.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague's speech.

The issue that we are trying to deal with here, on all sides I would hope, is the need to ensure that innovation continues to happen, that we believe that the Internet is going to be more and more of a vehicle for not just economic innovation but for social, cultural and political discourse. Therefore, there has to be the issue of confidence.

When people go on the Internet and they respond to people they might not know, they have to have a fundamental sense of confidence that they can make those connections. Without those links that are being made from person to person, from business to business, major problems will occur in terms of impeding productivity and also undermining the fundamental revolutionary power of what is before us.

The issue of spam is not simply an issue of an irritant. It is not simply that it bothers us because we have to delete from our inbox everyday hundreds of useless irritating emails. The deeper issue is the underlying issue of spam that leads to fraud. There is such an interconnection between the misuse of Internet communication and international fraud rings. We see that Canada was alone in the G7 in terms of having any kind of plan for dealing with spam up until now and we are also one of the worst spam bases in the G7 and, in fact, the world.

Could my hon. colleague speak to the connection between fraud and spam, and the need to have an international standard because a spam artist knows no domestic boundary or border?

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has identified the problem and its implications. Yes, it can be useful. There is spam, emails, and there are important things. There are things we can use every day. It is true that there has been fraud and that is why we have a bill. However, we must be careful. I can certainly understand how a great deal of spam can affect the productivity of some companies.

However, if we restrict people here and our businesses—those trying to make an honest living for themselves and their employees—if they can no longer use email and the Internet to sell and promote their products, what do they have left? As I was saying earlier, that leaves the postal service. This will hurt small businesses, who will not be able to keep up with big businesses. Larger big businesses will win out and smaller businesses will disappear. Is that what we want? It is one thing to protect our citizens. But we must also protect our businesses so that they can continue to participate in a given market.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to ask a question of my colleague today.

I am very concerned about the bill with regard to the cost and confusion the legislation might have for small businesses in the country. Oftentimes the government introduces legislation. Then, after it is introduced, it is quite a complicated process and expense communicating with small businesses and getting them up to speed on what the requirements are.

I can think of many initiatives in that area over the last several years. I just wonder if the member has any thoughts about how we should be proceeding with regard to that.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague put his finger on the problem. Yes, we discussed it in committee. It would seem that businesses would continue for some time, because as for any other bill, we do not yet know what impact it will have.

That is why I said during my speech that this bill would have to be reviewed again as soon as possible after it is passed, to determine whether or not it presents a problem for our businesses. That is what should be done. Six months is a long time and a year is much too long, but we would have to look at the legislation again to determine whether it has affected our companies and our society directly.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have moved this legislation along to the point where it should be ready to be made law. However, then we look at the do not call registry which was made law.

I am sure most members of the House have received phone calls. I receive calls at home all the time telling me my credit card information is incorrect and I have to press 1 immediately to correct credit card information. I am getting those calls at home. I was not getting them before the do not call registry was established.

It seems to me that we can say whatever we want in the House about spammers. We can talk until we are blue in the face and yet the fraud and misrepresentation continues, and the lack of political will to get serious about this remains in place.

I would ask my hon. colleague, does he think, besides reviewing the bill and its effectiveness, we need to show our other competitive countries in the G8, which are actually serious on these things? We preach the gospel of change, but it seems that once something is implemented, the government goes back to being an agnostic on actually dealing with it.

In light of the failure of the do not call registry, would my hon. colleague like to perhaps guess where this is going to go?

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, yes, I will. A witness told us. That was our concern. We knew that the question would come up when a clause was put in the bill that could abolish the national do not call list.

The question did come up, and there was no mention in the answer of abolishing the list. The government wants to be able to replace this regulatory system in future if necessary.

I believe that they want to abolish this list. I do not know why, since they are the ones who introduced it. It cost businesses $5 million to comply with the list. This bill contains a clause that could abolish it. That is unfortunate, because the do not call list has been in place for a year and it is working.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when the government brought in the do not call registry, individuals signed up so they would not be called. Then we found out that international scammers simply walked away with that list because internationally the registry is not respected. All the people, who put their numbers on the list so they would not be called, found themselves victimized by fraud artists and scammers.

There is talk about taking the existing registry and rolling it into Bill C-27. That is possible and I am open to the suggestion. However, my concern is this. Given the fact that the government showed absolutely no teeth in dealing with all of the scam artists in the Cayman Islands, and wherever else, who obtained the list of our citizens, how are we going to ensure that we are protected from international scammers who have no interest in what we proclaim in the House of Commons?

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Shefford has only 30 seconds left.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is precisely the problem. The bill does not mention what is happening at the international level. It only makes reference to what is going on locally, here in Canada. Anything outside the country is excluded. We do not hear about it and we cannot pass an international law either. We would need the G7 or G8 to pass a law that would be respected and endorsed by all its members.

I want to go back to the do not call list. I personally put the question to the chairman of the CRTC, who told me that the list is working. Federal public servants use it. I do not know why they identified it and included it in this legislation. I do not have an answer to that.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Yukon.

I am pleased to speak to Bill C-27, the electronic commerce protection act.

I think that the last interchange is an indication that the legislation before us may have its shortcomings but the urgency with respect to bringing the legislation forward is undeniable. It is undeniable because of the invasiveness of spam and that people's lives can be turned absolutely upside down by those who use spam with the intent to defraud and to use information that is available through access to information. It has been pointed out that no technological firewall or router can act as a barrier and people are absolutely susceptible to those who have spent a huge amount of time thinking of how they can, through an email invasion, access information that will be used fraudulently.

This is not an issue over which the government or any particular party has proprietary rights. In this House we all share the responsibility to have in place a legislative regime that anticipates the nature of this invasion through electronic commerce with the intent to defraud or to put forward false information.

We all share the desire to develop the tools. This will not be the end. The committee has made amendments to original legislation that was put forward through a committee or a task force process. This bill will go through the Senate process. I would assure members of the House, and I refer in particular to the interchange that just took place, there will be other mechanisms undoubtedly, other tools that will be developed through the continuing process of developing the legislation.

I am sure there are people who are watching who only see bits and pieces of the debate. People do not always see the total context within which the debate on legislation is taking place. I would like to provide a chronology to put things in context.

Spam is a serious concern for individual Canadians and businesses. Back in 2004-05, the then Liberal government established a task force to look at anti-spam legislation. That task force brought forward recommendations which generally paralleled the bill before us. Those recommendations were aimed at prohibiting the sending of spam without prior consent as a first principle. The second principle was that it would be an offence to use false or misleading statements to disguise the origins or true intent of an email.

The task force led to a number of key recommendations. I think there were 22 recommendations in all. The government of the day established a series of round tables to seek input from the business community and the community in general.

At that time, the specific recommendations were to prohibit the sending of spam without prior consent as the first principle, to prohibit the use of false or misleading statements disguising the origins or intent of an email, and to prohibit the installation of unauthorized programs. Spam artists are so cunning that if a person does give clearance to a misleading and disguised email, information with respect to even the person's passwords can be made available, which gives access to the person's email content, websites, et cetera. The final principle that was established through that task force was to prohibit the unauthorized collection of personal information or email addresses.

This bill has all of the elements of those task force recommendations and looks to implement the recommendations of that task force. As I have said, this is not a Liberal approach or a Conservative approach; in fact, it appears that the bill has the support of all parties in the House.

There is one aspect of the bill that is different from the regime that was put forward back in 2004-05 under those recommendations, and that is with respect to fines and the implications with respect to what may happen if one is found guilty of violating the intent of the legislation. The fines for these violations can go up to a maximum of $1 million for individuals and $10 million for businesses. It establishes rules for warrants, for information, as was discussed by the last speaker and in questions, and in particular, that information being available through warrants during investigations and injunctions that can be sought on spam activity while under investigation.

The bill also establishes the private right of action, allowing individuals and businesses the ability to seek damages from the perpetrators of spam. That is a particularly important principle. We have talked about victims and victims' statements during criminal proceedings and recently with the bill that firms up the interventions with respect to parole and the ongoing communication with those who have been victimized with respect to how the provisions of parole are carried out.

This bill also attempts to err on the side of victims. It gives them the ability to seek damages from the perpetrators of spam, depending upon the nature of invasion of privacy and the activity that took place.

It was pointed out that the committee had some problems with flaws in this bill. Clause 6 seemed to be a little too broadly written and, as has been pointed out by other speakers, could suppress a very legitimate part of our application of technology and the whole sector. It could impose an adverse position with respect to those who are creative within the technology, the rules of the technology and so on. It was pointed out that the committee was not satisfied to that extent. However, amendments were made to the bill.

The bill also maintains a very strong and some have said heavy-handed position, but given the nature of the illegal activity going on, I think that all of the House would concur with the committee's intent to make those who are guilty suffer.

Generally speaking, those in the stakeholder groups were not satisfied with the original task force recommendations, and there may be some who are still not satisfied with the bill. However, as I have indicated, it has gone through the committee stage, amendments have been made and at this point I think we have to err on the side of those who use their email and other technology for positive and high value-added activity and go after those who would victimize those who are using the technology.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I realize that there are certain provinces, I believe Quebec is one and Manitoba is another, that have class action legislation. Ontario might have it as well.

I wonder if the member could confirm that class action provisions might be applicable as far as the bill is concerned. It seems to me that if we are dealing on an individual basis, it is a much more positive approach if we could have the bill affected by class action lawsuits, whereby people could take action on the part of a whole group of people who were being victimized by certain types of spam activity.

I wonder if the member would comment on that and whether he has any ideas for improvements.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know that the hon. member is a lawyer, and I very much respect his knowledge of not only this kind of legislation, but the recourse that innocents would have with respect to the law.

The bill leans toward the concept of victims' rights. If victims' rights can be characterized through class action, and in other aspects of law, both civil and criminal, then that can happen. This is embarking on new ground. There will be many who will be viewing the intent of the bill and the legislation. It may be contested through the courts, but certainly the provisions with respect to victims would leave the door open, I would say from a lay person's perspective, to class actions. That would mitigate the cost associated with an action. Also, with the kind of publicity that is entrenched in that approach it would do what the bill, in terms of its intent is trying to do. It would put those who would use spam for defrauding and other criminal purposes on notice that more than individual court proceedings could occur. Class actions are very costly. The repercussions could be serious and would act as a deterrent, I would think. However, I am sure that the member would have better suggestions than I would from a legal perspective.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is always very succinct and informative in his speeches.

In his speech he talked about the fines, which he said were slightly different from the original task force recommendations. What specifically was he getting at? I would like his opinion on that. Also, I think there needs to be a significantly large fine for huge corporations because some of them look at a small fine as the cost of doing business and just carry on. It does not have an effect.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there are those with legal experience who could probably give a better answer to that.

When I review the bill and look at fines of a maximum of $1 million for individuals and $10 million for businesses, it would seem that is a pretty serious step toward the objective the member has which I inferred from his question. In that there is not a regime that is that serious now, this would be a fairly substantive deterrent. These are very serious charges and very serious fines.

The whole process through the bill establishes a framework for investigation. The notion that there are rules to be established with respect to warrants, for information during an investigation and so on, certainly provides a framework which will make the bill a much greater deterrent, if it is fully understood, than exists at this time.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, in 2004-05 a Liberal government anti-spam task force consulted the public widely and had round tables with stakeholders. This important bill to limit spam did not come out of the blue. There were four major recommendations from the task force.

The first is prohibiting the sending spam without the prior consent of recipients. I cannot imagine anyone in the public who would not want this to come into effect very quickly. We all get hundreds and hundreds of nuisance and unwarranted spam. People must be dreaming for the day when they will no longer be sent. Quite often it is the very same message with a different title, which I will talk about a little later. This will be a very popular part of the bill for businesses and anyone who uses a computers.

The second is the use of false or misleading statements disguising the origin or true intent of the email. I am sure everyone has received emails that they have opened by accident because they are very clever titled such as “You haven't paid your bill” or other more creative ways of getting us to open the email. Then there is the very same email we received one hundred times trying to sell us the very same product.

The third major recommendation from the Liberal task force is the installation of unauthorized programs prohibiting that and no one would want that to occur.

The fourth is the unauthorized collection of personal information or email addresses. That is very significant. Canadians and businesses do not want the unauthorized collection of their personal information. All kinds of damage can be done.

We only need to go back to the debates we have had recently on commercial crime to see the huge multi-billion dollars in damages and lives ruined because information of individuals has been used for fraudulent purposes. Computer technology is relatively new. In a previous job before I became a member of Parliament there were no computers in business. In that it is a new technology, people, especially seniors who were not used to this throughout their lives, could easily be hoodwinked into giving personal information, which is then be used to victimize them. It is very important this not be allowed to continue.

Let us look at the scenario where millions of unauthorized, unwanted messages or spam go through the Internet. How important is the Internet to today's life? It is really a backbone for many people and for many businesses. The whole way that our society functions—

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. The hon. member will still have time available in his time slot.

The House resumed from November 2 consideration of the motion that Bill C-27, An Act to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities, and to amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Telecommunications Act, be read the third time and passed.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this afternoon on debate at the third reading stage of Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, the ECPA.

It has been estimated that spam costs the Canadian economy about $3 billion a year. It costs the economy through the use of such malicious means as malware, spyware, phishing, worms and viruses such as Trojan horses which enter computers. It costs the economy in terms of sapping Canadians' trust in electronic commerce.

Bill C-27 will protect Canadian consumers and businesses from the most damaging and deceptive forms of electronic harms and provide a regulatory regime to protect the privacy and the personal security of Canadians. The rules will encourage confidence in online communications and e-commerce.

The bill before us provides the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner with the tools they need to pursue those who would undermine the online economy and to work with one another and with their international counterparts.

The bill provides sharp teeth: administrative monetary penalties of up to a maximum of $1 million per violation for individuals and up to $10 million for businesses.

The bill before us is the result of a great deal of work by several different sources. On the one hand we have the recommendations of the 2005 report by the task force on spam. The bill has also benefited from Bill S-220 introduced in the other place by former Senator Goldstein.

Some features of the bill before us differ from what the former senator proposed. Perhaps one of the most important is using the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to enforce the provisions rather than using law enforcement agencies as proposed by Bill S-220.

The RCMP has other urgent law enforcement responsibilities. We should not redirect their resources to the monitoring of unsolicited commercial e-mail.

I believe that both this House and the other place see the wisdom in using regulatory authorities rather than law enforcement agencies to combat spam. The regulatory agencies would be consistent with the regimes that have been put in place in other countries. This system would help promote international cooperation among the various agencies responsible for combatting spam.

In drafting Bill C-27 we have also looked at the experience of other countries in combatting spam. The bill draws upon what has worked in New Zealand, Australia and the United States. We have benefited from their experience, and the bill before us is based on the best and most effective aspects of the legislative initiatives from around the world.

Finally, the bill as amended, which is before us today, has benefited from the work over the past months of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology of which I have been a member.

As a result of the committee's work, several key elements of the bill have been strengthened and clarified without diminishing the core principles.

As hon. members know, Bill C-27 adopts an express consent regime designed to give businesses and consumers control over their inbox and over their own computers. It requires that an individual's consent be obtained in order to permit an ongoing commercial relationship. Once consent has been expressed by an individual, it remains until the individual opts out or revokes that consent.

The committee took a careful look at how to ensure that companies that use email to keep in touch with customers do not inadvertently find themselves in violation of the law. The implied consent provision has been expanded to include the conspicuous publication of an electronic address. If one publishes one's email on a website or in a print advertisement, one is considered to have consented to receiving unsolicited commercial messages, provided that the sender's message relates to the business or office one holds. Consent is also implied when one gives out a business card or provides an email address in a letter.

Similarly the amended bill clarifies that when a business is sold, the purchaser has implied consent to contact the customers of that business.

The period of implied consent has been expanded to two years from eighteen months following an initial transaction. This gives businesses an extended period in which to obtain someone's express consent to receive further commercial messages.

We heard from a number of different witnesses in front of committee. This may not have been what some wanted. They might have wanted a longer term, but the two years was agreed upon by the committee, and it was felt to be a reasonable amount of time.

Another area where the bill has been amended is in ensuring that updates to computer programs are not adversely affected by the protections we have put in place against malware and spyware. The committee looked at the impact the bill would have on the installation of computer programs. It has been amended such that the installation of updates is understood as a part of the original contract under which the software was installed.

Most of these programs call for automatic updates that take place daily or weekly to such things as antivirus software. A fresh consent will not be required each time one of these updates takes place. Programs such as JavaScript or Flash will also not require express consent each time they are run.

Let me say a few words about the private right of action included in this bill. Some hon. members have questioned whether a private right of action is needed. A private right complements the enforcement efforts of the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

I would remind the House that this feature has been very effective in the United States at shutting down those such as spammers who cause harm to the electronic economy. I believe it will be very effective here in allowing groups or individuals to pursue violators. The private right of action will allow individuals and businesses who suffer financial harm an avenue of recourse through which to be compensated and awarded damages.

Let me reiterate some of the things this bill does. The purpose of the amendments is to clarify some elements of this legislation and to address concerns that were brought forward from the witnesses during the testimony in front of the industry committee. The proposed amendments clarify the concept that legitimate online commercial messages are not prohibited, while reinforcing the vigorous safeguards for businesses and consumers in this bill.

The legislation is about reducing spam and other computer-related threats that discourage the use of electronic commerce and undermine privacy. This legislation restores consumer confidence in online commerce by protecting both consumers and Canadian businesses from unwanted spam. The Government of Canada is delivering on a key commitment that the Prime Minister made to Canadians and Canadian businesses back in the fall of 2008.

The proposed electronic commerce protection act will discourage the use in Canada of the most dangerous, destructive and deceptive forms of spam. Our goal is to ensure confidence in online commerce by addressing the privacy and personal security concerns that consumers associate with spam and related threats which deter consumers from participating in the online marketplace.

The bill proposes that all forms of commercial electronic messages will be treated the same way. Unsolicited text messages and cell phone spam are also prohibited by this legislation. Spam and related online threats can be reduced only through a concerted, cooperative approach aimed at undermining spammers, using a combination of public and private efforts. The Government of Canada continues to work closely with our domestic and international partners to address threats to online commerce.

The proposed government legislation affects the legislative recommendations of the task force on spam, which are a product of extensive consultations with businesses and other stakeholders during the task force's mandate. The legislation allows for administrative monetary penalties to be imposed upon those who violate the law by sending false and misleading email and who attempt to steal personal information.

The legislation also proposes this private right of action, which will allow businesses and individuals to take civil action against those who violate the law. All parties in the House have expressed their desire to strengthen confidence in online commerce. All parties are opposed to spam and see the dangers of it.

We have studied this bill at great length in committee. We have emerged with important amendments to clarify the bill. The time has come to pass the third reading of this bill in order to protect all Canadians.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder what the implications of the bill and its rollout are going to be to small businesses across the country that have had to deal with the implementation of the do not call list over the last couple of years, and the Privacy Act changes. A lot of small businesses find this very disruptive.

Does the government have any plans to communicate to small business and any plans to help them in any way, through information programs, perhaps using some of that government advertising to advertise that these changes are in the works? Are there any plans in this regard, regarding this particular initiative?

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to see that the hon. member sees the usefulness of government advertising in helping to inform Canadians of important changes and programs of the Government of Canada.

I know that is one of the things that has been looked at with the rollout of this bill, if in fact it does pass through the House. The government and the committee have looked at all of the different implications of this bill. As a businessperson, I understand the need to communicate with customers.

The hon. member mentioned the do not call list which has been in effect. I know Canadians have been happy to have the opportunity to put their name on a list that should cut down on those calls that they do not wish to receive. This bill goes such a long way, in terms of cutting down on that spam that so many are forced to endure on their computers.

I want to thank the hon. member for that question. I know that this is something that is going to be very important for Canadians.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would certainly like to thank the member for Leeds—Grenville for a very informative speech and for what he has been able to share with us on the anti-spam legislation. With electronic commerce being what it is and what it is becoming, it is very important that we are very clear on where we are headed, to help businesses do a better job of electronic commerce.

His speech was really informative and I apologize if he did cover this already, but I need to ask him, will the government be exempting research and survey firms in this legislation, as has been done in some other places and in the do not call legislation?

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member stands up for his constituents, in terms of their concerns, especially on this proposed legislation.

His question was a very good one. We did hear from representatives from survey and market research groups, and those that expressed their concerns that such an exemption was not necessary, as long as they were not trying to sell something.

This entire bill is coming forward for those businesses that are trying to sell something. They have to live up to the regime that is being proposed in the legislation. So, those survey and market research firms would be exempted from this legislation. I want to thank the hon. member for such an excellent question.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member, in his presentation, mentioned that a private right of action was included in Bill C-27, and I noticed that was in there when I read it. I would like to know what sort of arguments there were against having that in the law. It seems to me that is something that should be an absolute, that it be in there. I would like to know what sort of arguments were raised against having it in there?

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, those who came in front of the committee felt that it should be in there. However, some of course were concerned that there may be times when inadvertent communications were sent by email. If in fact there was an inadvertent situation where an email was put through, as long as it was not the intent to go against legislation, there would be some protection there.

The private right of action is there, but there is protection for those who would send an inadvertent email message or a cellphone text. However, they would only be able to get away with that inadvertence for a very limited time because we do need to ensure that this protection is in place to protect Canadians.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

It is the Bloc's turn in the rotation.

The hon. member for Berthier-Maskinongé is ready to deliver his speech.

The hon. member for Windsor West will be next.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great interest that I rise in this House. In politics, one has to adjust quickly at times. I may not necessarily have been ready, but I had made some preparations.

I am addressing today an issue which, as we all know, concerns a vast majority of the people we represent.

Nowadays, emailing is increasingly widespread in our societies, particularly among young people. Internet use is increasingly popular among youth and adults like us as well. I am myself an avid user of email.

Electronic mail is a relatively simple and inexpensive means of communication. It allows messages to be sent simultaneously to a large number of recipients at any time of day or night, basically anytime at all. It makes it easy to send messages to people anywhere in the world.

We can therefore communicate with family, friends or colleagues anytime, day or night, which increases communication between everyone on this planet. In addition, electronic mail allows us, as parliamentarians, to efficiently stay in touch with our fellow citizens. We now have several tools available to us. We have our electronic mail, our websites, Facebook and so on. These tools allow us to communicate with the various stakeholders in the community or our ridings, and with our office staff, whom I greet and whose excellent work I commend.

We used to work with letters written on paper and telephone calls, but emailing is widespread today, and electronic mail is very easy to access and use.

My remarks today concern Bill C-27, to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Quebec and Canadian economy by regulating certain fraudulent commercial activities using electronic mail, commonly known as spam. That is what it is called in everyday language nowadays.

Unfortunately, using the Internet is not always advantageous. We have seen on occasion that this mode of communication—we have all experienced this—can cause us some difficulties. Anyone who uses email regularly receives spam, in other words, unsolicited electronic commercial messages, the purpose of which is to encourage participation in a commercial activity, such as buying a product, or in a competition or game of chance.

Let us hope that this new legislative measure, Bill C-27, which we in the Bloc Québécois all support, will have the same effect as the legislative measure on the do not call list that regulated telephone solicitation.

It goes without saying that the vast majority of email users that I know would greatly appreciate such a measure.

Over the years, unsolicited commercial electronic messages have become a bigger and bigger problem and more widespread as a result, in large part because sending email is free.

Spam has become a real nuisance, damaging computers and networks and representing a significant economic cost. It contributes to fraudulent commercial practices—we are talking more and more about cybercrime—and it often invades people's privacy.

According to a recent Industry Canada study, 80% of email worldwide consists of spam.

That is a very high percentage. Here in the House of Commons, our staff spend quite a bit of time sorting through all these unwanted email messages. It is becoming increasingly important to take action on this, which is why Bill C-27 targets unwanted email.

Spam has huge financial consequences, including the labour costs associated with sorting through all these unwanted emails we receive. Of course, spam occupies a lot of Internet bandwidth, and service providers have to pay exorbitant amounts to filter spam messages. They then pass these costs on to their clients.

We have only to go to places that sell software such as Norton to see that new software is being created every day to deal with all these messages and the viruses that are passed on through spam. Spam is widespread because it is easy and cheap to create and it works. It is effective. According to some statistics, 80% of the email messages we receive are unwanted. And unwanted email is a growing problem on our networks.

With just one click, it is possible to send millions of messages at such a low cost that the operation remains profitable even with a low rate of return. Unfortunately, some people do respond to email solicitations, which leads to major problems with their computer system. Most spam is advertising. We see it when we surf the Internet. It appears as ads, as pornography, unfortunately, as scams and in all sorts of other forms. Pornographic spam, for example, accounts for much of the concern we have as parents about letting our children use email. Often, we see them surfing the Internet and receiving all sorts of solicitations. They see all sorts of pornographic images and receive all sorts of unwanted invitations. Sometimes, these messages are harassing and even criminal. Spam not only threatens the viability of the Internet as an effective means of communication, but undermines the confidence we as consumers have in legitimate electronic commerce.

In recent months, the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology has worked very hard to draft this bill and has heard from many witnesses. Everyone believes in the merits of this bill and I think the House is unanimous in that regard. Preserving the efficiency of legitimate electronic commerce is a vital and pressing issue and the Bloc has worked constructively to have this legislation implemented as quickly as possible.

Not only are legitimate commercial emails sent with the prior and ongoing consent of the recipient important to electronic commerce, but they are also essential to the development of a strong and productive online economy.

We must not forget that spam constitutes a considerable burden not just for consumers but also for our small, medium-sized and large businesses. As I said earlier, these companies spend considerable time managing these unwanted emails that can have disastrous consequences for the management of our Internet services.

Spam wastes time and reduces productivity at work. It obstructs networks and affects the security of computers by forwarding viruses and phishing emails that result in significant losses for businesses.

For all these reasons, the Bloc Québécois and a number of socio-economic players have for years been asking the federal government for legislation to regulate unsolicited commercial email.

We must not forget that service providers, network operators and consumers are all adversely affected by this problem, which is growing rather than diminishing in spite of all the antivirus software and the fact that computer technology is getting better and better. Nevertheless, our networks are facing increasing problems and experiencing more and more situations where they become inefficient. In addition, there are many viruses in our computer systems.

The task force on spam, which was created in 2004, has been calling for such a measure for over five years now. So, taking its inspiration primarily from the final report of the task force on spam released in May 2005, the purpose of Bill C-27 is to establish a framework to protect electronic commerce. As we know, it is a growing business. Internet-based trade and financial transactions are becoming more and more important and increasingly common. We must protect this network. The purpose of this bill is to protect and promote efficient electronic commerce.

To do this, the bill would amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act and the Personal Information Protection Act. Furthermore, Bill C-27 would enact the new electronic commerce protection act, which would make it illegal to send spam to any electronic address. The only circumstances under which it would be allowed is when the person to whom the message is sent has explicitly consented to receiving it. In addition, the message must be in a form that conforms to the prescribed requirements and must include an unsubscribe mechanism.

The bill would allow the recipient to indicate, through an email address or hyperlink, that he or she does not want to receive any further commercial electronic messages from the sender. Finally, the proposed legislation makes those may who send spam subject to hefty financial penalties. There must be consequences for this kind of behaviour on the Internet. The bill would allow individuals and companies to sue spammers and hold any businesses whose products and services are promoted using these means partially responsible for spamming activity. That is crucial, of course.

It is important to note that the bill stipulates that certain commercial messages would not be considered spam.

These commercial messages include: messages sent by an individual to another individual with whom they have a personal or family relationship; messages sent to a person who is engaged in a commercial activity and consist solely of an inquiry or application related to that activity; messages that are, in whole or in part, an interactive two-way voice communication between individuals; or messages sent by means of a facsimile to a telephone account. In all of these cases, the bill would not prohibit the sending of these messages.

As a number of my colleagues have already said, this is an important bill, but it will be quite complex to enforce. That is why the Bloc Québécois supported the bill in principle. But the Bloc thinks it is unbelievable that the legislative process took four years. Four years is a long time. Four years after the report was presented by the task force on spam, the federal government finally introduced a new bill, here in the House, on electronic commerce protection, which was becoming more and more necessary. Bill C-27 imposes even more controls on spam networks, and this problem will only get worse in the coming years. Four years was much too long.

Computer technology is changing rapidly, and people who want to send spam are unfortunately always finding new ways of doing so. We have to be able to protect ourselves better. Obviously, we want to hear and consult witnesses to ensure that this bill really meets needs and can really help consumers, businesses and companies do business on the web.

We also wanted to know whether the bill will make effective changes to combat the spam consumers receive. Introducing a bill is not enough; we have to be able to meet with witnesses and gauge the effectiveness of the measures contained in this bill.

After a serious study in committee, we still believe that this proposed new legislation will be effective in combatting spam.

In addition to the legislative and legal framework, which is necessary and essential, an education campaign will be needed. It is important to introduce legislation and try to find technical ways to prevent spam, but it is also important to raise public awareness and warn people, especially our youth, about spam, which is often fraudulent and sometimes dangerous.

Consumers know that users have a certain responsibility for controlling spam. We need to start with a public education campaign. We know that our young people are particularly vulnerable to scams and questionable messages they receive by email. International cooperation will also be needed if spam is to be eliminated.

Spam is not just a problem in Quebec and Canada. It is a global problem. Consequently, we need to keep working to harmonize anti-spam policies and to encourage countries to develop and enforce anti-spam legislation.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to associate myself with the sentiments expressed by the member for Berthier—Maskinongé because I found that his speech made a great deal of sense. He presented facts which give us pause to consider the principles of this bill.

I, too, believe that we must defend legitimate commercial activities of businesses while protecting ourselves from spam and those who abuse a technology that has a great deal of benefits.

I would like to know if the member has already come up with some ideas and amendments that he will attempt to present during study in committee.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there is a task force that has studied spam, as my colleague surely knows. The task force recommended that a centre be established to coordinate the various government anti-spam initiatives. This is a very good proposal. This centre's responsibilities would include coordinating policy, conducting education campaigns and providing support to enforcement agencies. It would also accept complaints and compile statistics on spam.

I believe we should also establish a mechanism to monitor the evolution of this bill. It could assess the impact of these measures in the next few years and determine if the measures implemented actually benefit our email networks.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one thing that has not been talked about, but I think is important to raise, and I raised it during committee, is people buy their own computers, they buy their own software, they maintain their own software and they also provide the Internet service. Therefore, sending someone an electronic advertisement through this medium should be a privilege, not necessarily a right. That should be the premise in preparing the bill to ensure there is balance. Once again, people invested in the physical hardware, the software, the maintenance of it and also the capacity to bring it across the Internet.

Does my colleague agrees with the presumption? A number of amendments were attempted in committee. One was to allow companies to spy on a person's computer, which was defeated. I want to ensure we support the premise that people have rights first, and it is a privilege, not a right, to send advertisements to someone's home.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am in total agreement with my colleague. This bill to prohibit spam and protect personal information is important. Hence, I agree with our NDP colleague on this matter.

The House resumed from November 3 consideration of the motion that Bill C-27, An Act to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities, and to amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Telecommunications Act, be read the third time and passed.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on Bill C-27. I will read the precursor to the bill so that the public knows what we are talking about.

This is known as the anti-spam bill, but in particular it is An Act to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities, and to amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Telecommunications Act.

This is about limiting electronic messaging that is unsolicited and unwanted which is coming across the Internet to many people in their homes and businesses. It is affecting the economy and the productivity of Canada and. in my opinion, is also a breach of consumer rights in many respects.

This is the reference in terms of the informal notation of spam. We all have received it in our mailboxes, whether it is an account at work or at home where we have received unsolicited electronic messaging.

I was pleased to support the government when it brought forward Bill C-27. It had interesting dynamics on the political front because during this process, it appeared the government would cave to a number of different initiatives from the Bloc and the Liberals to weaken the bill, but that was prevented at committee. We do have, I believe, all party support right now to bring a piece of legislation in line, which we can all be proud of and that will benefit consumers and the Canadian economy.

I would like to note that I am a bit worried about where the government is going with this legislation in terms of prioritization. We made an effort in the committee to work through this really quickly and I gave my personal word to move through this really quickly. We did get that done at committee and we did ensure that we preserved the fundamentals of the bill. There was some weakening of it, which I did not agree with, but at least it still meets the test at the end of the day.

It then took literally weeks before it appeared back here in the House of Commons and is finally coming back here again. It needs to be voted on again here in the House of Commons before it can move to the other place, the Senate. Unfortunately, some other bills have been stalling in the Senate. I do not know the politics between the Liberal and the Conservative Parties with regard to some of the legislation, but one of them I would note is Bill C-6, which is critical because it relates once again to consumer product safety for recall.

I would point out more recent examples. There was the one with the baby cribs, but there was also the one with regard to Toyota products where four million Americans received a recall notice related to brake and acceleration issues caused by the floor mats. Meanwhile, the 200,000 Canadians who had the same problem over here only got a public announcement on a website posting at their expense really.

I do not know why. I have written Toyota and asked why it has not done this for Canadians. It is ridiculous. Our public safety and a number of things are at risk.

However, that is an example of a bill that is stalled and we do not know where it is going to go.

The bill enjoys strong public support and it has the support of the New Democratic Party. This is part of our electoral platform in moving a number of consumer issues forward that we really want to see implemented as law. The other place will have to do some work on this bill and there will be some lobby efforts on this bill. That happened at our committee. I could be wrong but if I am not mistaken, some members of the other parties were accepting questions literally from the lobbyists in the meetings.

I think there will be a push to weaken the bill. However, some elements in the bill make it really strong and make it a good bill for Canadians and Canadian businesses because it affects our economy.

When we look at the issue of spam and electronic messaging, we need to recognize that Canada is in the top 10 and one of the few countries in the G8 that do not have this type of legislation. We are behind. We can catch up with this bill quite significantly and have one of the better models to deal with the issue.

Approximately 5% of the spam in the world comes from Canada. We are actually known as a harbour of some of the actual big spammers out there. I think we stand fourth in the world in terms of spamming, behind Russia and just ahead of Brazil.

We heard this before and it was important that we change it in terms of some of our workings with the United States. In the past, movies playing in Canadian theatres could be taped and that technically was not illegal. We were able to solve that problem over a year ago, giving credit to the way the Canadian market worked in terms of being fair to consumers and the industry. I see the same with this bill.

The model that is being proposed in this bill is a bit different than the United States. The United States passed a law in 2003 called controlling the assault of non-solicited pornography and marketing act. The U.S. calls this bill the can the spam bill because there is an opt out clause. An individual must opt out from receiving information.

Canada would have a much more proficient system with this bill. If an individual does not have an existing business relationship or does not have permission, then he or she should not be sending unsolicited emails. This would be a better system because it would clean things up more profoundly.

Some good things have taken place with regard to the United States system. There have been some charges related to it and there has been a reduction in spam. However, nothing will solve this problem outright. There is no doubt that no matter what law we put in place, there will be some challenges. There will be those who will always break the law. It does not matter what law we actually set in this chamber because there are always those who will take advantage of other people despite their economic and personal issues.

Electronic commerce activity is increasingly important in a competitive world. It is also important for us to meet our needs on the telecommunications run as we learn about the world and the use the Internet. Harboured down with approximately 87% of activity being electronic messaging undermines the Internet.

It is important to note that some good electronic commerce does take place. Businesses can effectively use it for advertising their services. Consumers want to use electronic commerce and that will continue, but there will be some regulation under this bill. This bill would take away some of the most offensive and egregious issues. Individuals would be penalized. Private action could take place as well, which is another strong point of the bill. I will get into this later in my speech.

As I mentioned, spam represents about 87% of email activity around the world. Last year it was estimated that 62 trillion spam emails were sent out and it is done in a variety of ways. This bill would identify some of those ways and eliminate them. I will get into a few of those as well.

An Ipsos Reid poll found that approximately 130 spam messages are received by Canadians each week, and that is troubling because that is up 51% from the year before. It is not just the irritation of removing unwanted messages and solicitations but it is also time-consuming. Employers are worried about the time this takes and the cost.

I do want to make a point that we in the NDP have been really strong on in terms of consumer rights. It is not a right to send these messages, it is actually a privilege. Let us think about that. When people purchase a computer or other electronic equipment that receives messages, they pay for that out of their own pocket. They also pay to maintain that equipment as well as paying for continual upgrades to software and so forth to ensure it is working efficiently. They also pay for the Internet service, the actual conductor of the information. Those who are sending spam need to understand that.

It should not just be an absolute right that we get inundated by activity, especially when we have some in the marketplace who are using malware and other types of spy software to try to gain more information about us by surfing the Internet to find out what our habits might be as consumers on the Internet. That also undermines the our ability to have confidence in it as a vehicle for doing commerce and legitimate business. It is important that those people who behave in that activity would be punished for offences under this new act.

This bill would create laws based on the federal trade and commerce power. That is important, because it will provide an opt-in approach. So there will be existing business relationships that we have and there is a timeframe for the sign-up.

One of the things that the bill would provide is windows of opportunity for businesses with current existing relationships to make that connection with their customers. One of them is for 18 months in terms of a previous existing business relationship. The Bloc moved a motion to extend it to 24 months, which I opposed. I believe that 18 months is plenty of time for someone to get information from us. It is a long time period, being over a year and a half, but now it is two years and I think that is unfortunate.

However, once we have this law in place, there will be a process for those to be punished who are actually doing it. The way it will need to be done is through three regulatory agencies. The first is the CRTC, which will be involved in terms of investigating complaints.

We then have the Competition Bureau which will be responsible for the administrative monetary penalties, if there is an actual breach that has been confirmed by the CRTC. The fines can be up to $1 million for individuals and $10 million in all other cases. So there will be a recourse to show to those spamming powers out there that are doing this that there will be punishments, that it will be more than just a fine, that it will be significant for them to deal with and, hopefully, it will curb that behaviour.

The Privacy Commissioner will also be involved because sometimes our privacy rights are affected by spam. There have been a number of cases where spammers have used headliners that look like many banks' headliners and then, for example, people click thinking it is their own bank, but it turns out that it is a spammer collecting data and information from them. Sometimes that can be quite perilous. There have been cases where people have lost money thinking it was their own financial institution or a legitimate financial institution and they have provided access to some of their monetary resources. Unfortunately, that is why the Privacy Commissioner needs to be involved because it also will protect our personal privacy. A lot of people are concerned about that.

I think one of the reasons the bill will be strong is it would have those three regulatory agencies actively involved in maintaining the accountability of the actual bill.

Interestingly enough, there was a bit of a debate about whether this bill should deal with the telephone solicitation issue. It does not but at the same time it would give the minister a bit more ability to work on the do-not-call list. I hope the minister takes this up to fix some of the do-not-call list problems. One of the ones that is in there that this bill would prohibit is the issue of surveys. The government almost capitulated on this. I would like to thank those in the industry, Michael Geist and a number of other different individuals, who pointed out this giant loophole that we could drive a truck through, whereas if someone proposed or sent a survey to somebody it did not count as solicitation or spam and, hence, it would have actually avoided the whole regime. The government, at one point, looked like it had actually tabled an amendment on this but it ended up not tabling it. It backed down from that amendment.

Ironically, the Liberal Party picked it up and actually tried to move it but it was defeated when the chair overruled that. We were lucky that we did not have that. The one thing I hope will be cleaned up with the do-not-call list is the survey loophole that everybody knows about and which is hindering the capability of the bill. We did not actually have a section on that, so that gives the minister some flexibility to fix it and I hope that he takes me up on that suggestion.

It is also important to note that there was another issue in the bill that was defeated. It is important to recognize that because it is an issue that people are concerned about. In the original manifestations of the bill there was a provision that would have allowed companies to go onto our computers and seek information from that computer. If we had agreed to them being part of our Internet relationship, we would be consenting or allowing them to go onto our computer and access information and documents, and basically surf through our computer unknown to us.

That issue was taken off the table as well. There was great Internet discussion and blogging about this offensive piece of the legislation. I was happy to see that backed out as well. It is important because had that provision been there as well as the other provisions I have mentioned that were taken out, I do not know whether I could have supported this legislation because it would have weakened it so much. It would have become far weaker than even the do not call registry. It is very fortunate that we were able to get consensus and push that back.

As well, there were a couple of amendments that were interesting and I was rather curious as to how they came forward. We will see whether or not in the Senate they will be pushed forward again. One of them came from the Bloc and that was the extension of the time to actually opt out of an email subscription. The way it works is if I, for example, agree to receive an email and I have a relationship with a company or if someone is sending me that information, then I can opt out of that later on, by just sending an email that I do not want to continue this relationship. The way the legislation was written I would be taken off the list in 10 days. The Bloc moved a motion for it to be 30 days. The final part of the bill is 10 business days.

If we agree to an email through our bank or somewhere else, they will instantly start spamming or sending information. Once we agree, they start flying in. I have Aeroplan points, for example, from Air Canada and boy, that thing rings all the time with all kinds of stuff. I have agreed to that relationship and sometimes it is helpful, sometimes it is irritating, but I make that choice. To suggest that I want out of that and that it would take 30 days to get out of that is absolute nonsense, especially with the sophistication of some of the programs. Ten business days is a sufficient time to end that relationship. It is not burdensome at all especially when they have the capability of adding us in instantaneously when we agree to get on these lists.

I was puzzled about this and when it gets to the Senate we will see whether or not there is going to be another lobby effort either to kill the bill or to weaken it some more. If it is weakened even more, Canadians will be upset because they are seeking a solution to this. As well, it is important to reinforce the issues of how serious spam is. Spam is used in crime. Spam is also used in an organized way that affects the whole Internet capacity of the system. We just have to look at some of the botnets. These are zombie computers where specific programs are written to go in and then turn our computers into a generator off spam or email spam for someone else who controls a whole grid of them.

I am going to wrap up by saying that I will be supporting the bill. We want to see this happen as soon as possible. I am glad it has finally come to this chamber. I was disappointed it took so long because we worked really hard at committee to get it here faster. I am concerned it will have some impact in the Senate. We will see whether the senators are going to stand hard on the bill and make it happen quickly for Canadians to ensure we get some real results.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Malpeque, Agriculture and Agri-Food; the hon. member for Mississauga South, Natural Resources; and the hon. member for Yukon, Canada-U.S. Relations.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, toward the end of my colleague's speech in this debate on Bill C-27 he was getting to the whole discussion of how spam is used in crime. That is a very important piece of what we need to be addressing with legislation.

We have all experienced the concerns and panics about computer viruses. We have heard the words Trojan horses and other malicious attempts to interfere with people's computers and corporate computers. We know it is sometimes directed toward identify theft and other types of fraud. There are other issues that come up. The member was talking about zombie computers, where off-site computers can try to take over other people's computers, and the whole question of phishing.

I wonder if the member might address a little more about how the bill tries to take on the whole issue of how spam connects with criminal activity.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the interesting results of the American legislation that was passed was the conviction of Robert Alan Soloway, who was arrested in the United States. He was one of the world's largest spammers.

The member is quite right when he refers to the issue and its connection to crime. It was not only identity theft and fraud, but money laundering was also part of the 35 criminal counts he was charged with. I am not exactly sure where it is. I think it was 2007 when he was arrested and some of the cases may be going through the courts. Those were the types of things with which he was charged.

That is important because it is not only about privacy but whether people's money can be taken. Government information and a great deal of personal information can be stolen and used for other types of illegal activity. The issue is related to money laundering. That can make it very harmful to citizens but also companies.

I want to touch on companies, too, because some of the market they invest in gets lost or hurt because of spamming. Some of the spamming is very particular, very clean in imaging, and induces people to think it is something it is not, such as, for example, the banking industry. It costs that industry because it loses customers. People then do not want to trust that company because others have abused it. That is why we do not want to lose sight of the criminal aspect of this as well.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to speak to this bill earlier and there was one issue I dealt with that maybe the member would like to comment on. It has to do with directing some of the attention on the ways in which small- and medium-sized businesses themselves can help to protect their own information by having best practices, et cetera.

I would refer him to the Canadian Privacy and Data Security Toolkit for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises, which was produced by the Canadian Institute for Chartered Accountants and issued at the beginning of last summer. There are, in fact, audit checklists in there for businesses because if they are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.

With regard to this bill, it is one thing to look at the problem and how we might deal with those who abuse the situation, but businesses themselves have to be proactive in protecting their own information. I wonder if the member would like to comment on the need for businesses to be part of the solution.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this issue really needs to be taken seriously. This is a privilege, not a right, especially given that businesses and people have invested in their own computers. They are the ones paying for the maintenance, as I noted. They are also paying for the Internet service being provided.

It is very much a privilege, not a right, to interchange in such a relationship. Otherwise, what should happen is that maybe consumers should get 5¢ for every ad or some type of remuneration for doing it. That really should be what is happening if this type of behaviour is seen as a right, not a privilege.

I would argue that there are some really good models, as the member has noted. Organizations are trying to create some best practices, so that they can keep their areas lined up correctly. With the three government agencies, the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Privacy Commissioner, there will be a really good, strong regime to set some good examples right away rather than those that are terribly abusive. That will hopefully bring in line those who are kind of on the fringes of doing this activity.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my question is a bit of a follow-up from the question by the member for Mississauga South, but it has to do with the whole role of businesses. Businesses have privacy officers now, and I am talking about little businesses here. A lot of them will not even know that the legislation has passed the Senate, even when it does pass the Senate.

The question I have is whether the member thought that the government should have a roll-out plan to let small businesses know about the bill and its regulations. Perhaps that would go a long way to avoiding all of the problems that will come up as a result of the bill in terms of non-compliance and perhaps people doing things inadvertently that they would not have done if they had known what the rules are.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there have been a couple of good examples in the past. But when I think about what will happen right now, if we are lucky, the bill will go to the Senate and be passed some time in 2010. I am hopeful there will be no election and the bill will become law.

I was watching a video today about some of the crime bills that were lost when the Prime Minister called the election, despite elections being set for ourselves in the future. We hope we will not see that happen again.

Businesses will have an additional two years before it comes into full implementation, when they will have that existing business relationship that can be struck with their current client base.

I am hoping the government does roll out a program right away at the beginning so that we can get to those businesses, not wait till the last minute and then have those types of problems.

There will be flexibility with the CRTC and the Competition Bureau to determine if there are accidental breaches or whether there are habitual problems that are happening in particular companies. There are all kinds of wonderful ways that we can connect electronically, with the Government of Canada's own infrastructure system, and as well, even connecting into, for example, the chambers of commerce across this country.

There will be a lot of opportunity to engage the public with a two year period before full implementation. So we are really not looking at it immediately. It depends when it gets through the Senate. It might be 2012 or 2013 before the law would be fully implemented and protecting consumers and the Canadian economy, and that is a long time.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my brief supplementary question is whether or not the member is satisfied with the penalties under the act. I notice that there is a right to private action. I would have liked to have seen some sort of examination of the possibility of class action because there are class action provinces in Canada. If the government does not enforce the act to its fullest, does the member think that the right of private action will actually step in as the tough enforcement mechanism?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I think it will, Mr. Speaker, but the member raises a really good point with regard to class action. That is one of the things on which we could probably have spent more time to see whether that could have evolved into part of the final structure of the bill.

We did not have much discussion on that at all, but it might be one of those things that we could look to add to the bill. I am hopeful that perhaps that would be a strengthening of the bill and that it could happen at the Senate. If not, I am hopeful that the bill stays in its current format, at least as a starting point, and then from there we could look at massaging the bill if it is not meeting the needs.

Once again, this is critical. This is not just about inconveniences and annoyances. This is a massive use of technology and the abuse that is taking place with customers. It affects the Canadian economy and it is also giving Canada a black eye right now.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-27, the electronic commerce protection act. This legislation enacts important restrictions to the volume and frequency of spam in business transactions. I was pleased to have the opportunity to work with other members of the industry, science and technology committee to review this legislation and respond to some of the concerns brought forward by stakeholders.

Spam, or in essence, unwanted commercial emails, is a significant problem for Canadians. Spam currently represents 60% to 80% of all email traffic around the world. The sheer volume of messages challenges the capacity of Internet service providers and legitimate businesses that conduct their activities over the Internet and by email. Most important, it has a significant negative impact on consumers. Spam is a large source of computer viruses, phishing programs designed for identity theft, deception and fraudulent business practices that target the vulnerable.

A 2003 report estimated that fighting spam cost businesses and consumers $27 billion annually in information technology spending, including increased expenditure in Internet bandwidth, storage costs, anti-spam software and user support. In May 2004 the Liberal government established a task force to lead the anti-spam action plan for Canada. The task force held public consultations and led round tables with key stakeholders in the industry.

In 2005 this anti-spam task force tabled its final report outlining 22 major recommendations, including a key recommendation to strengthen federal legislation in this area. Specifically, the task force recommended that Canada implement legislation that would prohibit the sending of spam without the prior consent of recipients, prohibit the use of false or misleading statements that would disguise the origins or true intent of the email, prohibit the installation of unauthorized programs and prohibit the unauthorized collection of personal information or email addresses.

Bill C-27 looks to implement those recommendations. The electronic commerce protection act would introduce fines for violations up to a maximum of $1 million for individuals and $10 million for businesses. It would establish rules governing warrants for information during investigation and injunctions on spam activity while investigations are ongoing.

Bill C-27 would also establish the private right of action, allowing individuals and businesses the ability to seek damages from the perpetrators of spam. It looks to prohibit the sending of commercial electronic messages or, in other words, spam email without the prior consent of recipients. The bill also looks to prohibit the use of false or misleading statements that disguise the origins and true intent of the email, the installation of unauthorized programs and the unauthorized collection of personal information or email addresses.

Bill C-27 would introduce legislation to enact all of these recommendations. We are pleased that the Conservative government has finally decided to act on the recommendations of our task force.

However, upon more detailed review of the provisions included in Bill C-27 at committee stage, there were flaws exposed in the bill and several changes were made that looked to improve and ensure that the productivity of businesses activities dependent on electronic commerce would not be impacted.

While the Liberal Party believes the bill remains unnecessarily restrictive to legitimate business in its approach in many regards, we will support the bill at third reading as action must be taken against spam. We will monitor the legislation closely going forward to ensure that it does not stifle legitimate electronic commerce in Canada.

However, the Liberal Party further notes that the fight against spam is much more than just legislation. The Liberal task force also recommended resources to be put toward coordinated enforcement of the law. As it stands, this legislation will only go as far as the willingness to enforce the law. Without additional resources toward enforcement and toward working with other nations to stamp out spam, the gains intended through this legislation will not be made.

We have yet to see how the government will put appropriate resources into enforcement. Dedicated resources should be put in place to work with Internet service providers and Canadian businesses to establish the best methods of enforcing these important regulations.

As I mentioned previously, through close review and testimony provided by witnesses at committee stage, flaws were discovered within the bill. Specifically clause 6 was found to have been written too broadly and could have suppressed legitimate business communications over the Internet. Clause 8 also defined “computer program” very broadly and could have suppressed legitimate businesses, software development and impeded legitimate Internet functions.

After considerable work, many amendments were made to improve the bill, refining measures for electronic messages, computer programs and the protection of privacy rights.

The bill, however, retains a very strict philosophy. Bill C-27 takes a very broad approach to defining a rather wide definition of electronic messages that puts the onus on individual businesses to seek exemptions if they believe their activities to be legitimate.

The proposed Liberal approach was to define known spam irritants and define them as illegal, with the flexibility to add further definition as electronic messages on the Internet evolved.

The concern with the Conservative approach is that an overly heavy-handed approach could stifle electronic commerce in Canada and negatively impact the productivity of the business community.

Overall, however, many good changes were made to the bill at committee stage. As such, the Liberal Party will support the bill at third reading.

When it was first tabled, it appeared that while stakeholders supported the concept of the bill, they were quite concerned about the details of Bill C-27. Business groups, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Electronic Software Association, various interests in the technology sector all felt that Bill C-27 was too restrictive and could hamper legitimate commerce.

With significant amendments at committee stage, these stakeholder groups now feel the legislation has better balance. However, they maintain the legislation is still heavy-handed and could suppress legitimate electronic commerce activity. Many, however, have indicated that they will look to see further amendments as the bill passes through the Senate.

The following issues in no particular order of priority present the outstanding concerns heard during the review of this legislation, but were not amended under the clause-by-clause consideration of C-27.

First, in hearings before the committee, the Canadian Bankers Association raised concerns dealing with Bill C-27 and confidentiality. In its testimony to the industry, science and technology committee the Canadian Bankers Association recommended that the electronic commerce protection act be amended to specifically protect information produced under the act from disclosure by CRTC in respect to an access to information request.

The amendment proposed by the Liberal members was under clause 29 of Bill C-27. This amendment sufficiently addressed concerns that a document produced for and then kept by the CRTC would not be available to be made public under the Access to Information Act. It also served to specifically protect the information from disclosure by CRTC in response to access to information requests that could be important for proprietary reasons.

Our ability to make this change was limited by the need for a consequential amendment to the Access to Information Act, which we were unable to move as it fell outside the jurisdiction of Bill C-27.

The next issue the Liberal members of the committee felt important to bring to the attention of the committee under its review of the bill dealt with materiality. We believed it was important to retain the standard of materiality in respect to electronic sender information and subject matter information and brought amendments to clauses 71 and 73 to include the words “in a material respect”.

The main reasons for these amendments are as follows. The first is the chilling effect on individuals and businesses doing business. Without this change, concerns remain that individuals and companies doing business in Canada will automatically face potential criminal prosecution or civil action under the Competition Act every time someone asserts that the subject matter information in a business email is somewhat misleading, whether by understatement, by overstatement or otherwise or is in some other aspect false.

The addition of “in a material respect” is consistent with the language used in the Competition Act. Without this amendment, even trivial or immaterial misstatements or representations that are false or misleading will be subject to the serious consequences in the Competition Act.

The second effect could be felt in the Competition Bureau, including materiality, which would provide the Competition Bureau with the necessary discretion to brush aside complaints raised about purported misstatements that were trivial. Given the thousands of complaints made annually to the Competition Bureau, this change would allow the immaterial or trivial representations to be automatically filtered.

Third, materiality would impact double consequence. Due to an amendment brought in by government members to clause 51, the sender of a misleading email would be held accountable twice, once under the serious consequences in the Competition Act and again under penalties to Bill C-27, by heavy penalties for a misrepresentation that may not be material.

Unfortunately, the Liberal amendments to make these important changes concerning materiality were not supported by other members of the committee, so Bill C-27 retains these potentially problematic sections.

The next major area of concern dealt with referrals for legitimate professionals. We received interventions from several organizations concerning the need for certain professionals to make and follow up on third party referrals by email. Referrals are key to many professionals' success, for example, financial advisers and realtors to name a few, and initial changes brought forward by government for discussion at committee included changes allowing clients to pass along the electronic address of a contact, family member or friend to the professional.

The amendment originally proposed by the government does include a number of conditions that must be met, which we feel will prevent abuse.

First, the sender needs to be in an existing business relationship with the referrer. The referrer needs to have a personal or family relationship with the recipient. The sender has to name the referrer and the sender is limited to sending a single message to the recipient. Unfortunately, the government decided not to present this amendment at the clause-by-clause review of the bill and did not support the Liberal amendment to include these important exemptions in the legislation.

Another area of concern for stakeholders centred around the definition of a computer program. The Liberal members presented an amendment suggesting changes to the definition of a computer program. The goal of this amendment was to ensure that a computer code meant to be compiled by a web browser, such as Flash, JavaScript or HTML, along with popular web technologies such as Java code, Flash programs, et cetera, would no longer fall under the ambit of the anti-spyware provisions.

The most effective way to exclude legitimate website codes from the anti-spyware provisions seems to be to propose a comprehensive definition, which is subject to amendment by regulation to ensure it is kept current against new and emerging online threats. The amendment proposed by the Liberal members of the committee was defeated and officials pointed to the changes made to clauses 8 and 10 of the bill to address some issues dealing with consent around computer software.

Finally, concerns surrounding the communication between regulators of self-regulated professions and their members under the electronic commerce protection bill were raised during the committee review, and Liberal members brought forth an amendment to address this issue.

As currently drafted, Bill C-27 prevents professional regulators from sending legitimate communications to their members for innocuous purposes, such as continuing legal education opportunities. In many cases, these regulatory groups are required by statute to make members aware of such opportunities.

This could be a simple oversight and could be remedied by introducing an amendment to provide an explicit exemption for self-regulated professions under clause 6. This amendment was initially contained in the draft changes brought forward by government officials for discussion at the early October meeting of the committee, but was not brought forward as an amendment by the government during the clause-by-clause review of the bill. A Liberal motion on this issue was presented at a later date, but was ruled out of order, so this oversight remains an unfortunate component of Bill C-27.

While there remains room for improvement to the bill, the Liberal Party will support the electronic commerce protection bill at third reading in the interests of taking necessary action against spam in Canada.

The concerns that I and my Liberal colleagues have articulated throughout our study of this legislation will hopefully be given some thought by the government for inclusion within regulations. The Liberal Party would have approached this bill from a different philosophy than the government has, but we also recognize it is important for the bill to move forward for the sake of Canadians. It is important that we continue to monitor technological advances throughout the progress and implementation of this legislation and any changes that are enacted to increase the productivity of Canadian business.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, what sort of advertising program does the member think the government should embark upon if we ever get to the point that this legislation passes? It has to go through the Senate. We have to avoid an election or else we will be back here discussing the same thing a year or two from now. If we do get to the point where the Senate approves the bill, what does the member think the government should do in terms of advertising to the public, advertising to small business and trying to make certain the bill actually has teeth and proper enforcement?

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, we look forward to the bill moving forward. It is intended to deter spam and protect the integrity of data transmission. We would like the bill to move forward rather expeditiously. We must ensure that legitimate business is not hampered in any way. We are a society that does a lot of commerce over the Internet.

I would ask the government to embark upon discussions with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the networks of chambers of commerce and boards of trade and other industry associations to widely spread the information about the provisions of the bill so that it can be implemented as quickly as possible.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl for an excellent overview of the bill and more explicitly some of the insights. It is easy to come here and talk about all the nice things the bill does, but the member raised a number of issues that the bill does not address. That is extremely important. I want to take this opportunity to thank her for thinking about the rest of us who have other responsibilities.

She raised a specific issue with regard to disclosures required for the CRTC. The hope was that they would be exempted from access to information legislation, but that provision could not be put into the bill. It does raise the point that when there are unintended consequences, a mechanism is needed.

Would the member undertake to ask the committee if it would consider writing a letter to the Minister of Justice who is responsible for the Access to Information Act to consider such an amendment to the act and failing that, to write a letter to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics bringing the matter to the attention of the committee so that the committee may consider such an amendment?

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, when we spoke of this in committee the response from officials was that there was sufficient coverage under the protections of the Privacy Act. They felt this was sufficient to cover the concerns we were raising. The Canadian Bankers Association raised the issue and thought that some of the provisions under the Telecommunications Act would have given better protection. I thank my hon. colleague for his suggestion and will certainly take that under advisement as to how we could best move forward to ensure that those provisions are in place.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, this bill is somewhat complex and it would prohibit a fair amount of activity. Its purpose as set out in clause 3 is to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating commercial conduct that discourages the use of electronic means to carry out certain activities that impose additional costs on businesses and consumers.

After prohibiting the sending of electronic messages unless there has been consent, expressed or implied, and prohibiting all sorts of activities, an exclusion is made for an electronic message that is sent by means of a facsimile to a telephone account.

I do not know if the hon. member is familiar with people re-sending advertising by facsimile to another individual's fax machine using the individual's paper, ink, toner and supplies. To send an electronic message all the sender does is press a button and that message can be sent to 1,000, 2,000 or 3,000 people. That would seem to cause an additional burden on people who do not necessarily want to get 500 ads for a $250 trip to Florida or wherever, and other impossible ideas that are being put forward. I see them all the time and I am sure the hon. member and others have seen them as well.

I wonder if the member could comment on that and why that might not be prohibited in this legislation as well.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the member for St. John's East raised a very interesting question. This legislation would apply to electronic commerce. It is an anti-spam bill. Many jurisdictions around the world have anti-spam legislation. Canada is strengthening its legislation and that is why we are supporting this bill.

With respect to the member's question about whether facsimiles would fall under this bill, I would assume it would depend on whether it was sent by a fax port contained on a computer, if it is electronic commerce from the Internet itself. As to whether or not it falls under the jurisdiction of this bill would depend on whether or not it was sent from a fax port on a computer or from a telephone to another telephone.

Bill C-27 was designed to capture those types of spam activities the hon. member mentioned, but it depends on where it comes from as to whether or not it would be captured.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to raise another matter. This is a new one on me which happened this past week and it is called spoofing. Someone can actually encroach on a system and create emails representing someone else. In my case, it was representing me, and it was a direct letter to the premier of Ontario concerning a tax. I did not send the message. I had it investigated. There is now the ability for someone to send an email to someone else that looks as though it came from a third party.

I am wondering whether or not that situation came up in the hearings and consideration of this bill at committee.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, spoofing did not come up specifically when we were reviewing this bill. We talked a lot about phishing and spamming and all the new words that are associated with electronic commerce. As the bill progresses, I am sure we are going to have a ton more of these new terms.

It would depend on how the spoofing is actually done as to whether or not it would be captured under this bill, I would assume, only because of the mechanisms and means under the bill.

The hon. member has raised an incredibly important issue. This bill is going to need constant attention. That was one of the reasons we were concerned about the bill's narrowness and its philosophy. What are we going to do with all of the new issues that arise with respect to the Internet and some of the new illegitimate spamming activities?

The member asked a legitimate question. Spoofing would hopefully be captured in this legislation depending on how it is done and the extent of it.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member whether she is satisfied with the penalties that are listed in the bill. They seem to be fairly adequate but we have to take into account criminal organizations and other organizations that may not be deterred by penalties that are not high enough.

In her opinion, are the penalties at sufficient levels to prevent criminal organizations from getting involved in this activity?

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, that is an important question.

In assessing other jurisdictions, it seemed that Canada was strengthening the measures in this bill to ensure the penalties were sufficient enough and that it would deter spamming. We looked at other jurisdictions such as Australia and New Zealand that implemented similar types of legislation. They found that spamming decreased substantially as soon as the legislation was put in place. The combination will certainly be powerful to ensure that spamming is decreased.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-27 at third reading. We will be supporting this bill. Hopefully it will have a very brief but successful trip through the Senate and will become law in Canada in short order. I would hate to see it held up in the Senate and/or have an election in between and then have to start over again.

As numerous members have mentioned in the debate on this bill, Canada is pretty much the last major country to bring in legislation of this kind. Having an election every two years has put us in this situation. Legislation like this should have been brought in three or four years ago, maybe even longer than that.

I was involved in setting up the e-commerce legislation in Manitoba. The bill was tabled in the Manitoba legislature on June 5, 2000. At that time Manitoba was not the first province to introduce e-commerce legislation. It was modelled on the Uniform Law Conference legislation. There was a Uniform Electronic Commerce Act. Manitoba used that chassis to build its legislation.

There may have been two or three provinces to introduce legislation before Manitoba did, but certainly when Manitoba's legislation was passed, it was the most comprehensive of its kind in Canada. That was almost 10 years ago and most other provinces, if not all, now have that basic underlying legislation. For the member who just spoke, the spam bill is a complement to that type of legislation. When legislation was first introduced in 2001, I am not even certain we knew what spam was. I do not think it was an issue at that point. When it did become an issue, I am guessing in 2003 or thereabouts, that is when the federal government took note of the problem and started to look at bringing in legislation.

In the era of computers and the Internet, we are all familiar with how fast things move. In the last 100 years the Pony Express was replaced by the telegraph system. Those things took time. There was a period of maybe 10 to 30 years where that technology was predominant. Now we are in an environment where the lifespan of technology is a year or two. Had Parliament adopted this bill two or three years ago, at that time I do not think we had heard of Facebook, Twitter or some of the other new technologies out there.

This legislation always will be a work in progress. After we pass this bill, no doubt loopholes will develop over time. We will simply have to plug those loopholes with future amendments or create an entirely new piece of legislation to deal with the problem at hand. There is a lot to talk about with respect to this bill.

On April 24, the Minister of Industry introduced this Bill C-27, An Act to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities, and to amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Telecommunications Act, in the House of Commons.

We are amending four acts in this process. The bill is called the electronic commerce protection act. It passed second reading on May 8 of this year and was referred to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology on the same day.

In addition to creating this new bill, the bill amends the four existing acts that deal with telecommunications, regulations, competition and privacy. Among other changes, these amendments designate the CRTC as the main regulator of this act, although both the Commissioner of Competition and the Privacy Commissioner will also play enforcement roles related to their respective mandates.

The bill is the culmination of a process that began with the anti-spam action plan for Canada, launched by the Government of Canada in 2004, although I thought it started around 2003. It established a private sector task force, chaired by Industry Canada, to examine the issue of unsolicited commercial email or spam.

By the end of 2004, spam, which is in many ways the electronic equivalent of junk mail, had grown to encompass 80% of all global email traffic. As has been mentioned before, bandwidth is a big issue. It is less of an issue today than it was seven or eight years ago because of all the dark fibre builds that are built by various communities and so on. We have seen an astronomical increase in the amount of bandwidth due to the dark fibre builds, due to other bandwidth proposals that have been promoted and financed by Industry Canada, which was involved in some of them.

What this has spawned at the end of the day is more spam. Just the other day we talked about the child pornography legislation. We said that there was a timeframe and in roughly the last four or five years child pornography had exploded as a problem. If we take that back, we come down to the question of bandwidth.

Ten years ago all we could get on our computers was maybe 15 frames per second. Then it became 30 frames per second. I mentioned before that the Rolling Stones was the first band to put one of its songs on the Internet. It could be seen as choppy frames when watched. Now we have full colour movies being seen on the computer. This is as a result of that enormous increase in bandwidth that has occurred just in the last half a dozen years and with that, the improvements in the technology to be able to carry that bandwidth.

Clearly, it was the great development we all said it would be. We said that tremendous bandwidth was something we would use to facilitate our electronic health records so we could put MRI images and X-ray technologies onto a hospital system and simply send it to the next hospital. It could also be used for distance education.

In fact, that is happening, but the downside of this is we have the criminal elements taking advantage of the bandwidth for their purposes. Their purposes are to use things like spam and so on for their benefit, to take money from people and to involve themselves in criminal activities.

The task force on spam, which led to the action plan, held a round table of national stakeholders in December 2004 and it solicited feedback from other stakeholders and Canadians through announcements in the Canada Gazette and in a dedicated online forum set up for this purpose. The task force issued a report in May 2005, examining the spam situation in Canada and recommended, among other measures, that legislation specifically aimed at combatting spam be created. The bill is the result of that process.

The federal government issued a news release to accompany the bill, which thanked the task force, as well as two senators who were involved in developing their own bills. Both senators have introduced bills concerning spam in the Senate during the past few years. This bill is a more extensive and complex bill than previous proposals.

What we have seen happen over the last several years is that when one bill has not had success, then the subsequent bill has been an improvement over that bill.

It will also involve several agencies in the regulation of spam, including the Competition Bureau, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the CRTC. In addition to setting up a regulatory scheme to deal with spam in Canada, it gives these agencies the power to share information and evidence within our international counterparts in order to deal with spam coming from outside the country. We are literally dealing with an international problem.

The government indicates in its backgrounder on the proposed legislation that the bill is intended to deter the most dangerous and damaging form of spam from occurring in Canada and to drive the spammers outside of Canada. Unfortunately, when we end up driving them outside of Canada, we just drive them somewhere else. That is why we have to work on a worldwide basis to deal with this issue.

The bill can be seen, as I mentioned before, as a complement to the e-commerce legislation that has been gradually developing in each of the Canadian provinces and territories over the last years. That e-commerce legislation set the foundation for e-commerce in the country. By the way, it was at a time when people were not yet buying things online. We were looking at ways to promote e-commerce and people were saying they were very reluctant using their credit card information on the computer to buy the product.

As part of Manitoba'S bill 31, we put in some consumer legislation which, at the time, was only in effect in three states in the United States. This consumer legislation made it a requirement for credit card companies to reimburse the customers, if they purchased something online and did not get the product. It was designed for peace of mind, to get people to accept the fact that if they used their credit card to purchase something on the computer, they need not worry. If they did not get the product, they would not be out the money. Credit card companies were held responsible and they were not happy. They came to the Manitoba government and to its committees to tell them that this was terrible, that they should not be held responsible for this.

However, we were interested in bigger fish, at that time, than the consumer part of the legislation. While that was important, the real reason we brought in the legislation in the first place was to enable the government to streamline the way businesses interacted with government and to facilitate the creation of the common business identifier. For those who know what that is, it was a means of having a common identifier for each business in dealing with governments at all levels.

Up until that time we had a common business identifier for the federal government and then we had a different business identifier for the province. If the business dealt with the province, it had one number. If it dealt with the federal government, it had another number. By streamlining this, we were able to save the province a lot of money at the end of the day by getting all the businesses transferred over to a single business identifier and that eventually led to them being able to pay their taxes and payroll deductions and so on through the Internet. Without that framework that all the provinces set up in those days, we could not have facilitated this seamlessness among the federal government, the provincial government and the business community. As a result of all of that, the business community, by and large, is filing its payroll deductions and T4s by e-file. Other dealings with the government are all being done that way.

There was at that time a major scandal in Ottawa regarding the databases. Ms. Stewart had a problem on her hands, the major Liberal boondoggle of the day. This was when we were doing this. There was some concern from the opposition about how far we were prepared to go, whether there would be problems with database sharing and so on. Whenever we try to do something, there is always a negative side of it that we have to look at, and it slows down what is a good idea.

In terms of the electronic commerce and the e-government initiatives, the common business identifier I just talked about was really low-hanging fruit for all governments to work with, because they controlled all the elements of it. So far that has been very successful. Once again, this is simply a companion bill to those original pieces of legislation.

The bill would expand the federal government's participation. The federal legislation related to e-commerce governs the basic privacy requirements for private sector organizations and electronic documents within federal jurisdictions and provinces and territories that have not yet set up their similar legislation. In a number of cases, the provinces opt to sign on to the federal legislation and therefore they avoid developing their own legislation.

As I said, Canada is the last of the G8 countries to introduce specific anti-spam legislation. Some existing Criminal Code provisions were identified by the task force as being of possible assistance in prosecuting spam cases. The task force worked with the Department of Justice and the technological crime branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police during 2004 and 2005 to identify the evidentiary requirements to bring a charge under the existing provisions, although when the task force report was published, these provisions had not been used for this purpose.

Other agencies, such as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Competition Bureau have received complaints from members of the public about spam as well, and there has been no over-arching framework for addressing such complaints.

The listening public may not be familiar with some of these terms. They would be familiar with identity theft. Phishing is certainly a popular word these days, although a lot of people do not know what it is. There are also spyware, viruses and botnets. The bill will also grant additional right of civil action to businesses and consumer targeted by perpetrators of such activities.

The definition of phishing is the impersonation of a trusted person or organization in order to steal a person's personal information, usually for the purposes of identity theft. The only other one that I would mention is botnet, because people do not necessarily know what that is. A botnet is the collection of zombie computers used to send spam or for another purpose. A zombie is a computer that runs malware so the computer can be remotely controlled by the creator, distributor or controller of the malware.

Once again I am short of time, but I am ready and very eager to take questions from my colleagues.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for reminding the members about some of the specific provisions in the bill. There are still some concerns. The member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl raised a couple of the issues that were there, particularly with regard to disagreements among some of the witnesses about whether or not their privacy protection would be adequately covered.

One of the examples that she used was where reporting requirements to the CRTC would, in fact, be protected from access under the Access to Information Act. No changes are proposed to the Access to Information Act at this point. It does raise a question about whether or not the process of legislation has taken consequential implications into account. I guess that would be one example. I do not know if the member has others.

I do have some concerns that we will be dealing in an area in which the velocity of information and the kinds of technological tools that have been developed so rapidly may always be one step ahead of the legislation in this place unless we get a better process in place.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely correct. That is why we have the committee process in the first place. It is so bankers and many others can come in and see that there is an exposure here. Somebody actually could file a freedom of information request and that banker information that they had given to the CRTC would then in fact be provided to the person who requested it.

I have said that, as the shortcomings of this bill and every bill that we have ever passed are noted, there will be vigilant politicians, many of them who are right here in this corner of the House today, who will be very willing and able to introduce amendments.

I have asked many questions about how this bill will deal with businesses. This is going to be a minefield and a problem for many small businesses. Certainly, businesses want to know that they can deal with their long-term clients and not have to get into trouble if they contact them. That is an issue. If a real estate agent sold a house to somebody three, four or five years ago, does the agent have the right to contact the owner?

I asked my friend from Burnaby that question because that is something to think about. Evidently, there has been an amendment put in by one of the parties to increase that period, but it still may not be long enough.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-27 is the spam bill. We are thankful that it is finally back in the House because the NDP industry critic, the member for Windsor West, indicated that he despaired that it was ever coming back here. We know how important it is.

Should the bill pass here in the House, which it seems likely to soon, get through the Senate and become law, what is then required? I know my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona asked another member earlier about the kind of advertising program that is necessary to ensure that the public are aware of this legislation and how it would affect them, but also how businesses would be aware of the legislation and the effect that it would have on their business and the way they did business.

I know he was just asking a question about how this would affect real estate agents, for instance, who go back to their former client list and try to use it again as they pursue business. I wonder if he can comment on that aspect of what is necessary concerning this legislation.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I know that in the case of the charity legislation, it too was one of those pieces of legislation that had to start over again with each election, and even though there are thousands of charities in the country, only a small percentage of them, after two or three times of getting the legislation through the House, even know that this legislation exists.

I am not sure exactly what the answer is here, but what I am saying is that the government has enough money to spend millions on feel-good advertising, basically just short of outright political advertising. Surely, it can put some money aside to advertise such an important bill as this to the public and to the businesses, and work out some creative ways of getting the information out there to the business community, so that it can start following the act correctly and not get itself into a situation where it is doing things it is not supposed to be doing because I do not think that most business people would want to do that.

That is where we get into the issue of real estate agents, insurance agents, and other people who have a business relationship with clients. How far back can they go to solicit the business? If an agent sold a house to someone five or ten years ago, does he or she have the right to send the owner a letter or contact the owner regarding a house sale? That was really my question there.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the speech of the member for Elmwood—Transcona, which gave us a lot of useful information on the legislation.

A lot of the activity that would be prohibited is currently legal, but on the other hand, a lot of the things that people complain about are actually illegal even now. If I get an email message purporting to be from the Bank of Commerce or the Royal Bank that there has been a error in my account and asking me to give my bank account number and PIN, that is obviously somebody committing a fraud. That is illegal now. I am assuming that this legislation is not going to change that and we do not need this legislation for that.

Then there is the person writing a letter saying he or she is the spouse of some former or deceased, corrupt government official in Africa and has $10 million to share with me. That is already illegal and maybe this bill can do nothing about that because it comes from Nigeria, the U.K. or some offshore account.

The first question is, would this bill stop anything coming internationally and are there mechanisms to co-operate with other governments to make that illegal here in Canada? The crime may not be committed here, for example, yet someone has access to email accounts or addresses within Canada. That was one question that I had concerns about.

Would this be something that would help that? I suppose if there were, he would have told us, but we know that when we had the do not call list, it turned into an opportunity for people to get access to all these numbers and as soon people signed up for the do not call list, they started getting calls.

Are there any fatal flaws like that in this bill that the member is aware of?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it has never ceased to amaze me that people will go to a boat show or some show, and willingly give out all their private information to join a free draw, when they should know that the boat seller is simply going to take the card and contact them about buying a boat, and that they are all going to be winners in the draw that happens afterward.

When things are going in their favour, they are very supportive, eager and happy, but if it gets into a situation that they are not happy about, then the argument about their privacy rights or other rights becomes an issue here.

It is a big minefield for businesses when they are dealing with this type of legislation. It really depends upon the people themselves as to whether or not they want to make complaints.

This bill has a provision for people to take action on their own. There is no provision for class action here, but if the CRTC does not take action, there is a provision for an individual right of action, which the member, as a lawyer, will know is probably a valuable addition to the bill.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

I declare the motion carried.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed)