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.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I have a quick question on enforcement, as I'm running out of time here.

I know there are the hefty fines and all that kind of stuff, but are the enforcement provisions in Bill C-27 adequate? In your view, are there enough funds around resourcing those enforcement measures? Oftentimes in legislation we put the enforcement mechanisms in place but then we simply don't resource them.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Has anybody taken a look at what the number would be of the cost to business for implementing Bill C-27?

[Prof. Michael Geist]

The task force report was a unanimous report that included representation from the marketing community, from the business community, from the consumer community. We're talking about as broad a cross-section as I think you could get on this issue. It's unanimous that Canada needs to do a number of things—not just legislation, for there are other things needing doing, but legislation was a key component. It is now the last piece of the puzzle yet to be implemented.

I think what we see with Bill C-27 is consistent with what a unanimous task force report envisioned, which was broad, tough, anti-spam legislation to finally bring us up to how people are dealing with this on the world stage.

[Prof. Michael Geist]

With respect to problems, here are two that I think highlight why in fact Bill C-27 does a pretty good job of dealing with these issues. The first problem is on this issue of whether it's opt-in or opt-out. I'm a strong supporter of our move towards an opt-in model here. As I think the minister noted, it could potentially serve as the model for the do-not-call list down the road. That's obviously embedded in this legislation as well.

If you take a look at what the Japanese did, they started with an opt-out. They started by saying you get a kick at the can and can send all the e-mails you like, and if someone says they don't want to receive your e-mail any more, you have to take them off the list. They quickly found that does not work. The better or friendlier approach from a consumer perspective, from a privacy perspective, and frankly from a good business perspective and confidence perspective is an opt-in model. They switched to the opt-in model.

The other country I'd point to is actually the United States. In this instance, they were one of the first off the mark with their CAN-SPAM Act. They were very narrow in it; they dealt just with spam. A lot of people feel they didn't deal with it that well, even within CAN-SPAM. But what we have seen in the U.S. since CAN-SPAM are successive state laws that try to deal with spam, and federal laws that try to deal with spyware, specifically because they didn't cast the net broadly enough. So they have continually tried to play catch-up with new legislation, either at the federal level or state level.

The way to deal with this is actually to learn from those lessons, and I think that's what Bill C-27 tries to do.

[Dennis Dayman]

It's my understanding that Bill C-27 follows the money. Most domestic spammers or Canadian spammers today tend to e-mail offshore, to get around blocking techniques and other laws that might be out there. But in general, the way I interpret the law—and Matthew might want to also make a comment on this—it follows the money. So even if we have spammers who are Canadian-based, who are attempting to get away from the law, trying to get away from blocking techniques, the bill itself will follow up with them through the illicit profits they would make.

Matthew?

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

Thank you very much.

I now have a question for the other group.

You struck me as being much more positive. You are in favour of the bill, and I even took your statements as meaning that you consider it to be perfect.

With regard to foreign spam, would you have recommendations or advice to give us in order that we be more effective? You are aware that the aim of Bill C-27 is to reduce or eliminate spam here in Canada.

I would like to hear what you have to say about some mechanism or improvements that might be made to Bill C-27 with regard to spam originating from outside Canada.

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

In Bill C-27, mention is made of international cooperation. Given that a lot of spam originates from elsewhere, Bill C-27 asks that we cooperate with other countries. No powers are therefore being granted to the enforcement agency responsible for this bill.

Should we be forcing the agency responsible for enforcing Bill C-27 to negotiate agreements with other countries in order to reduce spam?

[Prof. Michael Geist]

No, and I'm sorry if I wasn't sufficiently clear. I'm supportive of Bill C-27. My concern lies with the potential to water down the legislation. I think it does a pretty good job of striking the balance, and my fear is that some of the concerns, many of which I think are not valid once you take a look at the legislation, will result in a weakening of the legislation itself.

So I'm supportive, and supportive in much the form in which we see it now.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I wish to thank you for being here with us this afternoon and for your participation.

My first question is for Mr. Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law.

Mr. Geist, unless I am mistaken, you are opposed to Bill C-27, because you do not consider it to be strict enough. Is that correct? Please correct me if I am mistaken.

[Dennis Dayman, Secretary Treasurer, CAUCE North America, Inc.]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Dennis Dayman.

I'm the secretary treasurer of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail, or CAUCE. With me today is Matthew Vernhout, one of CAUCE's directors at- arge, who's on the anti-spam task force as well.

CAUCE is a group representing computer users in Canada and the rest of North America. CAUCE thanks you for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act.

As you can probably tell by my accent,

I am not Canadian; I am American.

And I regret that I do not speak French.

So why is an American here today addressing this esteemed committee? Well, reflecting the way in which spam is a global problem, some years ago CAUCE Canada merged with its American counterparts to better serve our constituents. Spam respects no borders, and to best represent computer users on both sides of our mutual border, we decided to mount a coherent Can-Am front against the blight of Spam 2.0.

Spam 2.0 might be a new phrase to you. At the turn of the millennium, virus-makers, hackers, spyware producers, phishers, and spammers joined forces in a blended threat, and spam is a distribution mechanism for their evil. It's now not merely a conveyance of illicit marketing, but also of malware of all shapes and sizes. Phishing, spyware, viruses, and spam are all now the products of the same criminals. Spam isn't just in e-mail any more. It comes to us by text messaging, voice over IP, our social networking sites, and instant messaging.

Bill C-27 recognizes this, and we in the consumer advocacy and marketing community thank the drafters of this bill for having taken a smart, open-minded, broad approach to current and future threats.

You heard me correctly, ladies and gentlemen. CAUCE, once the exclusive domain of the computer geek anti-spammers, has openly embraced the marketing community for a decade now. It counts among its members and executives many individuals and companies who have an enlightened view as to why anti-spam laws work in our favour.

My colleague Matthew Vernhout and I work for large international e-mail service providers. I work for Eloqua Corporation, and Matthew is at ThinData, Canada's largest e-mail service provider. Both of our companies were founded and continue to operate in Toronto. Our companies provide sending infrastructure for marketing e-mail on behalf of such companies as Fidelity, Air Canada, American Express, and literally hundreds of small and medium-sized companies. We are very much in favour of this law.

By now, you have received many letters supporting Bill C-27 from others in our community, such as Matthew Blumberg, the CEO of Return Path Inc. Return Path certifies commercial marketing e-mail into such places as Hotmail, Yahoo!, Telus, Bell Canada's Sympatico, and literally hundreds of other large and medium-sized Internet service providers.

It is our understanding that some have been spreading what we in the Internet community call FUD--fear, uncertainty, and doubt--about this bill. We cannot understand why anyone is doing so. Perhaps it's an adversarial relationship with some of the enforcement agencies in this country. Perhaps it is to create a hostile business environment for competitors. Some, perhaps, benefit financially from providing connectivity to those bad actors.

What we do know is that this bill has a long tail. It directly intersects with American and Canadian marketers and consumers. And we are here to assure you that from the standpoint of legitimate international and Canadian-based marketing companies, the bill is well crafted. We have no worries about our clients' e-mail or our professional activities.

Bill C-27 has broadband support on both sides of the equation--sending ESPs and receiving ISPs.

Bill C-27 draws from the experience and builds on the success of laws elsewhere, cherry-picking the best aspects of laws in, for instance, New Zealand, America, and Australia. Australia, for example, has had great success with the private right of action aspect of the law. Legitimate businesses continue apace, while bad senders have suffered the consequences, much to the benefit of good players.

Some might tell you that the law is complicated. CAUCE does not disagree. Yet the portions dealing with the problem of spam are simple and direct. They are already industry best practices, and many have already been implemented. Necessarily complicated are those aspects specifying the new Canadian enforcement regime. It would be folly for the one G-8 country without anti-spam legislation, Canada, to wait for agency reform prior to passing what is long overdue. Hence, we concur with this bill's approach of giving increased powers to existing enforcement agencies.

Canada must do its part to deal with homegrown spammers. Despite what you might have heard, Canada, with solid and inexpensive broadband infrastructure, is home to some of the most expansive spamming networks.

Canada has the highest per capita membership on the social network site Facebook, which is why a Lachine, Quebec, resident took advantage of their systems. He was successfully sued under the American CAN-SPAM law for three-quarters of a billion dollars. The spammer is now claiming to have zero assets, yet his blog indicates that he dines at some of Montreal's finest restaurants. Clearly, he has some pocket money. It is our understanding that Facebook is very actively investigating options in terms of getting a judgment here to seize what he does have.

Another example of Canadian spam is a man who lives near Montreal. His company has spammed for ten years, unabated, to promote the Canadian government subsidy directory. Despite repeated complaints to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, the spam continues to this day, hitting the inboxes of virtually all CAUCE directors, and I imagine yours as well.

And let us not forget our west coast. There is a company whose scheme is more complicated. It produces herbal concoctions designed to attempt to get around the health laws of the country. Their snake oil promises to help you stop smoking, lose weight, or, alternatively, grow larger in certain areas. They have been successfully sued in the United States under a class action lawsuit because, not surprisingly, this stuff does not work. The company is owned by two brothers. Their substances are produced in the Caribbean and shipped to a British Columbia distribution centre, and their marketing e-mail originates from there as well. They don't spam on their own behalf, apparently. Rather, they have what they call “affiliate programs” where people, real or imagined, sign up to earn a commission and send promotional e-mails—spam—to drive those sales. The spam is sent from all over the world. The company maintains a veneer of false legitimacy and clean hands.

Thankfully, here too Bill C-27 does bring a remedy. The beneficiary who profits from illicit activities is on the hook. Such a company would be shut down were this bill to become law. The infamous Canadian pharmacy spam gang got its start in Montreal and has points of presence in eastern Europe, with major ties to organized crime.

For these reasons, ladies and gentlemen, CAUCE speaks for tens of thousands of Internet end users and legitimate companies with a horse in this race when we respectfully encourage you to pass this law as quickly as possible to help clean up the Internet for the benefit of all. Canada must do its part, and Bill C-27 is a significant solution to that spam problem.

Thank you, and we will be happy to take any questions you may have at this time. Merci.

[Professor Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair, Internet and E-commerce Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks for the invitation to come and speak.

My name, as you heard, is Michael Geist. I am a law professor at the University of Ottawa, where I hold the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law. I'm also a syndicated weekly columnist on law and technology issues for theToronto Star and the Ottawa Citizen, and I was a member of the national task force on spam that was struck by the Minister of Industry at the time, in 2004. I served on the board of directors of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, CIRA, for six years. I currently serve on the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's advisory committee. However, I appear today strictly in my personal capacity, representing my own views.

The introduction of Bill C-27 represents the culmination of years of effort to address concerns that Canada is rapidly emerging as a spam haven. I don't think I have to convince you that spam is a problem, whether it's the cost borne by consumers, schools, businesses, and hospitals in dealing with unwanted e-mail, or the shaken confidence of online banking customers who receive phished e-mail. There is a real need to address the problem.

I think we all know that Bill C-27 isn't going to eradicate the problem, but no country can do that alone. But I think it will finally help to clean up our backyard.

Members of this committee have noted that this is broad legislation that extends beyond just spam. I'd like to submit that this is a feature, not a bug. With much talk of the need for a national digital strategy, I think Bill C-27 fits nicely within that framework, providing much-needed consumer protection for electronic commerce. It's fair to say that the spam task force members recognize the need to address the broader issues towards the end of our mandate and that the steps in this bill are consistent with our recommendations.

While the legislation is broad, it's important to emphasize that the exceptions are broad as well. There are three exceptions, in particular, that I want to point to.

The first exception is consent. Under this law consent trumps all. Indeed, any business or any organization can do anything it likes with respect to electronic marketing or software installation as long as it obtains consent. Now, there are some rules around that consent--form requirements for electronic marketing, disclosure requirements for the software--but I don't think it's an onerous obligation. In fact, whenever a potential concern is raised, and I know that some have been, the first question to ask is, “Why is obtaining consent unreasonable in those circumstances?” Is it unreasonable to ask someone to obtain consent before installing a software program on my computer? Or is it unreasonable to obtain consent before sending me a commercial e-mail about a house sale or about a product or a service? I think in almost every instance the answer is no, that consent is a reasonable requirement.

Moreover, it's not an uncommon requirement, as other laws have adopted the same opt-in consent model. Australia and New Zealand both have opt-in models, and Japan actually switched from an opt-out model to an opt-in model when they found that their opt-out model didn't work.

Secondly, there is a business-to-business exception, as you know. I've heard some claims that this legislation will hamper business as it seeks to use e-mail to promote its products and services to other businesses. The reality is that the legislation contains a business-to-business exception, paragraph 6.(5)(b). I think many of those concerns are unwarranted.

And finally, there are the consumer exceptions. These are pretty broad--in fact, arguably too broad. They mirror, for the most part, the exceptions that we find in the national do-not-call list. I think there are many people who argue that those exceptions already go too far.

Consider, for example, the business-to-consumer exception that covers eighteen months for existing customers and six months for non-customers who merely make an inquiry. So think about what that means. Somebody makes an inquiry with a long-distance provider about one of their plans or contacts a hotel to see if they have room availability and they are then subjected to six months of electronic messages under the guise that this is now implied consent. I think it's reasonable to ask why a business should be entitled to contact a consumer for six months without any further consent merely because the consumer has made a single inquiry.

My point here is that the net of the legislation may be broad, but so too are the exceptions that will continue to permit commercial activity. Some businesses may argue that it goes too far, and some consumers may believe it doesn't go far enough. Perhaps that's a sign that an appropriate balance has been struck.

Let me quickly talk about how these principles apply to several of the criticisms that I saw highlighted earlier this week. I know jurisdiction was raised. And jurisdiction, as you know, covers connections with Canada, including the routing of a message through Canada. This approach merely builds on existing jurisdictional law in Canada with respect to a real and substantial connection. If a message fleetingly enters Canada, I suspect that the test would not be met of a real and substantial connection and it's a non-issue from a liability perspective.

With respect to software updates, as I referenced earlier, it seems perfectly reasonable to expect a software vendor to obtain consent from an end user before installing anything on their personal computer and to tell them what they are about to install. To suggest otherwise would be to surrender control over their personal computer and to face the prospect of security breaches, as occurred in the fairly infamous Sony rootkit case.

Then there's the issue of real estate agent e-mails. As I'm sure many of you are aware, real estate scams are among the most common, with references to swampland in Florida being almost shorthand for the notion of fraudulent offers. Do we really want to exempt an entire area that suffers significantly from spam concerns?

Fourth, there's the issue of tough penalties, including the private right of action. I'd argue this is another feature of the legislation. The bill has tough penalties. The experience in countries such as Australia has been that anti-spam law only works if the penalties are sufficiently tough that you create some economic risk for spammers. Otherwise, they simply keep on doing what they're doing. In fact, there have been some lawsuits launched against Canadian spammers, but they've been launched elsewhere because Canadian law didn't measure up. I think we ought to fix that.

Are there any changes needed? I think there are at least two amendments I can point to. The first--and it was raised by this committee--is the prospect of a review provision. I think it's a fast-moving area, and mandated reviews make sense. The second involves the computer software consent provision. In the main, I think the provision gets it right. However, there may be a limited number of instances--the use of Java script on web pages comes to mind--where the provision could prove problematic. It's not easy to craft a rule that targets all the harms, the botnets, spyware, surreptitious installations, keystroke logging, while leaving behind the benign activities.

I'd suggest a small addition. I'm not a legislative drafter, but I would suggest essentially a subclause 10(3) that would allow for implied consent for certain types of computer programs where the person has consented to the installation of that type of program by way of their preferences in their web browser. In other words, if they've checked their preferences in their browser that will allow that form of program, then we ought to be able to take that as implied consent. That would cover off programs like Java and Java script, as those are typically addressed within web browser preferences.

Let me conclude with a warning against what I see as some lobbying efforts to water down what I see as reasonable standards found in this legislation. I'd note that we have seen this before; it's what took place with the do-not-call list. That bill started with good principles, faced intense lobbying and I think some scare tactics, and by the end of the process Canadians were left with a system that I think is now widely recognized as a failure, with some estimates saying that more than 80% of the calls that used to come continue to come, and with security breaches around the do-not-call list itself.

I think we must avoid a similar occurrence with respect to anti-spam legislation. Change in some business practices might be scary to some, but we can't allow scare tactics to dissuade you from moving forward with this much-needed legislation.

I look forward to your questions.

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

Maybe you could send us the link so we can check that out. It would be interesting to see.

You also mentioned the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, Bill C-27. Was one of the standing committees that you appeared before the one where they were considering that proposed legislation?

Electronic Commerce Protection Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-27. We in the NDP firmly believe this legislation is long overdue. We think there are a lot of improvements that could be made to this bill, as with any bill. Therefore, we are certainly prepared to send it off to committee and hope that the committee can do the job that is necessary to make it a better bill.

There is a whole series of questions and answers that we have heard over the last couple of days that have shed some light on the history of this bill and the details of it, but I want to comment on an article from CBC News. It says that Canada is a source of over nine billion spam messages a day. In a study, it was found that nine out of 10 emails worldwide are spam, according to a Cisco Systems security firm. That was as of December 16, 2008.

The article states:

Canadian computers — many of them unwittingly — send out over nine billion spam e-mails a day, almost five per cent of all global spam traffic, according to a report from network and internet security firm Cisco.

In an annual security report released Monday, Cisco estimated almost 200 billion messages per day, or 90 per cent of all e-mails sent worldwide — can be defined as spam, double the volume of the previous year.

E-mail spam is rarely sent from the computers of the spammers themselves...Instead they use a number of techniques, from phishing scams, to e-mail with attached malware, to hijacking the computers of unwitting people.

It sounds pretty scary, actually.

The article goes on to say:

The spammers then use these networks of computers — called botnets — to send out more spam.

While many spammers still send out mass-mailing spam to millions of untargeted recipients, web security software is usually able to filter these messages, the company said.

We have all known over the years that it is almost mandatory today for people to invest in Norton Internet Security and McAfee. I have spent literally hundreds of dollars in a year trying to keep a dozen computers in the office safe from viruses, and so on. This is a really big business and it is growing in leaps and bounds. So it is certainly long overdue that we step in.

I have mentioned several times that one of my favourite long-time MPs in the House, the member for Pickering—Scarborough East, brought in a bill way back in 2003. That is when we should have brought in the legislation. At this point, under normal circumstances, we would probably be looking at having made amendments to his original bill, had the government of the day done the right thing.

I can recall back in 2000 being asked to coordinate the Manitoba e-commerce bill. It was the most comprehensive e-commerce bill of its type in Canada of the day, and perhaps it is even today. We were able to get the five warring departments in the government together, because that is what it boils down to at the end of the day, and got them to agree that we had to proceed with this e-commerce legislation.

We followed the Uniform Law Conference model. We mixed and matched some things and added some consumer legislation, which I am not aware has been replicated anywhere else in the country up this point. We decided that if we wanted to promote purchases on the Internet, we should try to provide as much consumer protection to the public as possible.

We borrowed a little idea that had been adopted in three or four American states as of that time but nowhere in Canada. We put a provision in the act to provide that if any Manitoban purchased a product or service online and did not receive the product or service, the credit card company would be held responsible for reimbursement.

When we went to committee on this issue, we had the credit card companies, understandably, show up and make representations about how onerous this would be. We went ahead and passed the legislation anyway. We have had no problems, as far as I know, with the credit card companies, complaining that this was something bad.

As my colleague from Timmins mentioned yesterday, at the end of the day, we may reconfigure this bill a little differently from what it is right now. It may be a little light on the enforcement side. We have seen how weak the enforcement has been on the do-not-call list, which has only been around for a year. The very best that has come out of it has been nothing more than a few warning letters from the CRTC. No one has been prosecuted or chased around seriously about any aspect. That has turned out to be a big disaster for the government, which is trying hide its failure and collapse it partly through this bill.

What we may have to do at the end is have a little more emphasis on the policing side of things and a little less emphasis on organizations like the CRTC, which do not have the resources and, as a result, do not have the track record of being really tough on much over the past little while.

That was a suggestion the member made yesterday, and that may well be a good idea. He wanted to focus in, specifically, on the problem.

I do not see any problem in even going the other way a bit and expanding the scope of the bill to include what I just mentioned before, some consumer-type legislation. We can look at the Manitoba legislation. There was more than just the credit card issue that I had mentioned. There were two or three other issues. I am sure that in the intervening years, which has been now nine years or so, there must be some legislation in Quebec, or Ontario, or Alberta or another province that we could perhaps use in framing this legislation.

I am not suggesting that somehow we should put this off for another four or five years in order to get it right. However, I do think we should do as much consulting as possible. We should get as many people, particularly people with small businesses, in to make presentations on the bill as soon as possible so we do not have this huge compliance problem at the end of the day.

I will give an example. I will use a real estate agent as an example. If a real estate agent contacts a previous client who is outside of the three year rule and has not done business or does not have a contract with the real estate agent, is he or she violating the rules? Are we going to make criminals out of thousands of real estate agents across the country who may unwittingly and unknowingly get themselves into trouble over situations like this?

I really feel we have to go through the process. We have to contact the Real Estate Association, the Insurance Bureau of Canada, all the different small business organizations and get their input into this so we do not end up with a big problem on our hands at the end of the day.

Overall, the approach is a solid approach. I will tell members why. The do-not-call list was to allow people who were in the basket to get out of that basket. It is negative option offers. I do not know whether members are familiar with that concept, but this is something we deal with in Consumer Affairs all the time. Certainly insurance companies practise negative option offers.

For example, a home insurance policy, at one point, had sewer backup coverage on it. It would be too administratively expensive, for example, for the insurance company to contact each one of its customers and consult them on the issue. It would become cost prohibitive and the product would probably cost a lot more. Therefore, insurance companies automatically, for maybe $2.00 or $3,00, a small amount, add the coverage on all policies across Canada. People who do not want the coverage have to get back to the insurance company to have it taken it off. Cable companies do that, as well. We have seen that in Manitoba. We have seen that across the country.

Some people get angry about it, even though all they have to do is phone and get their name taken off. However, some jurisdictions have banned the practice of negative option offers, even though it is very administratively efficient and probably, in a way, good in some ways for the consumer in terms of cost.

It is the idea that people are going to have stuff put on their policies or on their cable bills without them consenting to it and without them knowing about it. That was the original do-not-call list approach. Everyone was put in the basket and they were told to phone and get themselves off this list. That was the approach.

Now the government has smartened up on this whole issue and it is taking the approach that people have to consent to be on the list. That is the right way to go. It is a little more cumbersome. It is going to take a little more time. It is not going to make people of small businesses overly happy, but this just did not start yesterday. For the last few years, different businesses across the country have been doing exactly that. For the last three or four years, they have been getting consent forms signed by their customers when they come in.

The last time people renewed their home insurance policy, or their automobile insurance policy and certainly real estate agent activity, they have been asked to sign a form, whether they know it or not and they probably did. That form will give the person the right to contact them.

Any time people want to cease contact with the business, then they can do that. Those businesses know that over the last couple of years they just cannot start phoning people and sending out emails at will, as they used to in the old days. The whole picture has changed and small business understands that.

It took some getting used to, but I think many of the businesses now accept that it is a good idea and they have put in place these practices of getting the consent from the customers, and that is a good thing. This bill deals with that.

There is a very interesting observation on this whole process and I do not know how many people know about it. Therefore, I will take the opportunity in my remaining time to explain it. It is an article on Geist on spam. I really was not aware of this problem.

The article states that “the government quietly lays the groundwork for needed overhaul in the do-not-call list”. We thought we were dealing with Bill C-27, a bill dealing with spam. Instead it turns out we are dealing with the problems of the government's do-not-call list, which has turned into a big disaster for it. It got its political points out of it and it was a good thing for it to do. However, it turned out to be a big mess and now the government is afraid of embarrassment, so it is trying to quietly solve the problems with that list by dealing with this list.

The article states:

Four years after the National Task Force on Spam unanimously recommended that the Canadian government introduce anti-spam legislation, the Government today took an important step forward by tabling Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act.

It further states:

—marketers must obtain consumer consent before sending commercial electronic messages...While...long overdue, one of the most significant changes was not reported or even included in the government’s briefing materials. Buried at the very end of the 69-page bill, are provisions that would lay the groundwork to kill the National Do-Not-Call list.

I recall back nine years ago when we brought in this huge omnibus bill on the electronic commerce legislation in Manitoba. It is right about the time that Jane Stewart was having all her troubles with her database issues.

One of our major driving forces for our legislation was that we had to get the legislative ability to enable the use of the federal business number. As a government, we were very concerned. We were very concerned that this legislation had to be brought through the house. We were also aware that the opposition, if it ever took the time to read it, would see that there were a lot things in there with which it could probably find fault. One of them was shared databases and things like that.

That is why, as a government, we ended up making the bill bigger and bigger and at the end of the day, putting some good consumer legislation in there so when we sent out a press release, we talked about the consumer legislation, but not about the database and business number issues and so on.

Thank goodness members of the Conservative opposition of the day were not overly active and did not pay attention, so the bill went through and they did not ask any questions about it, in my view, for the benefit of the province. Had we been the opposition at that time, we would have torn it apart.

Whenever I see a bill that big, and this one is 69 pages, I look through it. A lawyer is sitting to my right and she is nodding in agreement. When we see a bill that big, we want to find out what are these guys hiding. I bet there is something in there the Conservatives are trying to get through by calling it something else.

In any event, this gentleman says that “the proposed approach is very complicated”. That is good to know. He says that It boils down to the fact that the government is repealing the provisions that establish and govern the do-not-call list. Guess what? It is in the bill.

The member for Timmins—James Bay mentioned it yesterday. If this is not a big issue, then why is it in the bill? He says that in its place the approach of requiring an opt-in would apply, which I see as fine, meaning Canadians would no longer need to register their phone numbers on the do-not-call list. That is good too. It saves people a lot of trouble. He says that instead the presumption would be that telemarketers would not call without prior consent, which we discussed, and that it would also bring in stronger penalties, up to $10 million and few exceptions.

He goes on to say that although the do-not-call list is less than a year old, change cannot come soon enough. He says that it faced severe criticism earlier this year when it was reported that out-of-country telemarketers, who are out of the regular reach of the CRTC, are accessing the list and making unwanted calls to Canadians, and that with more than six million numbers registered on the list, the prospect of do-not-call list registration leading to more calls rather than less instantly becomes a disturbing reality.

What is this man saying? He is saying all those people last year, who responded the minute the government passed the do-not-call legislation, flooded the phone lines, phoning in, giving their number, asking to be taken off the list. Offshore companies simply accessed that whole list of numbers and used it, totally defeating the purpose. I did not phone last year to take my name off the list and I guess it was good. Had I phoned, I would have ended up with tons and tons of spam.

I can see why the Conservatives are hanging their heads over there and do not want to talk about something like this because this is a big embarrassment. They should just own up to it and say that they goofed up, that they made a mistake and that this is how we will fix it. We see that is exactly what they are doing right now.

He goes on to say that while the misuse of the do not call list remains a concern, a review of the thousands of pages of internal government documents released under the Access to Information reveals it is only the tip of the iceberg. That means there is a lot more underneath there if it looks like an iceberg.

He says that in addition to the lax distribution policies, the enforcement side of the do not call list raises serious alarm bells, with the majority of complaints being dismissed as invalid. He says that without CRTC investigation, the appearance of a conflict of interest and sorting through complaints on a regulator that has been content to issue warnings rather than levying the tough penalties contained in the law.

I said there were 70 warning letters that were sent out. This gets more interesting. I am going to run out of time, but if anyone wants to read the remaining paragraphs I will be very happy to make copies. There are many more interesting things in the letter. I will draw to a close and allow for any questions that might come my way.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her excellent question. I too am looking for an apartment in Ottawa.

She talked about spam from certain, shall we say, naughty, sites, and we sure do not want our children—not my children because I do not have any, but the children of other parliamentarians—to see these things. We have to block access to those sites. That is one of the reasons that we want to send Bill C-27 to committee so that we can figure out how to fight spam.

Earlier, I was talking about good, old-fashioned, handwritten letters. People get desensitized when they get so much spam sent indiscriminately. When these messages are sent to pretty much everyone, it is just not personal and it has no meaning. As a parliamentarian, I still love receiving handwritten letters from my fellow citizens. I can tell that they took the time to share something important.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the NDP members' speeches in particular, and I think they are quite right. I very much appreciated one of the points raised by one of my NDP colleagues, who said that the Liberals first introduced the idea for such a bill, the predecessor to Bill C-27, but we saw no progress on the matter. Sure, there were consultations, but there was never any implementation or procedure. This would suggest that the Liberal member was perhaps not able to convince his Liberal Party colleagues, although, quite often, the Liberals' good ideas are unfortunately not contagious and do not get passed on to others. Sometimes a single member of the Liberal caucus might have a good idea, while the others might not understand its essence.

It is even worse among the Conservatives, since they rarely have any good ideas. They have had a few; I do not wish to make a complete generalization. Nonetheless, I am sometimes surprised by some of their ideas. They have finally had a good one with Bill C-27. Let us hope that it will be studied and passed.