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.

[John Lawford, Executive Director and General Counsel, Public Interest Advocacy Centre]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Public Interest Advocacy Centre, or PIAC, is a national, non-profit organization and registered charity that provides legal and research services on behalf of consumer interests, and in particular, vulnerable consumer interests, concerning the provision of important public services.

PIAC has been active on the spam file since before the anti-spam task force was constituted in 2004. We testified before this committee in relation to then Bill C-27 in 2009 in support of the legislation. We supported the legislation as passed in 2010.

Our message today is simple. Canadians benefit from some of the world’s strongest protections against spam. Canada’s anti-spam legislation generally keeps business from sending spam unless the recipient has provided express prior consent and can easily unsubscribe. This is the great Canadian innovation. Trust consumers and citizens to control their privacy in the marketplace not marketers.

Has CASL been working for consumers? Currently, the CRTC is receiving about 5,000 complaints a week about email marketers not respecting CASL. One report from spring 2015 found outgoing spam volumes from Canada dropped 37% and overall email volume, spam and legitimate email, received by Canadians also dropped about 30% in the immediate period after CASL came into full force on July 1, 2014.

Since then Canadians have enjoyed the control of their email and other electronic communications by giving their consent to email, texts, and other electronic messages only to those companies with which they deal and by being able to unsubscribe from any email list that they wish.

Companies can still reach Canadians via email. There is no commercial email ban. Consumers buying products and services or who reach out to the company in question can expect two years of emails before the existing business relationship is deemed stale and the emails must stop. While consumers have a valid contract with a company, emails are allowed during the contract and for two years after that contract ends, unless of course the consumer unsubscribes on the handy link on each of these emails.

If a company does not follow these simple rules that put consumers in control, consumers can report the spam by completing a complaint form at fightspam.ca. As mentioned, up to 5,000 consumers a week file complaints.

Spam still wastes consumers’ time and reduces their confidence in electronic commerce, as it continues to deliver not only irrelevant, unrequested marketing but also deceptive and fraudulent messages and malware. What is different now is that the CRTC, Competition Bureau, and Privacy Commissioner of Canada can pursue companies for doing all these things.

Alysia.

Immigration and Refugee Protection Act

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to be speaking about Bill C-35, which we are debating today. We have talked a lot about immigration consultants, which are the focus of this bill.

I want to begin by speaking about the bill's title. Those following the debate since speeches started in the House this morning at about 10:20 a.m. would initially have seen it indicated on their screen that we are talking about the “Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act”, or the “Loi sévissant contre les consultants véreux” in French.

If they are watching now, they will probably see that we are talking about An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. This was changed because, likely, at the beginning of the debate the audiovisual team was using the former title of the bill.

In committee, it was decided that the title should be changed to make it more neutral and objective. There are a number of reasons for this decision. Even though we all agree that a bill title has no legal effect and is simply a secondary element in the debate about the substantive clauses and the actual provisions of the bill, the title is still important. On one hand, the title is important from a social point of view because it can affect how people perceive the bill. On the other hand, it is important from a political point of view because it is a tool used by the government to engage in political marketing and even to change the essence and intent of a bill for its own purposes. The government is using this technique more and more.

I will discuss both cases, beginning with the one before us, Bill C-35. It seems to me that the government was using the bill's original title for political purposes. They said they would attack crooked consultants. That sounds like an opinion to me. Opinions have no place in the law. The government should stick to a technical description of what the bill does, which in this case is amend the immigration act to require people who want to practise as immigration consultants and who are not already members of a provincial bar or the Chambre des notaires du Québec to be members of a body to be designated by the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. That is what this bill would do.

In practice, will this actually improve the situation and crack down on crooked consultants? That is a matter of opinion. Every member of the House is entitled to an opinion on the subject. I suppose that if the bill receives unanimous support, as it seems to have, that means people pretty much agree. Of course, the 308 members of the House can make mistakes. In the end, history may confirm that we have not. I do not think there should be anything subjective in the title.

If we want voters and the public to respect us, we should be humble enough to resist using bill titles to promote any messages, claims or opinions whatsoever. We must also take into account the potential social impact of an inappropriate title. In this case, they were calling it the cracking down on crooked consultants act.

Imagine consultants telling their clients to trust them because they have been accredited under the cracking down on crooked consultants act. As if. Picture the certificate hanging behind a consultant's desk, stating that the consultant has been accredited under the cracking down on crooked consultants act. That is not what the bill is about. This bill is about consultants who are not crooked. That is why the title of the bill was changed. Personally, I hope that the government will put an end to this practice, which has been observed in several House committees.

It is a ridiculous practice, one that wastes a great deal of parliamentarians' energy. In many cases, the bills do not even accomplish what is stated in the title, and that skews the democratic debate.

Since there is unanimity in the House on Bill C-35, I would like to provide a few other examples. In fact, most of the disagreement in committee was about the title.

There was Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act. Once again, the title was a claim. There was also the Protecting Victims from Sex Offenders Act. That is a matter of opinion; we may or may not agree that Bill C-34 will actually protect people from sex offenders. Then there is the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act. I gave examples from different Parliaments, and there are others from the current session. We have bills pertaining to security that are named in memory of a victim whose case has nothing to do with the bill in question.

Getting back to immigration, given that this is the subject of the bill before us today, there is Bill C-49, at second reading. The title, Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act, is an opinion. In fact, most observers, including the opposition members in the House, find that the bill does not in any way deal with smugglers, but rather targets refugees. The title also refers to people who abuse the immigration system. The bill does not refer to the immigration system but to the refugee protection system. The title is completely at odds with the reality and serves as a political marketing tool.

The government has said that people support their bill. It conducted a poll and asked whether people agreed with the law to prevent human smugglers from abusing our immigration system. Everyone is evidently in agreement. The problem is that the bill does not do what the title says.

Clearly, this is a ploy on the government's part. Basically, the government is admitting that it knows very well that it will not be able to sell the contents of its bill to the public. So it is using smoke and mirrors. It is using the title as an intermediary to try and suggest that one of its bills cracks down on crooked consultants and therefore must be a good bill. It has a bill that cracks down on human smugglers, so it is a good bill.

The most pathetic title we have seen in this House was the title of a bill that was something like: an act to stop the trafficking of minors, even though the word “trafficking” was not mentioned once in the entire bill. The bill had a title that referred to the trafficking of minors, even though the bill was not about that.

Clearly, this is a recurring ploy that must stop. I am very pleased that the members of the committee agreed to stop playing the government's game. I hope the government will have the wisdom and good sense to stop playing these ridiculous little games. The parliamentary secretary talked about it and so did my Liberal colleague, the hon. member for Papineau, and I imagine my NDP colleague will also talk about it, since we tend to work very well together on that committee; we respect one another, despite our political differences. If the government wanted to demonstrate its desire to co-operate and its respect for the opposition members, it could start by giving its bills legitimate titles, instead of making these inane attempts to manipulate public opinion.

I realize that was a long digression, but I had to do it. All that being said, I will now talk about the substance of the bill.

Those who want to immigrate to Quebec and Canada, whether we are talking about refugees, economic immigrants, immigrants in the family reunification category, or people who come on humanitarian or other grounds, are often overwhelmed and not sure what to do next. They are unfamiliar with our laws and are a bit distressed by the red tape. We can relate because we cannot keep up with all the bureaucracy, requirements and regulations either. It is hard for us to keep track of our rights. Imagine what it is like for an immigrant.

There is a real and legitimate concern and many of these people seek advice on the immigration application process. The advice they are given is extremely important because it can have a significant impact on the ruling to be made and on the rest of their lives. During this process, many decide to deal with lawyers or notaries. That is what I always recommend when people knock on the door of my riding office.

However, others seek advice and representation from an immigration consultant. The problem is that, unlike notaries or lawyers, immigration consultants are not really regulated. The regulatory body for these consultants, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, does not work at all; it is a colossal failure. This agency has serious governance problems and is run by people who commit flagrant abuses. They take liberties and do not administer the agency in the interest of its members or the general public. In my opinion, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants has to be abolished. It is beyond repair because it is fundamentally tainted by personal interests to the detriment of its members and the general public. I hope the minister will see it that way when he designates an agency.

A new organization must therefore be created that will better regulate the occupation. Let us hope that, with the new act, this organization will not encounter the same type of internal management problems and that it will have a much broader sphere of activity. Rather than controlling the relationship between the consultant and the government only from the day the application is filed to the day the application is ultimately accepted or rejected, the new act will cover the entire relationship between the consultant and the client or in other words, from the moment a client contacts a consultant or a consultant offers a potential client his or her services. This is a real improvement. However, the organization designated by the minister must do its work correctly and separate the wheat from the chaff.

We have to admit that there are some good immigration consultants; however, there are others who do not do their work properly at all. When touring the country, we were told that some consultants were abusing their ethnic proximity a little or even a lot. Someone immigrates to a new country where they do not know the system and do not know whom to trust, and then they meet someone from the same ethnic group who has successfully immigrated to Canada. Human nature being what it is, they might have a tendency to trust that person more than someone else.

Many crooked consultants—that is how the minister referred to them at the beginning—will abuse this trust. Sometimes these people do not know French or English, nor do they know the laws. People may pay a consultant thousands of dollars and that consultant will not even bother to submit their applications. They wonder why they have not heard anything, so they call the constituency office or the department only to be told that their application was never received and no one has ever heard of it. It can take years before they figure this out. There was a similar story on the news yesterday morning: a lady paid thousands of dollars but her application was likely never submitted.

We have taken a step forward. The House can pass laws, but it does not create the regulations. It is not the House that ultimately does the selection. The minister's role in that regard is very important. He must make wise choices and not usurp the will of Parliament, as has happened in the past, particularly in terms of immigration. He must comply with legislation and ensure that there is finally a real regulator that lives up to that title. Competent people are needed in order to ensure that the immigration consultants in Quebec and Canada are competent.

I have one last aside. Throughout this process, I have insisted that we must ensure that immigration consultants in Quebec are familiar with the requirements of the Quebec immigration system, which has its particularities. There is an agreement between Canada and Quebec. This must be recognized. If there are two categories of immigration consultants in Quebec, people who are submitting an application will not know whether their consultant is able to advise them on all of the possible options or just those that fall under either federal or Quebec jurisdiction. I maintain that, in dealing with immigration issues, we must always remember that the situation in Quebec is different and requires special treatment.

I would like to repeat that there is a good deal of collaboration in this committee. If there are interesting bills, we will study them. I do want to share a little frustration that is not the fault of the committee members or our chair, but it is a result of parliamentary procedure, which seriously limits us with respect to amendment possibilities. We could have developed a better bill if we had had more latitude, as parliamentarians, to make amendments that would change the bill's scope and give it a better direction. That is a problem for all parliamentarians. I hope that we will be able to have a look at this issue in the near future.

In the meantime, overall, I think that the bill before us deserves the support of Parliament.

Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, we are debating BillC-28, which I must admit is a very important bill. A number of members have had an opportunity to speak on it, but I would like to read into the record the summary of the bill. The summary of a bill is usually a fairly good synopsis of what the bill would do.

The summary of Bill C-28 states:

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 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, 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 Radiotelevision 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 Radiotelevision and Telecommunications Commission Act and the Telecommunications Act.

Most people would recognize this as the bill to deal with spam, but actually it is much more than that. So I took the opportunity to go back and look at the representations made to the House by the minister himself when the bill first came forward. I would like to quote a brief section of his speech in which he says:

Threats to the online economy include more than just spam. They include spyware, malware, computer viruses, phishing, viral attachments, false or misleading emails, the use of fraudulent websites, and the harvesting of electronic addresses.

Here is an interesting point. He says:

These threats are not just nuisances. Some are fraudulent, some invade privacy, and some are used to infect and gain control over computers. It is estimated that spam costs the worldwide economy $130 billion a year.

He goes on to say:

The bill before us contains important provisions that will protect Canadian businesses and consumers from the most harmful and misleading forms of online threats. It improves the privacy and economic security of Canadians in the electronic environment. It offers a host of clear rules that all Canadians will benefit from. It will promote confidence in online communication and electronic commerce.

The bill before us stakes out new ground in Canada.

Here is an interesting point:

Currently we are the only G8 country and one of only four OECD countries without legislation dealing with spam. This bill will rectify that situation.

In developing the bill, we have been able to incorporate the best practices of other countries that have launched similar efforts.

That is not exactly what the members said today in debate. It is kind of interesting. In fact, some members said that we have not even put forward legislation that takes into account all of the best practices of the G8 countries that have legislation in place. We have come up short on that. As a matter of fact, it was described that we are going to be playing catch-up. That point was made several times today during debate.

It is concerning because this is a very serious problem. We are ranked fifth in the world in terms of spam. I believe nine billion spam messages are received each and every day in Canada.

There is a cost associated with it. The worldwide cost is some $130 billion. Canada is fifth and we have about 10% of that. So we are talking about a lot of money, and based on the debate in the House, which has been substantively just opposition members, not enough rigour has been put in this bill to make sure that it is effective, the wish of the minister that this is going to be a good thing. We have missed the boat a bit.

One reason is that most of these problem areas come from international origins and they are beyond the reach of the laws of Canada. So all of a sudden we have to take out all these mass emailings sent out by persons who are not resident in Canada and are outside the reach of our laws. I will speak a bit more about that later.

The other part that was discussed very substantively during the day had to do with penalties. The infractions are under clauses 43 and 44, but with regard to the penalties, it says in subclause 47(1):

Every person who commits an offence under section 43 or 44 is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction and is liable

(a) to a fine of not more than $10,000 for a first offence or $25,000 for a subsequent offence, in the case of an individual; or

(b) to a fine of not more than $100,000 for a first offence or $250,000 for a subsequent offence, in the case of any other person.

It seems to stop there, ostensibly, in terms of the fines.

The point made in debate was that these are just fines. The growth of spam in Canada continues and we are playing catch-up. Despite the fact that this is proposing some fines, the argument has been that it does not seem to represent a sufficient deterrent to the perpetrators of, in many cases, the frauds.

Since the year 2000, online sales for Canadian companies have increased nearly tenfold. Ten years ago, online sales in our country were less than $7.2 billion. In 2007, the sales reached $63 billion. When we consider the magnitude of the economic activity going on in these unsolicited emails, we have to wonder whether, if someone gets caught, a fine of $10,000 or even $250,000 is going to be a significant deterrent from continuing the practices of spamming and the other forms of offences.

The point has been made a number of times that we missed the boat in terms of the penalties for offences. We have not taken into account that although the CRTC and the Competition Bureau will have the tools to impose fines, we do not have criminal sanctions here. There are going to cases, undoubtedly, where we are talking about billions of dollars that have been made by companies, without the fear of any criminal prosecution, just a fine. That, I believe, is a big flaw in this bill.

Regarding the admission that it did not go as far as other G8 countries and that we are playing catch-up, this bill has been around for five years. Previously it was Bill C-27. It is now Bill C-28 under a new Parliament, after prorogation and/or an election, but we are still playing around ostensibly with the same act.

If we look at the briefing notes, it is substantially still the same act. I really have to question whether there is a strategy to deal with the whole problem. The deterrents and penalties are certainly one aspect of it.

Recently, we have been dealing with some other pieces of legislation that I had an opportunity to deal with. One I think was just yesterday, a bill on tax treaties with Greece, Turkey and Colombia. It included the fact that we would be entering into information-sharing agreements with these countries.

It turns out that Canada has tax treaties with more than 90 countries around the world. We have relationships with virtually with every major economy around the world, and we do it because we want to eliminate double taxation, we want to deal with tax avoidance issues and we want to promote trade, et cetera. It is a good thing.

Why is it that we did not discuss information-sharing agreements on Internet abuses at the G8 and G20 summits? We paid $1 billion for one of those meetings. Surely we could have talked about some substantive matters, such as a problem that is costing the world $130 billion a year. It is not insignificant. That is 130 G8 meetings. That concerns me.

In the Income Tax Act there is a general anti-avoidance provision. Because there is a concern about being behind in our ability to keep up with the changes in technology and not even up to speed with what other G8 countries have been doing, we have the situation that, given how long it takes to bring forward new legislation and make the necessary changes, the time lag is so great that it is a tremendously expensive proposition when we know that it is going to grow.

I am wondering why the government did not pursue information-sharing agreements and things like the spirit of a general anti-avoidance provision, something that would say that notwithstanding what the act says, if the government believes people have done something that gets around the rules and in fact perpetrates fraud, the process of fraud or other offences under the act, it will be able to prosecute them as well, even though it may not be specifically in the act or have been contemplated.

That is why we have regulations to legislation. Rather than putting all the items in the legislation, we put them in regulations, which we can amend by orders in council fairly quickly. We do not need new legislation.

I am not sure at this point whether there was an opportunity missed. It would have been helpful to have built in some sort of a mechanism whereby the legislation, particularly in this case, was adaptable or was able to address emerging technologies and some of the issues that are coming out.

The other bill we dealt with recently that spurred some interest with me was the requirement for Internet service providers to report websites, et cetera, that had information or depictions of the sexual exploitation of children. The whole purpose of the bill was to require Internet service providers to report those things. It is an important element in the overall attempt to deal with the sexual exploitation of children.

Could this bill not have had a requirement or obligation for people who are involved or who become knowledgeable about the people behind some of these fraudulent activities to report? Intuitively people would say, “I respect the law, but I am not sure whether I am obligated to report if I become aware”. Maybe we should understand what the consequences are if we allow it to carry on, and perhaps there should have been some initiative that would have spurred people to report when it comes to their knowledge.

One of the experiences I have recently had, which most members have had, is that we received an unsolicited email apparently from a bank, which has the actual logo of TD bank or Scotiabank, for example. It purports to be our friend and tells us our account has been suspended and we have to get in touch with the bank, blah, blah. I printed that email before I deleted it and took it to the bank, which told me those things originate offshore and there is nothing banks can do about it, and that was about it. The banks ought to play a greater role in this. This is a big part of it. This is where there are people who prey particularly on seniors, the ones who are most vulnerable. When they are sent an email that says the bank has a problem and they have to get in touch, once they press the button and respond, they are in the system. Now they are targets. Now they are at risk.

We did not deal with that. We should have dealt with that. I do not know how. I am not saying I have the answers, but we should talk about it. Are other jurisdictions doing it? If these come from offshore, it is a case where we should have entered into information-sharing agreements and worked collaboratively with countries around the world? We certainly could have agreements with the 90 countries with whom we have tax treaties on matters that are harming all of us, when someone is in one jurisdiction and doing harm in another. We have seen that with regard to Switzerland and Liechtenstein with regard to tax havens, money-laundering and all kinds of things. When are we going to start entering into serious negotiations with our partners in trade and any other country that wishes to, for mutual benefit, to deal with these things? Where is the strategy? That is what is missing.

As I indicated, the penalty regime is not quite right. The issue with regard to dealing with the international situation seems to be ignored. We do not know what the dimensions are there.

The fact that it has taken five years already to get to this point does not send a warm fuzzy signal that we are really serious about this. Why does it take so long? When we bring bills in, why do we not start them with the minister or whoever is going to present the bill to the House and deal with it right through so that there is a continuity of the debate and a consensus that starts to develop? Second reading should be an opportunity for members to alert committee members to the kinds of concerns they have. This is where some of the fodder comes from in the legislative process. We cannot make any particular motions at second reading to change things, but we certainly can make recommendations to the committee and then make sure that committee is ready to deal with it. There is no point in putting forward a bill when there are 10 other bills waiting in a hopper to get into a committee, because it will not get dealt with for months.

In scheduling the House business, a particularly important legislation such as this seems to have been an orphan. I wish it had been dealt with quickly and, when it went through committee and came back here, we did not have debate last May and some more debate in September and now again in November. The continuity of the bill has been appalling. The issues have been on the table and this is something that has the support of all hon. members, all the parties. So why does the government drag this out in terms of how it schedules the bills for debate in the House? If it really cared about it, this would have been bang, bang, bang. The House leaders should have talked to each other. In the U.K. they have discussions to decide how many speakers there are going to be, they have the speeches and they deal with it.

I would suggest it is an important bill. I support the bill. The House will support the bill. We should get on with it, but the minister should know we are very concerned that we did not go far enough and that the bill may be a false start on the resolution of a very important problem.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise on Bill C-28, formerly Bill C-27. A little bit of history on the bill is important. This is a bill that will limit spam in this country and there are a number of different correspondence issues, not just email. There are several others I will get into later on, but it is important to recognize that this is important for Canada because we are the only one of the G7 countries that does not have a management style anti-spam bill. That is important for us to change.

New Democrats have been pushing for this for years and I want to touch at the beginning of my presentation a little bit on why we feel so strongly about the bill. It was formerly Bill C-27. With prorogation of Parliament that bill was shelved and did not go forward. We played a key role in getting that bill passed with the government. There were attempts to water it down by both the Bloc and Liberal members, but we made sure that the essence of the bill remained when there was lots of lobbying pressure from a number of different business and other organizations that rely upon electronic media. Some of it is done with good intent. Some of it is done with ill intent. But we were able to do that by taking out a provision where the government at one point was allowing a clause in the bill whereby if one had agreed to an electronic advertisement from someone that person could actually use that to go into one's computer and phish through it for further information. We had that clause taken out of the bill and compromised on that so we could move this forward.

Unfortunately, with prorogation, the government lost its opportunity and the bill died despite actually going through the chambers, and that is unfortunate because we did not get to have that legislation come to fruition. The bill reintroduced is taking quite some time in this latest government round. I am rather surprised it was not tabled during one of the first weeks post-election when we came back to the chamber. There certainly was a willingness on our side to get the bill moved forward and there were a few more changes added that were important to clean up the bill, but did not really essentially change anything. Then it moved quickly through committee and to this point in time.

It is a good opportunity for Canadians to revisit some of their rights in particular. I feel this is very much a social issue and a justice issue because when we look at the violations that go through spam it is not just the mere deleting and the pain of doing that, it is also a means of economically undermining people as well by phishing for information and privacy issues. It is important that the bill passes and I am hoping that it does so rather quickly in the other chamber when it goes there because it is critical.

What really defines New Democrats as different from the other parties in this are the rights people should have as users on computer systems and the Internet. This is something that I continually impressed on those who kept on pushing back on the bill. What I am referring to is the reality that when people buy a computer system, they pay the money. Then after that they pay for the use of the system not only through electricity, but also if it is activated on the Internet. They pay for the programs that are installed on computers that they use. They pay for all those elements out there.

At the same time, their rights were being ignored and, in my opinion, trampled on by others dumping all kinds of unwanted and unsolicited information and material, some of it even malicious, that affected computers, and that is wrong. There should be the rights of the users who pay for all of that, not just the initial outlay, but also the continuation of services every month through a provider. That is a key element that is important about this that gets overridden to a certain degree. With the explosion of the computer use and the Internet evolution, there were no rights granted to the user of any significant magnitude. As well, it allowed the introduction of a number of different commercials and even affects the performance of computers and the work people are doing by having malicious spyware and other types of things that end up on computer systems.

This is at the heart of it. Is this bill going to restore some justice to the Internet? Is it going to bring some accountability, bring Canada into this century in terms of its response and put penalties on those who do it?

For those who do not think it is a serious issue, I want to refer to a Cisco study that was done a couple of years ago. It found that there were around 200 billion messages per day and 90% of emails sent worldwide were spam. There were 200 billion messages per day being sent out to all kinds of people from all over the world and Canada, unfortunately, was one of the places that had spammers.

It was not individual people sending out that message. It was also those hijacking computers and creating what are called botnets. That is where people write programs and send out messages that would infect somebody else's computer so that people's computers become like zombies and send out a series of files, information and messages.

That happened to one of my accounts. It was hijacked and messages were sent out under my email address. A lot of people have faced this. That is why a lot of different software packages have been introduced. Because of the aggressive nature of those who are doing this, it has become an industry in itself just to police it. Various types of software are being used, which require constant upgrading to deal with all of the different infections taking place on computers.

What is important to recognize in that respect is that people are affected in a number of ways. Not only are their reputations affected by their names being tagged with material they do not approve of but it also affects the capabilities of their computers and sometimes their privacy.

There are also phishing scams to trick people. How that works is if people agree to something, there are unintended consequences that are not clear because there are no rules about that. Some people were giving out personal information, and there are those who said they knew what they were doing because they said yes.

We heard the argument from some of the people who use advertisements and so forth that once people agree, it is basically carte blanche. That is not fair and the reason is that yes, people made the mistake when they did it, but people are virtually learning on the computer every single day.

I know seniors today who are taking up the computer and its technology that they never had before, and they deserve protection from the government on that. The Internet has become very important, not only for communicating on social matters but also in allowing people to conduct their public and private affairs.

Public affairs means being connected to the world and communities and allows people to understand what is happening out there and to interact in that element, especially those who do not have the capabilities to get out any more, who do not have transportation or whatever the case may be. It is their connection to the community, and that has become clear through sites like Facebook and a whole series of other social media.

People use these avenues now to connect to their own community, not just to look at things or obtain information from across the globe, which they can do as well. It is very much part of people's lives, and those of neighbours, friends, family and so forth.

The second reason people deserve protection from the government and the forces who want fair play on the Internet is because people use it to conduct business, financial transactions such as paying bills, making investments and a whole series of things. Online elements have become critical for the daily administration of businesses and people's pocketbooks. That is key too.

There is the entertainment aspect as well, another critical part. People take part in everything from video games to movies. They can watch television now and a whole series of things. That is why with these elements of phishing, botnets and spam it is important to recognize the seriousness of it. It is not simply about deleting the thing that arrived in one's mailbox that was unwanted. It is about the abuse caused if one has those different elements affecting one's system.

New Democrats believe when a consumer buys equipment, programs and a service provider, the consumer's rights come first. That is an important difference. Technology will change even more. Some of the programs and the writers will become even more vicious. That is why it is important we start with the number one principle.

I will to refer to the international scene so we can get a clear understanding of this issue. Cisco reported that the United States was the single largest source of outgoing spam, accounting for 17.2% of all global spam. Canada was the fourth largest source with 4.7% of global spam. Behind the U.S., Turkey and Russia, Canada has a significant per capita.

The United States was referenced at 17.2% and Canada was at 4.7%. That is because the U.S. brought in what was affectionately known as the can spam bill. I hope Bill C-28 will be more effective than the American legislation, but we will see. It has been done with a bit more diligence.

Members will remember the legislation with respect to the do not call list. The government rushed it through and it failed miserably. It was an abuse on Canadians and an embarrassment to the government. We warned the government that it would not respond to the needs of Canadians.

There is a remedy. I took some criticism for supporting the government in a key vote on that legislation. I agreed to allow the minister to amend the do not call list legislation. I thought it was important for consumers to have that capability so I agreed with the government. Canadians want a do not call list that works. Improvements have been made to it and NDP members are happy with the changes.

I want to touch a bit on the types of information in the bill. I want to ensure people know that it is not just spam email defined under abuse. Instant media messaging, use net and user groups spam, web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ad spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet form spam, junk fax transmissions and file sharing network spam are all included.

It is important to note that. Those who abuse these types of communication devices will be subject to a series of penalties and fines. I will get into that a bit later. There will be better enforcement power. There will be a better process to stop those who send messages in those different formats to people who do not want to receive them. It is key that be the case.

The spam that we are focusing on has a number of different cost factors. There is the overhead cost, which is electronic spamming, including bandwidth, developing or acquiring an email, wiki blog spam tool and taking or acquiring the zombie computer.

Materials used on a computer system, whether it be the actual computer itself, the server, the websites, the other tools and applications such as a dot design can get infected. They then have to be administered by new software upgrades, hardware upgrades, a series of different things depending on what the spam has done to the computer.

Say, for example, a web designer has to design another management system related to security provisions to block certain things coming in. A physical cost is going to be involved as well as a programming cost. That is basically lost productivity in the Canadian economy. There is a cost to people doing work because others have abused or caused problems maliciously.

There is also a transaction cost. The incremental cost of contacting each additional recipient when one method of spamming is multiplied by the number of recipients. There is risk of legal or public reaction, including punitive damages.

On the transaction cost, it is not only the cost of responding, but also the public image or whatever it might be. There could be any host of emails coming in that are disingenuous and presents one's company or oneself in an ill way. Often those affected have to physically spend the time to re-contact people.

Also, one's reputation may be at stake. If people have their names tagged to something they do not support, that can be very damaging to them, given some of the content that is on the Internet today. Companies can suffer from this as well. This is another cost.

As well, damage is another cost. Damage can take place in a number of different ways, from people's reputations to a community and other types of areas. For example, Canada is currently known as a spamming country. We know that other countries look at us in an unfavourable way because we have not dealt with spam in a responsible way until now.

Spam is also used in crime, and this is important. In our opinion, it is a violation of not only consumer rights, but it is crime. We have seen viruses, Trojan horses and malicious software, often with the objective of identity theft and fraud.

There are people who lose information. There is sensitive information on computers, for instance, payment of credit card bills, real estate or other types of transactions, and all types of purchases. We see more and more purchases through several different sites taking place now.

When people experience identity fraud, they face a series of things. First, they have to find out when it took place and what has gone out. As well, the damages are part of that. Whether it is credit card theft or the use of their names and IDs to do things on the Internet, that can significantly affect them.

Also, and this is important, some people are not used to using the Internet or are just learning to use it. They become pawns for those who are very clever about using this information, technology and the different types of spam. Basically, there are predators. If people are not skilled or do not know the full effects of what they are doing, it does not make it right that they are taken advantage of. The bill's increased fines and penalties will be a significant deterrent when we look at some elements that need to be changed.

I recognize the work of the 2004 national task force on spam, which went across the country. It got things going and unified Canadians around the rights of the spam bill. It is important that we recognize the task force.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-28, the fighting Internet and wireless spam act, better known as FISA. It is designed to curb the flow of spam, unwanted installations of unauthorized and sometimes malicious software and the unauthorized collection of personal information. In other words, it aims at stopping spam emails. With spam emails, we do not always give prior consent and that is what makes them so obnoxious.

I have been listening to a lot of the speeches and going through the bill and it really is a dry topic. It is something that, unless one is really into the technical side of things, does not excite people until it hits our computers or our homes. That is when we really feel the impact that spam has on individuals.

I want to do a bit of a history. In 2004-05 the Liberal government of the day established an anti-spam task force and recommendations for actions were put forward. The Liberal recommendations called for the government to introduce legislation to prohibit four things: first, the sending of spam without prior consent of recipients; second, the use of false or misleading statements that disguise the origins or true intent of the email; third, the installation of unauthorized programs; and fourth, the unauthorized collection of personal information or email addresses.

I would like the members to remember these four points because they will be showing up again and it is important that we finally get there. Of all the G8 countries, Canada is the only one that does not have legislation in place yet. When we look at something like this, we have to ask why Canada has really lagged behind.

Had the government continued under a Liberal government back in 2005, we would have had legislation. However, unfortunately the NDP leader decided that in 2005, it was time to stop supporting the Liberal government of the day. I think history will look back and see where progressive thought really slowed down, if not stopped, for a number of years. It will not be pretty when people look back and see what was lost. Whether it was legislation on spam, child care or first nations rights, it will not be viewed positively.

Let us get back to Bill C-28. It was originally introduced by the Conservative government as Bill C-27, which died in prorogation. Prorogation normally is not something we speak of positively. I look at prorogation and it really was something Canadians did not want, it was something Parliament did not really want and it caused a lot of problems. However, one thing it caused was the death of Bill C-27.

Prior to the prorogation, many flaws were exposed in the bill and when it came back, the good thing was that many changes were made. Bill C-28 was introduced after the return from prorogation, with the changes to correct many flaws identified. I am pleased to see the Conservative government decided to act on the recommendations of our Liberal task force and the recommendations of the industry, science and technology committee.

Legislation in a fast moving area such as technology must be monitored closely to ensure it does not stifle legitimate electronic commerce in Canada, while accomplishing its intended purpose.

The real test of Bill C-28 will be in its implementation. How diligently will it be reinforced? What resources will be allotted? How serious is the government in protecting Canadian citizens? Those are the questions we will have to look at and really look to see how strong the legislation will be.

One of the things that the legislation calls for is periodic review of the legislation. I talked about how fast electronic media changes and how fast technology changes. That is why the legislation in particular has to be reviewed on a regular basis so it keeps up with what goes on.

In its main provisions, Bill C-28 introduces a new regulatory scheme and monetary penalties for spam and related threats such as identity theft, phishing, spyware, viruses and botnets, and it extends the rights of civil action of their victims. I know a lot of us have heard these terms, but I thought I would take the time to go through them because they are not always well understood and I want to clarify them.

I went on the Internet itself, to Wikipedia, and got some definitions of the individual terms, because I know there are people listening at home wondering, “This is wonderful, but what exactly does it mean and what effect does it have on me?” We all know about spam, which I will define at the end, but spam is just one part of it.

We hear about identity theft. Identity theft is a form of fraud or cheating of another person's identity in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person's identity, typically in order to access resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person's name. The victim of identity theft can suffer adverse consequences if he or she is held accountable for the perpetrator's actions. Organizations or individuals that are duped or defrauded by identity theft can also suffer adverse consequences and losses, and to that extent, they are also victims.

Again, identity theft is one of the points that this legislation takes on. We look at the fraud in it. Someone spoke earlier and asked about the Criminal Code. This identifies it, and fraud is covered under the Criminal Code.

The other term that comes up quite often is phishing, not fishing with an “f”, but phishing with a “ph”. Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social websites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public.

Phishing is typically carried out by email or instant messaging and often directs users to enter details to a fake website that looks and feels almost identical to a legitimate one. When we go somewhere on the web and see something saying it is a certain company, we want to make sure that it is real, that it is what it says it is.

Phishing basically sets up a fake facade that people think they can trust. People input information and then the information is harvested and used to hurt individuals. Whether it is taking their money or identity or causing problems for those individuals, we can see where the problem would come.

The one we hear about often is spam. That seems to be the generic one that covers everything. Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messaging indiscriminately.

While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is also applied to similar abuses in other media, including instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, web research engine spam, spam in blogs, wikispam, online classified ad spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, and junk fax transmissions.

People who have faxes in their offices have had junk fax transmissions come to them. It uses up trees by using paper, it uses up resources by using ink, and it uses up copies that the individual receiving it has to pay for. Sometimes when these transmissions are received in large number, it becomes an expense that hurts.

Social networking spam is something that people are aware of, as well as television advertising and file-sharing network spam.

We have all heard the word “spyware”. Not many people really realize what spyware is. It is a type of malware that can be installed on computers and collects little bits of information at a time, without the user's knowledge. The key is “without the user's knowledge”. Users do not know that this spyware is in their computers and it constantly transmits little bits of information. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user and it can be difficult to detect.

Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's personal computer, and while the term “spyware” suggests software that secretly monitors the user's computing, the functions of spyware extend well beyond simple monitoring. Spyware programs can collect various types of personal information such as Internet surfing habits and sites that have been visited, but it can also interfere with the user's control of the computer in other ways, such as installing additional software and redirecting web browser activity.

Spyware is known to change computer settings, resulting in slow connection speeds, different home pages, or loss of Internet functionality and other programs.

We have all come across that, where we are working on something and it seems that everything is going along really well, and suddenly everything stops. What happened? There is a piece of spyware that went in there and changed things around. There is a frustration and a cost to the individual.

If someone sitting at home, likely retired, working on a computer, has a fixed income and suddenly he or she has to expend dollars to get the computer running again, there is a direct effect there.

There may be those who ask how that affects them. We have all had the frustration. We have had to bring someone in to fix the problem, if he or she can fix the problem. When the individual gets it running again, that individual has money out of pocket. On a limited income, if one is retired, it really hurts individuals directly.

Computer viruses are something that we hear of a lot. A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer. A true virus can spread from one computer to another when its host is taken to a target computer, for instance because a user sent it over a network or the Internet or carried it on a removable medium such as a floppy disk, CD, DVD or USB drive.

We see a lot more of that now where we have people coming in with USB drives, collecting the information and then going to another computer. It is a perfect way to spread viruses.

I have a 13-year-old daughter who works on her computer. She brings her homework back. She will input the information and take it to school. She might be bringing back something from the school or someone else might be bringing it to the school. So we can see where a virus can cause a lot of problems for many people.

Viruses can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by other computers.

One that we do not hear much about is botnets. That is covered under this legislation. A botnet is a collection of software agents or robots that run autonomously and automatically. The term is most commonly associated with IRC bots.

The best way to describe IRC bots is when we go to a website or even an email and think we are interacting with another individual but we are not. With an IRC bot, we are basically interacting with another machine. We think that person is there responding to us. We can see the problems that could cause: someone going to one site, getting answers, building up a trust, and then suddenly finding out it is a machine on the other side.

The other thing that happens with the IRC bots is that one can access a number of people, all interacting with this one machine, so the individual is not duping people, a machine is, and the spread can cause a lot more damage because it is so pervasive.

As well, it does spread some malicious software and it can also refer to a network of computers using distributed computing software.

Anyone who has used a computer can relate to the kind of frustration that this malware can cause in some of these unwanted infiltrations into one's computer.

It is not only frustration. As I mentioned earlier, there can be a real financial loss to the individual who is using that computer and connecting and who will be affected by some of these issues.

Let us take a look at Bill C-28 again, now that we know what some of the definitions are.

Bill C-28 contains four main thrusts. It prohibits the transmission of commercial messages, basically spam, without express consent. The only conditions under which express consent is not required are those where family or prior recent business relationships exist. Messages requesting consent have to provide the names of the sender and the client on whose behalf the message is being sent, contact information for both, and a way to unsubscribe.

Quotes and estimates that are requested are not covered by this, nor are emails or follow-ups on business previously transacted.

There is one loophole or one barrier in this legislation that I would like to talk about. That is in regard to people who are in sales, such as financial advisers, real estate agents, or stockbrokers. What often happens is that they will do business with someone, and at some point, using real estate as an example, the person they are doing business with will say, “My brother, John, is looking for a house. Give him a call or get hold of him. I am sure you can help him out. You have done a great job for me, and John, who is my relative, could use your help”.

This legislation unfortunately does not allow the real estate agent to send an email to that person. He has to get express consent from the individual to whom he will be sending that email.

I was talking about how this legislation has to be reviewed on a regular basis. I think this is one of the areas we are going to have to look at and ask if it really allows business and e-commerce to continue and to flourish. We can see the barriers that are set up and the problems it would cause to people who earn a living in the sales field.

As we see this going on, I think it is important that we monitor some of the effects of this legislation. Maybe in about a year or so we should review it, see what is going on, and see what the unintended effects of this legislation will be.

The bill attempts to curtail phishing, with a prohibition on false or misleading information on the source of an email. The bill also prohibits the installation of programs to operate another's computer or the dissemination of messages on a computer without the individual's consent, and there is the option to withdraw the consent.

As we can see, it goes back to malware, the spam that we spoke about earlier and how this bill will block that.

The bill includes provisions that halt the collection of personal information, by amending PIPEDA, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, to include a ban on collecting or using electronic addresses obtained through a computer program designed for their collection, as I mentioned earlier, the phishing program.

So this legislation does come into play, and there are additional provisions that specify that a tougher regime under FISA take precedence over the existing Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and all the legislation that could apply.

The bill's provisions extend not only to those who violate it, but also to the agents or directors of the corporations who aid, authorize or acquiesce to the violations. The bill follows the money. That is the key right here, because when we look at a lot of this, the infractions and the invasion, it comes right back to money. It follows the money, stripping protection for those who hide behind a corporate shield.

When we look at some of the fines that are out there, the fines could go as high as $1 million for individuals and $10 million for corporations. The bill aims to accomplish ending the practice of spamming.

Will this bill end it completely? I think when there is something illegal going on, it just keeps going and going. What this does is minimize it and at least offer some protection to Canadians when it comes to spamming, phishing and the rest of the electronic malware that exists around the world and on the Internet.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, I rise here today to speak to Bill C-28, once known as the Fighting Wireless and Internet Spam Act.

I would like to begin by saying that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of the principle of Bill C-28, which was previously known as Bill C-27, but which died on the order paper at prorogation. A number of minor changes have been made, but the overall text, its objectives and key elements remain the same.

New legislation that specifically targets unsolicited commercial electronic messages has been needed and requested by society as a whole for some time now. Governments, Internet service providers, network operators and consumers are all affected by the problem of spam. Preserving the efficiency of legitimate electronic commerce is a vital and pressing issue. Not only are 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 the online economy.

The Bloc Québécois is pleased to see that Bill C-28 takes into account most of the recommendations in the final report of the task force on spam. On the other hand, we are upset that the legislative process has taken four long years. Computer technology is evolving at astonishing speeds, and spammers keep finding new ways to achieve their goals. Accordingly, consideration of the bill in committee should give many industry stakeholders and consumer protection groups an opportunity to express their views on the proposed Electronic Commerce Protection Act. A number of other points also need to be examined in committee and I will come back to those points later on in my speech.

The task force on spam was struck in 2004 to look into this problem, which is constantly evolving, and to find ways of dealing with it. The task force heard from Internet service providers, electronic marketing experts and government and consumer representatives.

In all, more than 60 stakeholders took part in the discussions, providing input on issues such as legislation and law enforcement, international co-operation, and public education and awareness. In addition to launching an Internet-based consumer awareness campaign entitled “Stop Spam Here” to inform users of steps they can take to limit and control the volume of spam they receive, the task force on spam presented its final report to the Minister of Industry on May 17, 2005.

Entitled “Stopping Spam: Creating a Stronger, Safer Internet”, this report calls for new, targeted legislation and more rigorous enforcement to strengthen the legal and regulatory weapons that Canada could use in the global battle against spam.

The report also supports the creation of a focal point within government for coordinating the actions taken to address the spam issue and other related problems like spyware.

Among the report's key recommendations are more vigorous legislation and enforcement and legislation to prohibit spam and protect personal information and privacy, as well as computers, emails and 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.

In addition, new and existing resources of the organizations responsible for the administration and enforcement of anti-spam laws should be strengthened.

The task force recommended creating a centre to coordinate the government's anti-spam initiatives. This focal point would coordinate policy and education campaigns and support law enforcement efforts. It would also receive complaints and compile statistics on spam.

To curb the volume of spam reaching users, the task force developed a series of industry best practices for Internet service providers, network operators and email marketers. Examples include allowing ISPs and other network operators to block email file attachments known to carry viruses and to stop emails with deceptive subject lines.

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. The report recommends that these groups voluntarily adopt, regularly review and enhance the best practices.

To help change people's online behaviour, the task force created an online public education campaign called “Stop Spam Here”. Launched in 2004, the website offers consumers, volunteer organizations and businesses practical tips for protecting their personal information, computers and email addresses. The task force recommended that all partners continue to enhance the site's content.

Since most of the spam reaching Canadians comes from outside the country, international measures to stem spam are vital. Therefore, the task force proposed that the government continue its efforts to harmonize anti-spam policies and to improve cooperation among all countries to enforce anti-spam laws.

Four years later, on April 24, 2009, the Government of Canada finally introduced new legislation to protect electronic commerce, namely, Bill C-27. Inspired primarily by the final report of the task force on spam, Bill C-27 established a framework to protect electronic commerce. To achieve that, the bill would enact the new Electronic Commerce Protection Act, or ECPA. Basically, this act would set limits on the sending of spam.

Spam can be defined as any electronic commercial message sent without the express consent of the recipient. It can be 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. Considering the content of the message, it would be reasonable to conclude its purpose is to encourage participation in a commercial activity, including an electronic message that offers to purchase, sell, barter or lease a product, goods, a service, land or an interest or right in land, or a business, investment or gaming opportunity.

Note that the following types of commercial messages, which appear in clause 7, are not considered to be spam: 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 consists 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; messages sent by means of a facsimile to a telephone account; messages that are a voice recording sent to a telephone account; a message that is of a class, or is sent in circumstances, specified in the regulations.

This means that, under this legislation, sending spam to an electronic address—email, instant messenger, telephone or any other similar account—would be prohibited. The only circumstances under which it would be allowed is when the person to whom the message is sent has consented to receiving it, whether the consent is express or implied

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. Lastly, 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.

The bill would also prohibit altering the transmission data in an electronic message so that it is delivered to destinations other than that specified by the initial sender. In addition, the bill would prohibit installing a computer program on another person's computer and sending an electronic message from that computer without the owner's consent.

There are provisions for administrative recourse. Anyone who contravenes, even indirectly, any of these provisions would be liable to an administrative monetary penalty, or AMP, if the computer used is located in Canada. The maximum AMP is up to $1 million for individuals and up to $10 million in all other cases. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC, will be responsible for investigating complaints and, when necessary, imposing the penalties. Furthermore, the CRTC will have the authority to apply for an injunction if it finds that a person is about to or is likely to carry out a violation.

In order to carry out these inquiries, 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 or prepare a document based on data, information or documents that are in their possession. It could even conduct a site visit in order to gather such information or, if necessary, to establish whether there was a violation under clauses 6 to 9. Note that it will have to get a warrant from a justice of the peace prior to entering premises.

An individual who refuses or fails to comply with a demand under clauses 15, 17 or 19 will be guilty of an offence and subject to a fine of up to $10,000 for a first offence and up to $25,000 for repeat offences. Businesses will be subject to a fine of up to $100,000 for a first offence and $250,000 for repeat offences.

There are also private remedies. Bill C-28 provides for the creation of a private right of action, modelled on U.S. legislation, that would enable businesses and individuals to initiate civil proceedings against any person who contravenes clauses 6 to 9 of the new act.

If the court believes that a person has contravened any of these provisions, it may order that person to pay an amount corresponding to either the loss or damage suffered or the expenses incurred. If the applicant is unable to establish these amounts, the court may order the applicant to be paid a maximum amount of $200 for each contravention, up to a maximum of $1 million.

Bill C-28 also proposes an extension of the co-operation and information exchange powers for anything that has to do with the Competition Act, the Telecommunications Act or the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

For example, any organization to which part 1 of that act applies may on its own initiative disclose to the CRTC, the Commissioner of Competition or the Privacy Commissioner any information in its possession that it believes relates to a violation of the act. The CRTC, the Commissioner of Competition or the Privacy Commissioner must also consult with each other and may share any information necessary to carry out their activities and responsibilities in accordance with the act.

Over the years, unsolicited commercial electronic messages have turned into a major social and economic problem that undermines the business and personal productivity of Quebeckers. Not only does spam impede the use of email for personal communication, but it also threatens the growth of legitimate e-commerce.

The Internet has become an essential tool for commerce and communication in general. According to the government, the online marketplace represents an important segment of the Canadian and Quebec economies. In fact, there was $62.7 billion in sales in 2007. In 2009, e-commerce reportedly surpassed $8.75 trillion. But the Internet and e-commerce are also becoming increasingly vulnerable and threatened.

Spam accounts for more than 80% of global electronic traffic, which results in considerable expenses for businesses and consumers. Spam is a real nuisance. It damages computers and networks, contributes to deceptive and fraudulent marketing scams, and invades people's privacy. On a larger scale, spam directly threatens the viability of the Internet as an efficient means of communication, undermines consumer confidence in legitimate e-businesses and hinders electronic transactions. And in the end, everyone loses.

The need for new legislation dealing with unsolicited electronic messages has been urgent for far too long. The Bloc Québécois is pleased to see that Bill C-28 covers most of the recommendations made by the task force on spam. However, we deplore the fact that the legislative process has taken four long years. Computer technology is evolving at astonishing speeds, and spammers keep finding new ways to achieve their goal. In terms of information technology, four years is an eternity.

Consideration of the bill in committee should give many industry stakeholders and consumer protection groups an opportunity to express their views on the relevance of new electronic commerce protection legislation. The committee should also study the exchange of information between the CRTC, the Commissioner of Competition and the Privacy Commissioner. And while we want these exchanges to take place in order to maximize the efficiency of the ECPA, any personal information that is shared must always remain confidential. This is even more critical because this information could be shared with foreign states. The question of vigilance in relation to protecting commercial ties between businesses and consumers will also be studied in committee. And although the ECPA's provisions on this subject may seem to be sufficient, industry evidence must be considered because this legislation cannot slow down the use of the Internet as a catalyst for and facilitator of trade.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Madam Speaker, when I was first elected in the summer 2004, spam was a burgeoning issue, but it was something that was focused. Everyone's Internet account was getting inundated with spam and solicitations of a nefarious nature. In 2004 the activity was measured at $130 billion worldwide. One has to wonder exactly how it goes from zero to $130 billion in a very short period of time.

The situation has proliferated to the point where it has become oppressive to individuals who have email accounts and certainly for small businesses with accounts. In dealing with spam and unsolicited emails, we are at a point where the system has been clogged. Now 80% of the information traffic to our computers and PDAs constitutes what we know as spam.

That was then and this is now. Not only has the situation been exacerbated by the fact that so many people are trying to get involved in unsolicited emails and are becoming much better at, the system is allowing them to become much faster and in many cases more elusive. We have several platforms by which people can do this.

As imaginative as we can be when it comes to the world as an extension of who we are, since 2004, we have had the proliferation of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. Also an abundance of texting has taken place. We know it is not only the computer on our desks at home or at the office, it now travels with us all day no matter where we go because it is much more compact.

Back in 2004, about six months after I was elected, an anti-spam task force was established. At that time, experts were gathered because it was a pressing issue. Let us remember, it is not only the domestic issue at which we are looking. Sometimes we extensively deal in a domestic nature in the House with issues such as the economy, social security, pensions and employment insurance. Sometimes these serve as models for the world to follow, such as our Canada pension plan.

Now we are now completely intertwined with the world. As we know, electronic commerce, or e-commerce, knows no boundaries. It surpasses all that CBSA can put out there. It travels around the globe instantaneously. We are able to connect to the world in a way we never thought possible. I am not saying that is a bad thing. It is absolutely wonderful if we are to achieve a common understanding around the globe. However, it becomes problematic when we have to create domestic legislation to follow suit on international agreements. Therein lies the crux of what we are doing.

Other members have pointed out, and I would wholeheartedly agree, that we are behind the eight ball when it comes to this type of legislation. Legislation has been addressed in other G8 nations and it has gone farther than we have. Now we find ourselves in the situation where we are playing catch up with the rest of the world.

However, that is one issue. We still have to do our due diligence within the House, through debate and committee work, so we can create legislation that has teeth and is effective.

The second phase of this follows from the legislation we create in the House, and that is the enforcement of it, which is very important. This is why the myriad of agencies, as mentioned in this debate, have been brought into this in order to enforce it.

I mentioned the international component of this. Being from the east coast, primarily Newfoundland and Labrador, we have dealt with legislation on an international perspective when it comes to our fisheries. As many past politicians from Newfoundland and Labrador have said, “borders are borders, but fish can swim”, and they swim over borders.

Therefore, the international scope of this issue is much like issues of climate change. Many of the models created to govern our resources are created in international forums. For fisheries, it is the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization, NAFO. For climate change, it is the United Nations and other avenues and even the Council of Europe for that matter.

This agreement has taken place through international governance. Now we have to follow with our own domestic legislation. That goes a long way in cluing up and taking our place in the world to deal with this issue.

I have compiled some background information. My compliments to the Library of Parliament for this legislative summary. I want to congratulate Ms. Alysia Davies for compiling this information. She did a fantastic job. She is with the legal and legislative division, Parliamentary Information and Research Service.

There are a few clauses in the bill that deal with the situation at hand.

Following the work of the task force, we had the first go around with Bill C-27. When it made its way through committee, certain changes were brought forward by the committee, as well as the government and the department, which have been incorporated for the most part. That too follows a great debate. Following the prorogation, the bill died on the order paper. Now we are with Bill C-28 and we will do our due diligence yet once again.

As Bill C-27, it was known as the electronic commerce protection act. We now incorporate items that were added to the former ECPA as government amendments during its original passage when it was Bill C-27.

As with the previous bill, the new bill, called “fighting Internet and wireless spam act”, would amend four existing acts that deal with telecommunications regulation, competition and privacy. Among other changes, these amendments designate the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, commonly known as the CRTC, as the main regulator of the fighting Internet and wireless spam act. Also, both the Commissioner of Competition and the Privacy Commissioner will play enforcement roles related to their respective mandates.

There may be some questions. For example, one question earlier in the debate was about the Privacy Commissioner not being mandated to educate the public. That is a very valid point because then it falls within the realm of justice. That certainly needs to be brought out in the House and we need to have a thorough debate as to exactly who will to educate on what is not right, not legal and what fines may result.

My hon. colleague from Manitoba brought up the idea of prosecution for the sake of criminal charges being laid. Right now we are dealing with just fines, but that too should be addressed. In future, this may be re-addressed in this legislation.

I also want to talk about the four pillars. This is a combination of a process that began with the anti-spam action plan in 2004. That was a private sector task force, chaired by Industry Canada, to examine the issue of unsolicited commercial email, which we now know as spam.

By the end of 2004, spam, which is in many ways the electronic equivalent of junk mail, had grown to encompass 80% of global email traffic. Imagine a mailbox with 80% of its mail being junk mail. Many would say that is already happening, and in some cases I am sure it is.

Nonetheless, 80% is a high number because it is so easy and cheap to put out these emails. Typing something in, either a scam or something close to a scam, and feeding it to the masses electronically is much easier than doing it with physical paper.

The task force on spam led the action plan at a round table of national stakeholders in December 2004. We received feedback through announcements in the Canada Gazette and in a dedicated online forum. It issued a report in May 2005. That report recommended, among other measures, legislation specifically aimed at combatting spam, which we are dealing with today. It is a second incarnation of a spam act. The federal government introduced a first attempt back in the 42nd session.

I want to thank two gentlemen from the Senate who did a lot of work prior to this. First is Senator Donald Oliver. Second is former Senator Yoine Goldstein from Montreal, who did a tremendous amount of work on this issue. We owe both former Senator Goldstein and Senator Oliver a debt of gratitude.

The spam act can be seen as a complement to the e-commerce legislation that has gradually been developing in each of the Canadian provinces and territories over the past 10 years.

We owe a debt gratitude to provincial legislation that started back in 1998 under the uniform electronic commerce act created by the Uniform Law Conference of Canada. The provincial and territorial acts have thus far served as the underpinning for burgeoning e-commerce sectors across the country. We also owe a debt of gratitude to many of the respective provincial ministers for helping us create the bill in front of us today. Eventually we will deal with the enforcement aspects of it.

Basically what came from that, the main federal legislation related to e-commerce, was the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA, which governs privacy requirements for private sector organizations and electronic documents within federal jurisdiction and in provinces or territories that have not yet established their own similar legislation. This is typical for many pieces of legislation since the inception of Parliament.

As I mentioned, Canada is the last of the G8 countries to introduce specific anti-spam legislation domestically, and a lot of this came from what was negotiated in international fora. Some existing Criminal Code provisions were identified by the task force as being of possible assistance in prosecuting spam cases. The task force worked on this with the Department of Justice and the Technological Crime Branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 2004 and 2005.

This is another element of the bill that should be engaged to a greater degree. We are still on the cusp of understanding the influence that spam emails have around the world. In six years we have come a long way in electronic commerce. We have gone from the nuisance of spam email to Facebook and social media, such as Twitter and other forms of apps, iPads, and so forth. Members get the idea. The platforms are evolving, but the people who are behind the criminal aspect of spam, and some not so criminal, are adapting around the platforms that currently exist. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to try to keep up to date, to ensure people are informed as to what they can and cannot do and to allow the government agencies, at arm's-length, to deal with the enforcement of these issues.

I mentioned the technological crime branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the requirements to bring a charge under the existing provisions. However, when the task force report was published, these provisions had not been used for this purpose, so questions remain around that.

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 was no overarching framework for addressing such complaints. We can see the genesis of this. At the time, the task force was able to tell them to deal with the issue of the Criminal Code and deal the fact that our government agencies are inundated with complaints and that we have to marry the two. The fine situation we have right now was a result of that. That is something we need to address at a future date.

The legislation would provide a clear regulatory scheme, including administrative monetary penalties, or AMPs, with respect to both spam and related threats from unsolicited electronic contact, including, which is the important part, identity theft, phishing, spyware, viruses and botnets. It would also grant an additional right of civil action to businesses and consumers targeted by the perpetrators of such activities. Therein lies another aspect of taking these people to court. Does it hold enough teeth is the expression and this is what I have a few reservations about.

For descriptions and analysis, clause 2, for example, contains its own definition of what we call commercial activity. It is different from the one in PIPEDA, the legislation that served as the paramount legislation for dealing with spam. It does not modify the existing definition to that act but builds on the PIPEDA wording of “any particular transaction, act or conduct or any regular course of conduct that is of a commercial character”, and adds the qualification “whether or not the person who carries it out does so in the expectation of profit”.

Therefore, we get the incentive for doing this when we talk about unsolicited emails and other nefarious activities that I described earlier, the botnets, the spyware and those sorts of things, because those are the programs that are adapting, for a nefarious nature, to solicit from us money taken under circumstances that consumers would consider to be not right. Therefore, it tries to define that for the sake of profit.

It does reflect an intention to widen the scope of who could be considered responsible under the new law in cases where spamming or other activity occurs, possibly implicating Internet service providers, or ISPs, or even those whose computers are being used for spamming without their awareness or consent. We can see how this has taken place.

A lot of situations have developed since we first started the task force about six years ago that this legislation has to address. A lot of that came out of the committee work on Bill C-27 and now enacted within this. Part of clause 2 acknowledges that.

There are also provisions discussed in further detail, which I will talk about in just a little while, but one of the situations was telemarketers and what we call the DNCL, the do not call list, which members of Parliament receive a lot of calls about. I would say that over the past six years of being here, I have certainly dealt with a lot of that and the bill would address it to an extent.

Eighty per cent of global traffic regarding spamming is an incredible amount of activity. This is what this legislation attempts to address. There are key provisions in clauses 7 to 10 and 13.

One of the situations that subclause 7(6) originally added to the predecessor bill through a government amendment that was before the House of Commons under the industry, science and technology committee specified that the prohibitions on sending a commercial or electronic message do not apply to quotes or estimates for the supply of a product, goods, a service, land or an interest or right in land, if the message was requested by the recipient. Therefore, this bill would not impede on the normal course of e-commerce.

We need to face the fact that those businesses, especially the small and medium size businesses, the SMEs, have been successful through the world of Internet and therefore we want to ensure this legislation will not impede upon their efforts to create business and to solicit in what I would call a way that is consistent with good consumer practice.

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-28, the anti-spam bill, which was formerly Bill C-27.

I have often bemoaned the lack of co-operation in the House, but this is one case where members of all partisan stripes seem to agree.

All of us and our constituents have been inundated with unwanted spam at home and at work. Spam represents about 87% of email activity around the world. At best, it is a huge waste of time and energy. It was estimated last year that over 62 trillion, and I am trying to get my head around that number, spam emails were sent out. It is done in a variety of ways. This bill would identify and eliminate some of those ways.

This bill enjoys strong public support. It certainly has the support of the New Democratic Party. This is part of the New Democratic Party's electoral platform to move forward on a number of consumer issues that we want to see implemented as law.

There will be a push to try to weaken this bill. There are some elements in this bill that make it a really strong and good bill for Canadians and Canadian businesses because it affects our economy.

Canada is actually in the top 10 when it comes to generating and receiving spam. Canada is the only G8 country that does not have the kind of legislation that Bill C-28 represents. Once again, we are behind but we can catch up with this bill quite significantly and have one of the better models to deal with this important issue.

Approximately 1 out of 20, or 5%, of the spam in the world comes from Canada. Canada is known as a harbour for some of the big spammers. I believe we stand fourth in the world in terms of spamming, behind Russia and just ahead of Brazil. An Ipsos Reid poll found recently that approximately 130 spam messages are received by Canadians each week. That is troubling because it is up 51% from just the year before. Speaking for myself, both at work and at home I get quite a bit more than 130 spam emails.

It is not just the irritation of removing unwanted messages and solicitations; it is also time consuming. Employers are worried about the time it takes and the cost to their businesses. As a small business owner myself, I know how taxing spam can be on my computer system's efficiency. It puts my computers at risk and lowers my employees' productivity.

Some may argue that businesses have the right to inundate us with these kinds of messages, but really it is a privilege. No one has an absolute right to inundate us with emails, especially when many spammers use malware and other kinds of spyware to gain data on us regarding where we shop online, what our online consumer habits are, et cetera.

Interestingly, the bill provides for windows of opportunity for businesses with existing relationships to make that connection with their customers. One idea is an 18-month extension in terms of a previous existing business relationship. That makes sense. The Bloc moved a motion to extend that grace period on previous business relationships to 24 months. I strongly disagree with extending it to 24 months. Eighteen months is long enough.

Once this law is in place, there will be three regulatory agencies to punish spammers. The CRTC will investigate complaints. The Competition Bureau will slap on fines of up to $1 million for individuals and $10 million in all other cases. The Privacy Commissioner will get involved when people's privacy is violated.

The part about the Privacy Commissioner is important because far too often spammers have used headliners that look like many banks' headliners, and then people click on them, and I have almost done it a few times, thinking it is their bank, but it turns out that it is a spammer seeking to collect data and information on them, perhaps to create fraud.

There have been cases where people have lost money, thinking it was their own financial institution or a legitimate financial institution. They provided access to some of their monetary resources and suffered financial losses. This is shameful and should not be happening in a country like Canada.

There is going to be recourse to show those who bombard us with spam and those who have to deal with it that there will be real punishments, that it will be more than just a fine, that it is going to be significant for them to deal with and hopefully it will help to curb this behaviour.

One of the reasons that 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 or not this bill should deal with the telephone solicitation issues. It would not. However, at the same time, it would allow the minister actually some degree of ability and capability, and quite frankly, a bit more strength to work on the do not call list.

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 regarding that computer site. 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 site, at times unknown to us. That issue was taken off the table as well, thank goodness.

There was great Internet discussion and blogging about this offensive piece of legislation. I was happy to see that this was removed 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, which is pretty weak. 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 could opt out of that later on. I would just send an email that I do not want to continue this relationship. The way the legislation was, in 10 days, I would be taken off the list. The Bloc moved a motion for it to be 30 days. The final part of the bill is now 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 then 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 that out and that it would take 30 days to get out of that is absolute nonsense, especially with the sophistication of some of today's programs. Ten business days is more than sufficient time within which to end that relationship.

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. This is like a zombie computer where specific programs are written to go in and turn our computers into a generator for spam, or our email address for someone else who controls a whole grid of computers.

I hope to see the bill passed and I hope to not see it watered down in our unelected Senate. 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. Among the 35 counts that he was charged with were not only identity theft and fraud, but also money-laundering.

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 effective and professional-appearing in imaging and induces people to think it is something it is not, such as, for example, the banking industry as I have already mentioned. It costs the banking industry because it loses customers. People then do not want to trust that company because others have abused the site that appeared to be theirs.

That is why we do not want to lose sight of the criminal aspect of this as well. We must move the bill through as quickly as possible. It has taken long enough to get through committee, despite the noble efforts of my colleague, the hon. member for Windsor West, who has worked hard and smart on the bill.

Let us show Canadians that the government can get useful things accomplished for Canadians.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Madam Speaker, as I mentioned in my presentation, it was the Liberal Party in 2004 that initiated the process of looking at the very serious problem of spam. As my hon. colleague mentioned, this problem has huge cost implications for the entire planet. It is rather surprising that it has taken five years for this bill, which initially was Bill C-27, to reach third reading.

It is clear as well that Canada has not been ahead of the pack in taking the initiative to bring forward this bill. We have been a laggard on this issue. Canada is the last country in the G8 to bring forward a bill like this one. We are among only four OECD countries that do not yet have legislation on spam. The current government has been in power for almost five years and it has not given the issue of spam, with its huge cost implications, the necessary priority it should have been given.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, the research has estimated that spam costs the worldwide economy about $130 billion. This is not a recent number. This is a number that has been building up over time.

If we take that together with the fact that we are the only G8 country that does not have this legislation, and one of only four OECD countries, it begs the question of where the government's priorities are. When we think of the cost of just spam alone, and if we add all of the other abuses that affect productivity, and certainly therefore the cost to persons, business, and the Government of Canada, we have to question the minister's statement when he says that in developing this particular bill, “we have been able to incorporate the best practices of other countries that have launched similar efforts”.

If that is the case, why was Bill C-27, the predecessor to this bill, not based on the good practices of all these other countries? Does it not show that the government in fact was not really serious about making good laws and wise decisions?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I stand today in third reading to speak about Bill C-28. I was involved as a member of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology on the bill, which deals with a very important matter. It was known as Bill C-27 at the time and has now progressed to being Bill C-28, and it is very encouraging to see that we are now at third reading.

First of all, I would like to stress that we must act quickly to resolve the massive problem of unsolicited electronic messages, more commonly known as “spam”.

Let us go back to 2003, when the problem was not nearly as bad as it is now. A report at the time concluded that businesses spent $27 billion on expenses related to the IT personnel needed to deal with this plague.

Who of us in this chamber have not experienced that maddening moment when we have opened up our emails and discovered that a fairly large number were unsolicited, were trying to interest us in something we were really not interested in, were trying to sell us something? Who of us have not experienced the time it has taken to get rid of these unsolicited emails? Of course many of us have now had to purchase software to try to control so-called spam, and this is adding to our annoyance with the whole thing. Even today, the ingeniousness of some people still manages to circumvent even the best spam software, and we still occasionally receive spam messages even with that best software.

Spam represents, according to the experts, 60% to 80% of all email traffic around the world. Clearly this situation is a major challenge for consumers, businesses, governments and Internet service providers. Yet the issue at hand is not limited to spam and, therefore, legislation must also remedy the use of false or misleading statements that disguise the origins or true intent of the email, the installation of unauthorized programs and the unauthorized collection of personal information or email addresses.

Whether spam comes in the form of unsolicited emails, viruses hidden in attachments—which is often the case—phishing, misrepresentations or the use of fraudulent websites, the government must take action to ensure that Canada does not fall behind.

How can we be the only G8 country and one of only four OECD countries that has not introduced legislation on spam? No one can deny the magnitude of this problem that goes beyond the simple annoyance of receiving unsolicited emails.

This practice also has huge costs for users in terms of the cost of receiving emails and text messages, as well as in terms of the users' storage capacities. Furthermore, this interferes with computer systems, which can have consequences on businesses, governments and individuals. When spam floods and completely paralyzes systems, these practices have more serious effects than anyone could imagine on the way society functions.

We often do not realize how vulnerable we are, which is why we must act quickly. In this case, there is no point reminding members that when the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament at the beginning of the year, he ruined our chance to act quickly.

The Liberal Party of Canada has not only always been concerned by this serious problem but has been very proactive on this matter. In fact the Liberal government established an anti-spam task force in May 2004 that held public consultations and round tables with key industry stakeholders. This Liberal initiative led to the 2005 anti-spam action plan for Canada, which was a call to action.

The plan comprised specific recommendations, requiring the implementation of legislative measures that: prohibit the sending of unsolicited commercial electronic messages; prohibit the use of false or misleading statements that 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-28 and the initiatives announced by the Conservative government followed through on the recommendations made by the Liberal anti-spam task force of 2005. However, it is worth mentioning that Bill C-27, as originally submitted by the current government, contained a number of flaws. Fortunately, the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology did outstanding work and proposed recommendations that significantly improved the bill. With these amendments and with further changes recently proposed in Bill C-28, we believe the bill is achieving its main objectives.

Bill C-28 introduces legislation to deploy most of our recommendations, and therefore we are pleased to say that the government has finally decided to act on the recommendations brought forth by our task force. This said, care must taken and we will continue to monitor the legislation closely to ensure that it does not stifle legitimate electronic commerce in Canada. It is important to emphasize that the fight against spam is much more than just legislation.

The industry committee also discussed how important it is that the government take responsibility for a cohesive approach once Bill C-28 is passed. What good is this law if the authorities overseeing it cannot take action because they lack resources? What specifications will be given to the various entities that will enforce and implement the law?

The minister must submit a comprehensive enforcement plan outlining the roles of these entities, such as the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The fact is that with this many stakeholders, Industry Canada's role as coordinator will be extremely important. We must give this department the proper tools, both from a human resources and an organizational perspective.

In short, it is essential that there be a coordinated approach involving industry partners, affected organizations and concerned stakeholders in order to implement this bill, and it is in this context that the government needs to take action. It needs to provide the mechanisms to ensure that this legislation is enforced effectively. Enforcing this type of law is complex. It needs to be reviewed periodically so that we, as legislators, can cover all eventualities, such as technological advances.

I should also point it that it is becoming essential and urgent to coordinate our legislation with various countries and engage with the international community in order to harmonize measures to achieve agreed-upon objectives. Canada must now take its place and become a leader in this area.

The Liberal task force also recommended that resources be put toward co-ordinated enforcement of the law, since we all know that legislation will only go as far as the capacity and willingness to enforce the law. Hence it is of the utmost importance that the government put appropriate resources into enforcement, in its determination to work with other nations to stamp out spam.

It is also imperative that the government dedicate resources to clearly establish codes of practice. The Liberal Party of Canada will, without fail, be on task to assure that these elements are not forgotten as the process moves forward.

I am confident that we are on the right track. The members of the Liberal Party will continue to work to ensure that this bill is in line with the expectations of the people.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from the member for Richmond—Arthabaska.

I am pleased that the Canadian chambers of commerce have decided to support the bill. I know when it was presented to the House in past machinations of what it is now as BillC-27, a great number of concerns were raised. Amendments have been made. One problem that had been identified with past legislation was the sending out of spam prior to any kind of approval or consent from the recipients. We wanted to prohibit the use of false and misleading statements that disguised the origins or the intent of the email and the insulation of unauthorized programs.

I am sure that every member of the House has received calls from constituents with regard to some of these vexatious annoyances. When one tries do some work on the computer there are these types of things and they are annoying.

Does the member think that Bill C-28 addresses with sufficient rigour the one that is of most concern, the one to prohibit the unauthorized collection of personal information? I know there are various laws to protect personal information. Specifically with regard to the Internet and the use of online services, does the member believe that with the checks and balances this is adequately addressed within the legislation?

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak again to Bill C-28.

My colleagues may think I have become an expert on spam. I want to reassure them and the people who are watching us that I am not a spam expert and I have certainly never sent any spam. I have received spam, though, as I said in my previous speeches on this issue. People who work in offices today, especially decision makers, receive so much spam that there was a need for legislation on this issue, which is why the Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-28, the Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act.

I am not necessarily going to repeat all the criticisms the Bloc Québécois has offered in speeches in the House. But I do want to remind hon. members—and the Conservative member who spoke before me said this himself—that Bill C-27, which preceded Bill C-28 and concerned the same issue, died because the government prorogued Parliament, which is why Canada is so far behind other countries today when it comes to anti-spam legislation.

Better late than never, as I always say, but the damage that has been done is still there. People who have suffered losses, especially financial ones, because of all this spam will never get their money back. It is time to act, and we need to act as quickly as possible. We will see how quickly we can deal with this in committee. We will also see whether the government is willing to listen to people who might have improvements to make to this bill.

The Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-28. We will listen to the relevant testimony in committee. This speech may give me the chance to draw some conclusions, which I had not had time to do. In our speeches, we often get sidetracked and end up not having enough time to say everything we planned to say. As I touched on earlier, over the years, unsolicited commercial electronic messages have turned into a major social and economic problem that undermines the individual productivity of Quebeckers. People all across Canada have the same problem.

Spam is a threat to the growth of legitimate electronic commerce. Clearly, new technologies can be practical. If legal businesses want to communicate by email legitimately, we must not stop them from doing so. However, spam is something else entirely. Fraud is not the only danger. Some companies harass people, which is a huge waste of time for people in offices trying to get rid of these unwanted emails.

Spam accounts for more than 80% of global electronic traffic, which results in considerable expenses for businesses and consumers. In light of this situation, legislation to protect electronic commerce is reasonable and appropriate.

On another note, some clauses of the bill are still problematic. We would like further information about the national do not call list. The current list is doing the job it is supposed to do, and it is used by millions of people. Compliance with the national do not call list required many companies to reorganize their resources and make a large financial outlay. Could we not use the existing list?

I do not know what mechanism might make that possible, but that can be covered in committee. A number of parallels may be drawn between the system proposed for emails and the existing system for telephone calls. For example, I have had my name taken off call lists, but that does not means that marketing companies cannot get in touch with me. There are certain categories of businesses that can do so. Political parties are one example. Since I subscribe to newspapers, they can call me. I am not completely sheltered from receiving calls. However, people who incessantly phone during supper to sell all sorts of things are now breaking the law.

As I said, could we not use this list to cut the cost of creating a whole new list? We will have to wait and see.

It might be worth looking into. Speaking of the do not call list, consumers should understand that registering will reduce but not eliminate all telemarketing calls. There are certain kinds of telemarketing calls that are exempt from the rules. The exemptions include telemarketing calls made by or on behalf of political parties, riding associations and candidates; Canadian registered charities; and newspapers of general circulation for the purpose of soliciting subscriptions.

Telemarketing calls from organizations with whom people have an existing business relationship are also exempt. A person is considered to have an existing business relationship with a telemarketer if they purchased, leased, or rented a product or service in the last 18 months from the telemarketer, have a written contract with the telemarketer for a service that is still in effect or expired within the last eighteen 18 months, or asked a telemarketer about a product or service within the last six months. In those cases, people can expect to receive calls at home.

Telemarketers may also call those who have provided express consent to be called. Express consent includes permission on a written form or an electronic or online form, or verbal permission. The do not call list rules do not apply to telemarketing calls made to businesses.

If you do not want to be called by a telemarketer making an exempt call, you can ask to be put on the telemarketer’s internal do not call list. Every telemarketer is required to maintain such a list and respect wishes not to be called. Organizations conducting market research, surveys, or public opinion polls are not required to keep their own specific do not call lists.

I am explaining all this to say that it is possible to have our telephone numbers taken off telemarketing lists. This list is working well. The very same principle should apply to email. Text messages can also come under this category. I think that Bill C-28 covers text messages as well as email.

I would remind the House that Bill C-28 was inspired by the final report of the task force on spam, which was created in 2004 and did an enormous amount of work. I have already had the opportunity to address some of the 22 recommendations made by the task force. Of course I will not list all of them here in the House, but I have already mentioned a couple of them. I would like to revisit some other, very interesting recommendations. Most of the 22 measures recommended to the government have been accepted and included in Bill C-28.

There are some very interesting recommendations regarding legislation, regulation and enforcement. The federal government was told it should establish in law a clear set of rules to prohibit spam and other emerging threats to the safety and security of the Internet—for example botnets, spyware and keylogging—by enacting new legislation—which will be done when Bill C-28 is passed—and amending existing legislation as required. It is worth noting that this bill also amends a number of other pieces of legislation, including the Competition Act, which I will talk about a little later, if I have the time. Of course this new legislation will affect the Competition Bureau.

It is important for people to know that they will have some recourse when it comes to sending and receiving unwanted emails. This is also covered in the final report of the task force, which was made up of experts, government officials and marketing experts, as well as leading experts in the field of these new technologies.

According to the task force on spam, the following penalties and remedies should be applicable: new offences created should be civil- and strict-liability offences, with criminal liability possible for more egregious or repeated offences. There should be meaningful statutory penalties for all offences listed in the recommendation. They also said that there should be meaningful statutory damages available to persons, both individuals and corporations, and that there should be meaningful statutory damages available to persons who bring civil action. The businesses whose products or services are being promoted by way of spam should also be held responsible for the spamming. Responsibility should also rest with other third-party beneficiaries of spam.

This leads us to the issue of private recourse. People should know that they will have rights once this bill is passed. Bill C-28 provides for the creation of a private right of action that would enable businesses and individuals to initiate civil proceedings against any person who contravenes articles 6 to 9 of the new act; this is found in clause 47 and onward. If the court believes that a person has contravened any of these provisions, it may order them to pay an amount representing either the loss or damage suffered, or the expenses incurred. If the applicant is unable to establish these amounts, the court may order the applicant to be paid a maximum amount of $20 for each contravention, not exceeding $1,000,000. This is found in clause 51.

That may seem a bit high, but in one of my earlier speeches on Bill C-28, I mentioned an individual from Montreal who was found guilty by a California court of hacking into the Facebook social networking site. This individual, who managed to send a slew of spam messages through Facebook, was fined $1 billion. Yves Boisvert wrote about this case in an article in La Presse, which I have quoted here before. The article said that this individual will never be able to pay $1 billion, but it served as a good scare for all those who use websites, social networks and email addresses to defraud or embezzle people and get away with it. These people flood us with unwanted emails or text messages, which are becoming increasingly popular, as I mentioned earlier. We all get them on our telephones. The individual in question in this case will perhaps not pay the fine, but he will certainly not have any desire to start up again.

Bill C-28 also proposes an extension of the co-operation and information exchange powers for anything that has to do with the Competition Act, the Telecommunications Act or the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. Earlier I said that I had some examples about the Competition Bureau. For example, any organization to which part 1 of that act applies may on its own initiative disclose to the CRTC, the Commissioner of Competition or the Privacy Commissioner any information in its possession that it believes relates to a violation of the act. The CRTC, the Commissioner of Competition or the Privacy Commissioner must also consult with each other and share any information necessary to carry out their activities and responsibilities in accordance with their respective acts.

And if agreements are signed to this effect, this information could be given to the government of a foreign state, an international state or government organization or one of their agencies, if the information is useful in ensuring compliance with laws that address conduct substantially similar to conduct prohibited in our laws. It is important that countries continue to consult more often in order to end this scourge of spam or at least reduce it; it will be difficult to eliminate it entirely.

On one hand, agreements must specify that the information can only be used to assist an investigation or proceeding in respect of a contravention of the laws of a foreign state that address conduct that is substantially similar to those I just spoke about. On the other hand, they must ensure that the information will remain confidential and cannot be otherwise shared without the express consent of the person responsible for the communication. These two conditions are fundamental to preserving the privacy rights of those concerned.

I said earlier that it was important to remember why countries enacted such laws, which are becoming increasingly strict. When a new technology comes on the scene, it is not always possible to know exactly how people are going to adjust to it and what powers the courts will have to deal with all the fraud and abuse that can be perpetrated with this new technology. But some countries have reacted much more quickly than we have, and we need to use their experience to help the victims of these unwanted emails. Spam is a real nuisance. It damages computers and networks, contributes to deceptive marketing scams and invades people's privacy. That list alone shows just how serious a problem spam can be.

More generally, 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. In the end, everyone loses.

I do not know whether it is because of my age, but when I buy things on the Internet, I am always reluctant to give my credit card number. It always gives me pause. If hon. members are like me, they wonder whether everything is secure or whether someone somewhere is looking at what they are doing on their computers. Maybe I watch too many movies—even though I do not have that much spare time—but I know there are hackers out there who can play around in people's home or office computers. Not only can they create computer problems, but they can also access the personal information of people who are using sites legitimately to purchase items.

In any event, like everyone else I got up to speed and managed to do my banking transactions, my transfers and all that on the Internet. So far, so good. However, before buying anything on the Internet with a credit card number, I check as much as possible to see whether the site is secured. So far, things have worked out well, but I know that everyone knows someone who has been a victim after making this type of transaction. We have to restore public confidence to ensure that those who have a legitimate business can make a living and that consumers can benefit from this properly.

New legislation to regulate unsolicited email has been needed for far too long now. The Bloc Québécois is pleased to see that Bill C-28 addresses most of the recommendations from the final report of the task force on spam.

Since I am being asked to wrap up, the time has come to talk about how we are behind on legislation that has been passed around the world. I am talking about the United States, Australia and Great Britain, for example. We must nonetheless proceed carefully. I invite people to read a very interesting article in La Presse about the Competition Bureau and how it has started to attack social networks. This September 25 article by Isabelle Massé addressed advertising on social networks and the importance of taking action.

I do not have enough time to quote it as much as I had hoped to, but it is worth reading this article that shows that the Competition Bureau has been able to take action. With Bill C-28, other organizations will be able to take even more consistent and concerted action.

As I was saying, it is time to take action.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in my place today to speak to Bill C-28, a bill that passed second reading as the fighting Internet and wireless spam act, or FISA. With this legislation, we would be providing Canadian consumers and businesses with a regulatory and legal regime that would help drive spammers out of Canada but permit legitimate online commerce.

Hon. members will recall that Bill C-28 recently received support from all sides of the House. In fact, several members pointed out the importance of passing this bill quickly. Indeed, we have been working for some time now to produce and implement legislation to reduce spam and related online threats that discourage the use of electronic commerce and undermine privacy.

The origins of this bill, after all, go back to the work of the task force on spam. The task force recommended that strong action be taken against unsolicited commercial emails, as it recognized that spam was becoming more than just a nuisance. It has become the means by which viruses, trojans and worms are spread through the Internet and it undermines confidence in the digital economy.

The task force made its recommendations, and Industry Canada followed up with its own consultations. In the last Parliament, Bill C-27, the electronic commerce protection act, or ECPA, was introduced in April 2009. The House unanimously passed Bill C-27 at third reading last November and it was sent to the other place on December 1, 2009.

The fundamentals of the former Bill C-27 and this Bill C-28 remain the same. With the new parliamentary session, Industry Canada took the opportunity to fine-tune some of the features of the bill before reintroducing it as Bill C-28. For example, given the more focused consent regime in the bill, it was necessary to make it clear that Bill C-28 takes precedence over the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act with respect to consent.

In review by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, all parties stood behind the principles of this bill and there was good discussion about how some of these principles would be applied. For example, realtors and other businesses would need to change some business practices with respect to third party referrals as a result of requirements for consent in Bill C-28.

Committee members also expressed concern that the government allocate sufficient resources to administer the new rules. As hon. members will recall, the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Privacy Commissioner will all have their respective roles in combatting the effects of spam and related online threats. These three enforcement agencies would be able to collaborate with each other and their international counterparts as a result of this bill.

The government has committed that all three agencies will receive additional funding and personnel to fulfill this role. In addition, Industry Canada will establish a spam reporting centre and support the Office of Consumer Affairs at Industry Canada in providing resources for education and awareness.

When it came time to go through the clause-by-clause study, every clause but one was passed by the committee. As per the report from the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, clauses 2 through 92 were carried. Clause 1 was defeated. It would seem that there was unanimous consent in the committee and I believe in the House on the importance of this bill and the effect it would have on countering Internet and wireless spam and related online threats.

However, where the committee could not find its way to agree was on the short title of the bill. As outlined in clause 1, the short title of Bill C-28 is the “Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act”. The name was intended to reflect the concern that cellphone and other wireless spam has joined Internet spam as a source of malicious infections that undermine consumer confidence in the digital economy.

The government does not believe the short title of the bill should impede the progress of a much needed law. Canadians have waited a long time for legislation that would give spammers nowhere to hide in Canada. In the interest of having this bill move quickly through the House and on to the other place, we will support changing the short title of the bill to the name by which it was known under Bill C-27 in the last session.

The short title of the bill has been restored to what it was in the last session of this Parliament when Bill C-27 had succeeded in making its way through the House and to the other place but died on the order paper when Parliament was prorogued last December.

The change to the short title in clause 1 of the bill was the only change requested by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. Clauses 2 to 92 remain the same. So we now call the bill the electronic commerce protection act, ECPA for short.

The fact that clauses 2 through 92 passed through the clause-by-clause study without amendment indicates the wide support this bill has from all parties in this House. In fact members from both sides of the House are eager to see this bill pass into law so that we can help eliminate spam and related threats from the Internet and from cell phones.

This bill is about reducing spam and related online threats that discourage the use of electronic commerce and undermine privacy. The Internet has become a powerful medium for communication in the economy, but it has also become more vulnerable with the rapid growth and increasing sophistication of spam and other online threats.

Unsolicited commercial email can carry associated threats like malware, spyware, phishing and various viruses, worms and Trojans. In fact the hon. member for Davenport pointed out during second reading that the Kroll Global Fraud Report maintains that cyber theft has overtaken physical theft as a criminal act.

The Government of Canada is committed to the passage of this bill. Over the past years, it has worked both with the industry committee and in the House to create effective anti-spam legislation as a critical element of Canada's digital economy. The goal has been to make Canada a leader in anti-spam legislation by providing a more secure online environment for both consumers and businesses.

Under the bill before us, the CRTC would be responsible for enforcing the no-spam provisions, the violations involving the alterations of transmission data in an electronic message, and prohibitions against installing software or causing it to be installed without consent.

The Competition Bureau would extend its powers under the Competition Act to prevent misleading and deceptive online practices. The bill contains amendments to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act that would enable the office of the Privacy Commissioner to take measures against the unauthorized collection of personal information through hacking or illicit trading of lists of electronic addresses.

The bill before us would create an effective regulatory regime that would permit legitimate online commerce while protecting consumers and businesses through rigorous safeguards. It would provide powers to the CRTC and the Competition Bureau to administer administrative monetary penalties for those who violate the law. It also proposes a private right of action, which would allow individuals and businesses to take civil action against those who violate the law.

The end result would be to promote consumer confidence in online commerce, by protecting both consumers and Canadian businesses from unwanted spam and related online threats.

We saw one recent example of the power of the right of private action when a California court rendered a judgment against a Montreal-based Internet marketer. The marketer had posted spam messages on Facebook. This judgment was recently upheld by the Quebec Superior Court, which ordered the marketer to pay Facebook more than $1 billion in fines. It is unlikely the marketer will ever be able to pay the fine, but the judgment certainly sent a powerful signal to spammers.

During the debate at second reading, the hon. member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor reminded us that fighting spam is not the responsibility only of the designated enforcement agencies but is also the responsibility of businesses, citizens and all members of society writ large. I believe the Facebook judgment demonstrates how businesses are ready to take action against spammers.

The bill before us is part of a wider government strategy to build consumer confidence and put Canada at the forefront of the digital economy.

Last May, the hon. Minister of Industry launched a nationwide consultation on the digital economy. Industry Canada has been evaluating the input and advice, and the minister has indicated he will make further announcements in the coming weeks and months on steps we will take to put Canada at the forefront of digital economy.

We can reduce spam and related online threats through a concerted, co-operative approach involving the public sector and the private sector. We will continue to work closely with our domestic and international partners to address threats to online commerce.

I urge hon. members to join me in supporting Bill C-28.

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

I have a quick question about the application of this legislation for a business that offers services, sells products or does soliciting. Currently, there are no regulations on email. Has a deadline been set? It seems a deadline of 24 months was requested. Bill C-27 spoke of 12 months and I believe we agreed on 18 months. Is that still the case?

[Janet DiFrancesco]

Thank you for the question.

The bill before you does very much reflect the previous Bill C-27, ECPA. The changes that were made, other than the two that I mentioned in my opening remarks, were made as the result of a careful review of the bill after the House was dissolved. For example, it was noticed in a number of areas that the French version of the bill was missing concepts that existed in English. There are maybe three or four of those types of amendments that correct the French-language version to reflect the English.

There was also, for example, an amendment that was made at committee to clause 8, which deals with.... Let me just look at the bill. Sorry. We added the provision for someone who is receiving the electronic message to consent to a change of the alteration of the transmission data, but that change should have been mirrored in clause 12, which allows someone to withdraw their consent, and that was missed. So the drafters noticed that in order for the parallel amendments to make sense under clause 8, we needed to make an amendment under clause 12 as well.

Similarly, a number of the amendments dealing with the changes to the Competition Act needed to be modified to make sure they were consistent with other provisions in the Competition Act--for example, reference to reviewable conduct, as opposed to just a contravention under the act.

So we took the opportunity when the House was dissolved to make sure that there were no other changes to the bill that were required. You will recall that there were a number of changes made the last time, and it was important that we took the time to make sure that the parallel changes were reflected all the way through.

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

Thank you Mr. Chair.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen for being here today.

My first question is for Ms. DiFrancesco.

First, we know that Bill C-28 was Bill C-27, which was studied in committee and made it all the way to the Senate. However, when the election was called, the bill died on the order paper. You said that Bill C-28 is quite similar to Bill C-27, which suggests that there are some changes. Could you share some of those changes?

I have another question about that. Do these changes come from officials or other entities?

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

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

I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-28, Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act. The bill is an updated version of Bill C-27, which incorporates items that were added as government amendments during its original passage through the House in 2005.

It is fair to say that ordinary individuals are being overly inundated with unwanted spam in their email inboxes on a daily basis. Spam currently accounts for more than 80% of global email traffic and around 90% of Canadian email traffic. In addition to the nuisance that spam poses, as well as the decreased productivity and efficiency which spam entails, spam can also pose a significant risk to individuals who unwittingly open maliciously infected emails. Thus the issue of spam is not solely connected to economic and individual efficiency on productivity, but also to the increased rate of identity theft and other forms of illegal activity, which has grown alongside the rapid increase in the online shopping industry during the beginning of the 21st century.

What is spam? Spam is identified as the abuse of electronic messaging systems, including most broadcast media digital delivery systems, to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email, the term applies to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging, Usenet newsgroups, web search engines, spam, spam in blogs, WikiSpam, online classified ad spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions and file sharing networks. This is not a Monty Python skit, it is actually a very serious issue.

Spam seems to infiltrate every aspect of our lives these days and it is extremely important for the Canadian government and Parliament to take this on.

Let us look at the legislative summary for this. It says that this is an act that is an accumulation of a process that began with anti-spam action planned for Canada launched by the government in 2004, which 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 to junk mail, has grown to encompass 80% of all global email traffic.

That was 2004 and here we are in 2010 and we are once again debating legislation. The initial legislation was lost when the House was prorogued. We have again lost time dealing with an issue that is extremely important to businesses, consumers and ordinary citizens in our country. This is complex legislation. It has many pages and it impacts on a number of different agencies.

However, let us look at some of the costs.

In both commercial and non-commercial cases, spam happens because of a positive cost benefit analysis result if the cost to recipients is excluded as an externality a spammer can avoid paying. The cost is the combination of overhead. The cost of the overhead of electronic spamming include bandwidth developing or acquiring an email, wiki or a blog spam tool and taking over or acquiring a host or a zombie. The transaction cost is the incremental cost of contacting each additional recipient once a method of spamming is constructed multiplied by the number of recipients, the risks, the chance and severity of legal and/or public reactions, including damages and punitive damages. Then there is the impact on the community and/or the communications channel being spammed.

The benefit is the total expected profit from spam, which may include any combination of the commercial or non-commercial reasons listed above. If we talk about how quickly this can become a global epidemic, so to speak, we could have millions of emails go out asking for credit card information and just a small percentage of that is returned as a huge benefit, negatively of course, but it is still a benefit.

We are starting to see spam now used in crime. It can be used to spread computer viruses, Trojan horses, or other malicious software. The objective may be identity theft or advanced fee fraud. Some spam attempts to capitalize on human greed, while others attempt to use victims inexperienced with computer technology to trick them, such as phishing.

In May 2007 one of the world's most prolific spammers, Robert Alan Soloway, was arrested by U.S. authorities. Described as one of the top 10 spammers in the world, Soloway was charged with 35 criminal counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, email fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. Prosecutors alleged that he used millions of zombie computers to distribute spam during 2003. This was the first case at that time in which U.S. prosecutors used identity theft laws to prosecute a spammer for taking over someone else's Internet domain.

We have been labelled, unfortunately, as a lawless spam haven. Canada is the only G8 country without anti-spam legislation. It is only a matter of time before spammers will begin to take advantage of this. Canada ranked fifth worldwide as a source of web-based email spam, trailing only Iran, Nigeria, Kenya and Israel. This information is from a research study done by Cloudmark, a leading provider of anti-spam software.

A recent Facebook case has placed the spotlight on Canada's ongoing failure to address its spam problem by introducing long overdue anti-spam legislation. The Facebook case is only the latest illustration of the impact of government inaction.

Companies anxious to target Canadian-based spammers have been forced to turn to other countries to do the job, while international law enforcement investigations into criminal spam activities run the risk of stalling as Canada's authorities may lack the requisite investigatory powers.

The fact that organizations are forced to use U.S. courts and laws to deal with Canadian spammers points to an inconvenient truth; that Canadian anti-spam laws are woefully inadequate and that we are rapidly emerging as a haven for spammers eager to exploit the weak legal framework.

My colleague earlier talked about the OPP PhoneBusters and the great work it was doing to protect seniors and any person being dealt with fraudulently. Part of this group is based out of North Bay, Ontario. Many times PhoneBusters has put out announcements in my great riding of Sudbury, advising seniors to watch for an email campaign coming from some country that is asking for their credit card information. We are going in the right direction if we are able to start protecting our seniors and those who are infrequent users of electronic media.

Canada initially recognized the need to address spam with the formation of a task force in 2004, which included a broad cross-section of marketers, telecom companies and public policy groups. The task force unanimously recommended that the government introduce anti-spam legislation.

There are some very important aspects in this bill.

Under commercial activity, the bill contains a new exemption where it explicitly does not include any transaction, act or conduct carried out for the purpose of law enforcement, public safety, the protection of Canada in the conduct of international affairs or the defence of Canada.

The electronic address covers email, instant messaging, text messaging and messages sent on Facebook and Twitter. These things did not exist five years ago, and we have seen technology evolve rapidly. We will ensure that we can capture all aspects of spam by using that language.

The electronic message includes a message sent over any means of telecommunication, including text, sound, voice or image and therefore implicates voicemail messages. The commercial electronic message is based on the type of content contained in it, including contained links. Thus, for commercial purposes in any way, it qualifies under this definition.

Telecommunications service extends to any service or feature of a service provided by means of telecom facilities. Transmission data is any data relating to the telecommunications function of dialing, routing, addressing or signalling, including by phone, Internet and wireless involved in all functions of transmitting data electronically outside the actual substance of the message.

This is a very complex issue. We talk about many avenues and ways in which those with not so positive ideas can get their way out.

It is clear that introducing anti-spam legislation is intricate for both Canadians and Canada more broadly. I am glad to support the bill.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I was going to start off with some of the technical matters at the very beginning, including the title of the bill and some of the functions in clause-by-clause material, but I do want to pick up on one thing that was brought up by my colleague from Sudbury.

He talked about seniors, and this is a perfect illustration of why we work in this House to legislate practices like this, because many seniors now are using devices such as Facebook and text messaging. Pictures can be transferred through our phones now and that sort of thing. A lot of seniors get these emails and a lot of them become victims as a result in many cases. One of the reasons is that it is hard for public relations campaigns, such as Crime Stoppers and others, to keep the pace going with the methods with which they are communicating and getting their bad products out there. It started out with just emails. Now we have things such as text messaging and Facebook.

My hon. colleague brings up a good point. We are looking at victims now, and because the seniors' ranks are becoming much larger because of what we call the baby-boom effect, we do have to keep pace with legislation much more quickly than we have been thus far. I would have to say that we have been a little too delayed in this particular bill, but nonetheless we have it here and it is nice to see that all parties are in support and that we are going to do this exercise once again. I say “once again”, because we started out with Bill C-27, which was left over from the last session. Now we find ourselves with Bill C-28, and some modifications have taken place since then, which I will touch upon in just a few moments, but this indeed does look to enact an electronic commerce protection act, prohibiting the sending of electronic commercial messages, or spam email, without the prior consent of recipients.

One of the key elements of this is going to be the idea of consent and just how we have to formalize this. Not only that, but we have had to expand the idea of what consent means, whether it is implied or not. As we know, if we are dealing with websites, many of them prompt us for contact information and there is always that disclaimer or a box that we have to click on, giving consent to receive unsolicited email. That has to be brought into context.

We have to talk about the international context, which my hon. colleague from Mississauga South mentioned earlier. That is to say that in the context of the G8 we are the last ones to get on board, so it is time we saddled up to this particular issue and did it the right way. I would implore all members to send this to committee as soon as possible, similar to the last go-round with Bill C-27. Some modifications were made in Bill C-27 that help with the language and allow it to be a little more flexible.

This is not on the floor yet, but when we talk about the copyright bill, Bill C-32, which is on the order paper and hopefully will come up for debate pretty soon, we are looking at ways in which the context of digital technology is changing the way we act as legislators. Flexibility is required. Mr. Speaker, I am sure you will agree with me that in the context of flexibility, the legislation has to be devised and written so that it can be enforced in a way that gives people protection and preserves their rights but at the same time goes after the people out to do nefarious things, in other words, circumvent laws, whether it be about copyright and digital locks in Bill C-32 or, in this particular case, getting around the consent for people to receive this information. Sometimes these people are very deceptive. They pretend to be what they are not. They shroud themselves in a realm of legitimacy.

Whether they call themselves a bank or a financial institution, they parade themselves as such and become a part of a person's life or know they can get involved in a person's life by pretending to be something that has a great reputation. With the imagination of using emails, Facebook and messaging, they have ways of doing this. It seems there are advances every day in the criminality of this type of activity. So we have to look at that.

The other issue we have to look at, of course, is digital technology itself and how it proliferates in a short period of time. When we first tackled the issue in the House, we looked at it through a panel. We set up a panel to decide how we were going to deal with all the spam email. Billions of dollars every year are spent on trying to cut down on spam email. It now constitutes the majority of traffic around the world when it comes to e-commerce and emailing in general, for that matter.

We can well imagine that back then, as it was becoming a problem, we set up a panel. That was in 2004 and 2005 when we were primarily looking at emails. There was just that one form of communication that we were focused on. Since then, we have text messages and Facebook, which was not looked at in 2004-05 as it is a relatively new concept, and other modes of communication such as texting.

Right now, Mr. Speaker, I can take a picture of you and send it around the world. How about that?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I hope to get a chance to speak to this bill later because the bill is very important. In his speech, the minister reminded us that we are the only G8 country that does not have anti-spam legislation. He also laid out the cost. As the member also alluded to, the cost is very significant. On a worldwide basis the cost is something like $130 billion a year as a consequence of not having this legislation.

There are privacy issues as well. The minister did not spend very much time on the aspect of personal privacy information under PIPEDA, another area in which personal information is being collected by harvesting addresses.

When we consider that the bill was going along very well and there was all-party support in the House for Bill C-27 in the last session, if it is so important, why did the minister have to introduce it again and start the process all over rather than refer the bill straight to committee so that we could get this legislation passed?

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

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-28 introduces measures that people and businesses have been waiting for for a long time. The government also put this measure forward as Bill C-27. Now we are dealing with Bill C-28.

I asked this question earlier, but I would like to hear the member's opinion, which may differ from that of the NDP member. Why does he think it took so long to get to Bill C-28?

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

Mr. Speaker, is all the dedication and energy that we are going to put into discussing Bill C-28 going to go the same way as Bill C-27? Is the government going to prorogue before we actually realize some of the claims that he thinks the bill is going to put forward?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak on behalf of New Democrats on Bill C-28.

I want to start by acknowledging the good work the hon. member for Windsor West has done on the anti-spam legislation, both the current piece and the previous piece of legislation that was before the House.

New Democrats will be supporting Bill C-28 at second reading to get it to committee. Of course, as always, I know that the members of the industry committee will do their due diligence in reviewing the bill thoroughly to make sure that there are no clauses of the bill that could have unintended consequences.

I want to speak briefly. I spoke to this bill back in May 2009 when it was Bill C-27. I was fortunate enough to sit in on some of the industry committee's hearings on the anti-spam legislation. I want to start by reading into the record a definition of spam. I think most of us in the House know what spam is, but not all the Canadians who may be listening to this debate may be aware of what it is.

Spam is identified as the “abuse of electronic messaging systems, including most broadcast media digital delivery systems, to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term applies to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging, Usenet newsgroups spam, web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions...and file sharing networks.”

Spam seems to infiltrate every single aspect of our lives these days, and it is extremely important for the Canadian government to take this on.

I want to read a brief statistic from an article by Peter Nowak on July 14. He wrote that New Brunswick is hardest hit in Canada. It reads:

New Brunswick receives the most spam email of the Canadian provinces while nearby Newfoundland and Labrador gets the least, according to a report from security firm Symantec. About 92.5 per cent of email in New Brunswick qualified as spam over a 10-month period.

It goes on to say:

That was the worst rate in the country and the only province to exceed the global average of 89.3 per cent.

New Brunswick, British Columbia and Saskatchewan exceeded the Canadian average of 88 per cent. Newfoundland and Labrador fared best with only 86 per cent of email considered spam, followed by Quebec, Nova Scotia and Manitoba at 87 per cent, Ontario at 87.5 per cent and Alberta at 87.6 per cent.

I know that the hon. member for Windsor West has identified this before, but we need to recognize that Canada is actually in the top 10 in the world. We are the only G8 country that does not have this type of legislation.

When one starts thinking about the fact that a province like New Brunswick, where 92.5% of all email in the province is spam, one can see that we have a very serious problem facing us.

I want to turn briefly to the legislative summary, because there are a couple of aspects of this bill that I think are important to note. Other members have pointed this out, but I would like to highlight the fact that we have been talking about anti-spam legislation for a number of years.

In fact, the legislative summary says that this act is a culmination of a process that began with the anti-spam action plan for Canada launched by the Government of Canada in 2004, which 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.

It goes on to talk about the fact that 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.

That was 2004, and here we are in 2010. We are once again debating legislation. The initial legislation, Bill C-27, was lost when the House prorogued. So we again have lost time dealing with an issue that is extremely important to businesses, consumers, and ordinary citizens in this country.

This is a complex piece of legislation. It is many pages long and it impacts on a number of different agencies.

The agencies that are involved in the regulation of spam include 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, the bill gives these agencies the power to share information and evidence with international counterparts in order to deal with spam coming from outside the country. It goes on again to emphasize the fact that Canada is the last of the G8 countries to introduce anti-spam legislation.

One of the points raised in this legislative summary is the fact that Canada, in some respects, is seen on the international market as a haven for some of these spammers from outside the country because of our lack of legislation. The legislative summary goes on to say that the act:

will provide a clear regulatory scheme including administrative monetary penalties, with respect to both spam and related threats from unsolicited electronic contact, including identity theft, phishing, spyware, viruses, and botnets. It will also grant an additional right of civil action to businesses and consumers targeted by the perpetrators of such activities.

At the very end of the Bill C-27 legislation, when it was introduced, were a couple of clauses that dealt with the do not call list. Again, Bill C-28 has the same inclusion in the legislation. It says that they

would give the government the power to repeal legislation for the relatively new Do Not Call List for telemarketers. Since it was introduced in 2008, the Do Not Call List has been subject to much criticism owing to telemarketer misuse of the names on the list.

I want to refer to another aspect of that. It says that:

The delayed set of amendments provides the framework for replacing the do not call list with a new scheme at a future date, as described earlier in the summary. The powers to be restored with the delayed amendments include the power to regulate the hours during which such communications can be made, the contact information that must be provided by the communicator and the way in which it must be provided, and the use of automated telephone calls.

The reason I raise this in the context of Bill C-28 is that this inclusion of the ability to amend the do not call list legislation is important to note, because the do not call list legislation actually was flawed. That is why it is important that the House refer the bill back to the industry committee for a thorough review.

Now I know that we had hearings on Bill C-27, and there have been some amendments to this legislation as a result of those hearings, but it is important that we reconsider this legislation and make sure that there are not any unintended consequences such as we saw with the do not call list.

There are a couple of other aspects of this legislation that are important to note as a result of industry hearings and the input that was heard. Clause 66 in Bill C-28 now allows for a review three years after the day on which the section comes into force.

[A] review of the provisions and operation of this Act must be undertaken by any committee of the Senate, of the House of Commons, or of both Houses of Parliament that is designated or established for that purpose.

It is very important that the mandate to review the legislation three years after coming into force is in place again so that we can determine if there have been further changes in the whole electronic media that would require some further amendments. We can determine whether the piece of legislation is effective. We can determine if adequate resources have been put in place in order to make sure that the agencies involved have what they need to oversee and enforce the legislation.

I think others have referred to the very substantial fines that are now in place to make sure that there are some teeth to this piece of legislation.

There are a couple of aspects of the legislation that came up when it was under study when it was Bill C-27. I want to turn to an analysis that was done by a law firm called McCarthy Tétrault that pointed out a couple of aspects that raised some concerns. I want to outline the summary of a couple of these aspects. One of these was about consent. It says that the legislation contains certain exceptions to the rule about consent. It says that consent is not required

to send a commercial electronic message, the purpose of which is to provide a quote or an estimate; facilitate, complete or confirm an existing commercial transaction; provide warranty information; provide information related to an ongoing subscription, membership, account or loan; provide information related to an employment relationship; or deliver a product, goods or a service, including product updates and upgrades.

It goes on to say that the list is not exhaustive, and that other purposes may be specified in the regulations.

I am bringing this up because business has raised concerns. Some in the business community think that this legislation is too onerous, that it would not allow businesspeople to communicate with their customers or potential customers.

Clearly, the legislation has made some attempt to recognize that there is an ongoing business relationship that needs to be maintained, and it has outlined situations in which that consent would not be required.

It goes on to say:

The bill also provides for certain situations where consent can be implied, including where:

- the sender has an existing business relationship with a recipient (provided the relationship is entered into within the specified time frames);

- the recipient has “conspicuously published” its electronic address and has not indicated a desire to not receive unsolicited commercial electronic messages, and the message is relevant to the recipient's business role; or

- the recipient has provided its electronic address to the sender without indicating a wish not to receive unsolicited commercial and electronic messages.

When requesting express consent to send unsolicited commercial messages, an organization would have to set out “clearly and simply” the purpose(s) for which the consent is being sought, information identifying the organization that is seeking the consent, and any other information that may be prescribed.

The [act] also stipulates the electronic message must:

- identify the sender;

- provide contact information for the sender; and

- include an “unsubscribe” mechanism....

I think what is required of businesses is clear, as are the references to the protection for consumers. It does not appear that these are going to be onerous.

I want to touch on a couple of other aspects that are important when we are talking about the viability of business.

When it was Bill C-27, Professor Michael Geist appeared before the industry committee. I know he was talking about Bill C-27, but I think some of his comments are applicable to Bill C-28. He stated:

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 received phished email. There is a real need to address the problem.

Professor Geist identified that there was an impact on businesses. Many times in this House we have heard concerns raised about Canadian productivity in the workplace. When we understand the volume of spam that is coming in, whether it is via email, text messaging, or electronic media that businesses are using, we can understand the concern about the impact on business productivity.

There are varying statistics about the amount of time it takes for workers to recover when they are interrupted in a task. Many of us in this House can attest that, even though we have a good filter on our email system, we are still occasionally bothered by spam.

Imagine in a regular workplace where up to 90% of emails may be spam if there are not adequate filters in place. Every time they have to go through their email box and clear emails, or they are interrupted in their work, it affects the business's productivity, its quality, its performance. I saw a statistic that every time workers were interrupted at a task, it took them up to seven minutes to get back to where they had left off. So we can see that this has a definite impact on workers' ability to perform well in their jobs.

The other aspect of this, and it can be quite troubling, is the effect on seniors. Despite the unfair stereotype, I believe many seniors are absolutely email literate. They rely on email to communicate with loved ones, to do business, and to do all the things that Canadians under the age of 65 do.

One of the real concerns about spam is that seniors and other unsuspecting people end up being fraudulently sold goods or services.

Another important purpose of the bill is to protect vulnerable citizens from spam, whether it is banking fraud or investment fraud. I think many of us have received those unfortunate emails from overseas that tell us to send money to get somebody out of jail. It is sad that unsuspecting Canadians have sent money, only to learn that their money has gone down the tubes. That is an important aspect of the bill.

Professor Geist also raised another issue when he did his presentation to the committee. He said:

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 note that we have seen this before. It is what took place with the do-not-call list. The 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 breeches around the do-not-call list itself.

I think we must avoid a similar occurrence with respect to the anti-spam legislation. Changes in some business practices might be scary to some, but we cannot allow scare tactics to persuade you from moving forward with this much-needed legislation.

In that context, when businesses are looking at the potential costs of complying with the legislation, getting the appropriate consent, and doing all the things that are laid out in the legislation, it is important to encourage them to consider the costs of dealing with the amount of spam that is out there.

In conclusion, New Democrats will be supporting Bill C-28 to go to committee for further review, and we are optimistic that perhaps this time it will actually get through the House.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is the third time in a year that I have risen in the House of Commons to discuss the bill on electronic commerce, known as Bill C-28 this time around.

The former Bill C-27 sparked a lot of public interest, and a number of witnesses who testified before the committee essentially told us that we needed to move forward in order to provide better protection for email users.

The new Bill C-28 specifically targets unsolicited commercial electronic messages. People have been demanding such a bill for some time, and it is sorely needed. Governments, service providers and network operators are all affected by spam. We must create safeguards for legitimate electronic commerce, and we must do so now. Commercial emails are also essential to the development of the online economy.

Bill C-28 was inspired primarily by the final report of the task force on spam, which was set up in 2004 to examine the issue and to find ways to eliminate spam.

Some groups had reservations about the former Bill C-27 and made suggestions for amendments. The main concerns and questions from these groups had to do with the enforcement of the legislation.

Parliamentary committee members had to examine a number of issues. Even now, this bill amends the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Telecommunications Act.

As a result, government officials in each of these sectors came to tell us why and especially how the amendments would apply and how we could be certain the changes would be useful.

We supported the former Bill C-27 as amended by the committee. Therefore, we will support Bill C-28, whose contents are more or less the same, so that the committee can study it.

We are aware of the need to legislate quickly, but we must also proceed carefully in light of the many witnesses the committee has already heard from.

I hope that the work the committee has already done will prove useful and that we will be able to proceed more quickly.

Let us not forget that we first started talking about spam in 2004 and that six years on, we still do not have legislation to get rid of spam.

I would like to expand on one point. The government accused the committee of taking its time when studying this bill and of holding up the electronic commerce bill's progress.

I want to make one thing clear: Bill C-28 is not a back-of-the-napkin affair. It covers a number of complex issues and clauses. It is to be expected that committee members and our research teams be given the time to study the content of the bill. I am sure that this electronic commerce protection bill would be in force by now had the Conservative government not prorogued Parliament. We lost a lot of time because of that.

I want to reiterate that the Bloc Québécois and the other parties worked well on this. I can vouch for the fact that my party, the Bloc Québécois, and the members of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology worked constructively together.

I sincerely believe that during the committee's hearings, all of the members worked hard to find a solution to the spam problem while taking into account the needs of companies that shared their concerns.

Anyone with an email address receives spam, emails that try to sell us products and offer us prizes and many other annoying things.

I do not know if anyone has noticed, but in recent months, there seems to have been a significant increase in the amount of spam. It makes me wonder whether companies have made changes to how they contact consumers.

Obviously, some businesses are concerned about how legitimate businesses will continue to contact consumers if Bill C-28 is adopted.

Bill C-28 clearly states that organizations will not require the express consent of their own clients to communicate with them in what can be deemed “existing business relationships”. However, to contact potential clients in order to market a good or service or to expand their activities, businesses may not directly contact a client by email without their prior consent.

Unsolicited electronic messages have become a significant social and economic problem that undermines the individual productivity of Quebeckers. Spam is a threat to the growth of legitimate electronic commerce.

Spam accounts for more than 80% of global electronic traffic, which results in considerable expenses for businesses and consumers. In light of this situation, legislation to protect electronic commerce is reasonable and appropriate.

On another note, some clauses of the bill are still problematic for the Bloc Québécois. We would like further information about the national do not call list.

A number of parallels may be drawn between the system proposed by Bill C-28 and the existing system for telephone calls.

The Bloc Québécois feels that the current list is doing the job, and it is used by millions of people. Compliance with the national do not call list required many companies to reorganize their resources and make a large financial outlay.

We realize that the Minister of Industry wants to keep the door open in order to replace the list with a new system. However, for the time being, it is a proven system that has been successful since it was implemented in 2008. At the committee hearings on Bill C-28 regarding electronic commerce, we were given verbal assurances by officials that it would not be abolished without public hearings.

Let us come back to Bill C-28. I believe we are all 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.

To the Bloc Québécois, there is no doubt that the bill aims at protecting the integrity of transmission data by prohibiting practices related to the installation of computer programs without consent. It makes sense to avoid the use of consumers' personal information to send them spam.

Bill C-28 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. It is a matter of principle.

This bill has a noble objective, but it will be a complex law to apply. I know the government wants to attack spam, and I agree with that. In my previous speeches and having had the chance to be part of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, I personally have been convinced of the need to pass such a bill.

A number of countries have already passed measures similar to those in Bill C-28 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-28 will make it possible to develop measures to dissuade as many people and businesses as possible from sending spam involving false representation, unauthorized software and exchanges of email address information.

This bill will help resolve many of the problems our constituents have raised and will further protect their privacy. Unsolicited commercial electronic messages have become, over time, a major social and economic problem that undermines the individual and commercial productivity of Quebeckers.

Spam is a real nuisance. It damages computers and networks, contributes to deceptive marketing scams, and invades people's privacy. Spam directly threatens the viability of the Internet. In fact, spam accounts for over 80% of all global Internet communications. Thus, spam directly threatens the viability of the Internet as an effective means of communication. It undermines consumer confidence in legitimate e-businesses and hinders electronic transactions.

Basically, 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. This is what we mean by “prior consent”.

I would like to close by reiterating that the Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-28. This proposed legislation has already been examined by a parliamentary committee, and it will help to increase the protection of computer systems and people's personal information.

As a final point, the Bloc Québécois is pleased to see that Bill C-28 takes into account most of the recommendations in the final report of the task force on spam, created in 2004. However, it is unfortunate that the legislative process took several years to produce this long-awaited bill to protect electronic commerce.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this bill is the former Bill C-27. What strikes me is that it took four long years to come up with a bill, and the work is not over. We can see that technology is evolving at an alarming rate and that the legislative framework often lags behind. How can we counter this?

I would like to ask the member a question. When we talk about the web or the Internet, we cannot ignore its international aspect. How can we ensure that international agreements will be signed to make sure this bill remains useful?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, sometimes it is not a pleasure to rise and speak to bills, but it is a pleasure to speak to this bill as it will make Canadians very happy.

All of us are bombarded with annoying spam on our computers. The side effects can be dangerous to our computer system. It slows down legitimate commercial businesses in Canada. It is amazing that we have not yet dealt with this issue because it is an annoying and costly problem to Canadians and people all over the world. I am sure there will be support on all sides of the House to deal with this aggravating and at some times dangerous problem that essential computer systems face.

Twenty years ago a computer was not essential in carrying on daily life, but now it is involved in many things. It is even more important to people in the area I come from for things like distance education and health because they do not live in a big city so they do not have access to these specialties. Computers are essential. People need their computers for all sorts of things, like banking and personal communication. A fly in the ointment or a wrench in the works could gum the whole thing up. All of us would like this problem fixed as spam is distressing and dangerous.

I am excited about speaking to the bill. I am also excited about Parliament taking action on spam, which is unsolicited electronic email.

Many of us with computers know how dangerous and how much of a problem this is for Canadian consumers and businesses. In 2003 it was estimated that spam cost the economy over $27 billion worldwide. That is half the Canadian deficit. It is a monumental amount of money.

Since then, the problem has only grown worse. I am sure each of us in the House has thousands of these unsolicited emails gumming up the work of Parliament. I am sure that businesses across the country have this problem, as do individuals. More updated information will be forthcoming on how devastating spam actually is, and it is becoming worse all the time.

We are now looking at a far more serious problem, which would be corrected by the bill, and that relates to the issues of identity theft, phishing and spyware, all of which give concern to Canadians and to the world. We have to deal with this in legislation, both locally and internationally.

In the early 2000s the Liberal Party recognized the problem that spam created. In 2003 the Liberal member for Pickering—Scarborough East tabled a private member's bill to make spam illegal. Unfortunately, the bill never made it to second reading.

However, based on the strength of Bill C-460, introduced in mid-2003 in the 37th Parliament, the Liberal minister of industry struck a committee to examine the issue of spam and to report to the minister about how the government could most effectively stop this obvious and seriously growing problem.

That report entitled “Stopping Spam: Creating a Stronger, Safer Internet ”, was released in May 2005. The report was created by a committee of 10 experts on information technology and Internet law. The task force also worked with dozens of stakeholders in the technology industry to develop sound proposals and to look at the best practices at the time.

The primary recommendations of the task force were that the government legislate prohibitions on the following: the sending of unsolicited email; the use of false or misleading statements that disguise the origin and the true intent of the email, those emails we get with the funny titles that make it look like it is for us, or something critical or important, but it has nothing to do with that at all. The same product is being sold to us all over again.

The task force also recommended prohibitions on the unauthorized collection of personal information and email addresses, particularly by using fake websites through the selling of lists where those on the list were not told the list would be sold to a third, unknown party.

The committee recommended all these very important changes and I cannot imagine anyone in the House disagrees with those changes. The official opposition supports the bill as it follows through on the recommendations of the committee created by the Liberal government. Also the industry committee did such good work in the last Parliament before prorogation on Bill C-27. It made some very good changes to the bill to make it acceptable to more members of Parliament and a much better bill. However, much more needs to be done.

As I described earlier, as the world is changing, it is changing for businesses too and it is changing the way businesses do business and earn their revenue. They depend more on the Internet and computers. The bill would protect them and it would be a big enhancement to industry and small business in Canada. However, it also has to be careful not to deter the legitimate work and communication with consumers about their business products and services.

The minister talked about the consultation being done with business organizations and the fact that the committee and MPs can hear from those organizations and see whether more amendments need to be made other than the good amendments there were made on Bill C-27 to make it now into this new bill, Bill C-28.

Much needs to be done. The committee highlighted the need for the government to play a central role in coordinating the actions of both government and the private sector. All actors agreed that spam needed to be stopped. Internet service providers, web hosts and online marketing agencies need a set of best practices for email solicitation.

The government must work in coordination with industry partners to establish a strong code of practice that prevents the proliferation of electronic emails that are unsolicited, unwanted and constitute spam.

These days spam is no longer a problem exclusive to email. In 2004 and 2005, when the committee was writing the report, spam was starting to move to other electronic platforms. Today Canadians must contend with cellphone spam, either by means of text message or something we may not all be familiar with, robo calling.

It is important that the act recognize the facts and is technologically neutral, encompassing all forms of commercial electronic communication.

The legislation must meet the test to ensure there is proper, effective and adaptable application to current, existing and future modalities that may be able to circumvent not only technologies to prevent and protect consumers in business, but also to remain faithful to the act.

That is why some hope the act can be revisited on a yearly basis as technology evolves. It is something the Liberal Party may look to see the government amend or to look into at committee.

Moreover, the issue of text message spam is being aggravated obviously by yet another announcement of a major cellular service provider recently to start charging for received text messages. There has been plenty of discussion among members of Parliament. It is obvious to everyone that it is unfair, to say the least, that consumers are charged for something they had no choice whatsoever in receiving.

Spam is not just a Canadian problem, as I indicated earlier. Given the borderless nature of the Internet, it means that spam can originate from anywhere and be delivered anywhere. It will not help a lot if we just do the controls here because then we will be flooded by people sending spam to Canadians, gumming up Canadian businesses. They will start sending it from an out of Canada site.

I strongly point out that the legislation takes measures in Canada. There has to be an attempt to work internationally with other partners so we can also go after those companies and organizations that do this remotely from other countries, which do not have the same level of proposed enforcement or legislation. We have to do a lot of work on the international scene, assign the resources to do that work so the good work that is before us now, brought to us by the industry committee, does not dissolve in a flood of spam from 180 other countries around the world.

As a result, because of the international nature of this problem, any government that is serious about combatting spam must be willing to engage other governments around the world in an international strategy to reduce this ongoing problem.

The government's ability to combat spam is not simply about legislation. My party calls on the government to show its concern by raising this internationally at all international fora and working with other governments to produce a coordinated international anti-spam and anti-counterfeit strategy.

The effectiveness of this law will be measured by the government's commitment to enforcement. I take the comments that have already been raised in the past, that we have to ensure there is adequate support for the enforcement of the legislation, which is being complimented and being recommended here. That is a tall order.

Some members are probably aware about all the fraudulent emails people get. If they send them off to the place to deals with them, they get a message saying that they cannot give them an answer because they are so busy, they are so inundated. If there are not enough resources to deal with enforcing this, and the minister mentioned the agencies where those resources would be needed, then the legislation is not going to have much effect.

There is no point in bringing forth legislation if there is a reasonable chance the legislation will not have the intended impact of deterring, stopping, correcting and preventing what is continuously more than just a nuisance, but a very costly one at that.

Policing Internet traffic is incredibly difficult because any Internet crimes crosses jurisdictions and borders, territorial, provincial and federal. That is why in an attempt to control or stop spam, the report called on the government to create a central office that would coordinate anti-spam activities.

I hope the government will move diligently on that if speedy passage is given to this legislation.

Industry Canada is being designated as the official coordinating body. I would like to ask, perhaps in subsequent interventions from the government side, what kind of resources Industry Canada is being given to coordinate the other agencies that have responsibilities under this act such as the Privacy Commissioner, the CRTC and the Competition Bureau, as mentioned by the minister. When we talk about billions of emails, we need the resources for these agencies to deal with them and enforce the legislation.

What resources can we see coming from the government with respect to these offices so we can see spam corrected in our country?

It is extremely important that everywhere in Canada we can have confidence in legislation proposed by the government. I expect the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology will deal quickly with the issues before us because it has already reviewed the bill and improved it substantially, and I congratulate the committee for that.

Central to this issue is if the government passes legislation and walks away from the issue, all these proposed initiatives, well-intended, well-researched and up to date, will fail.

I believe legislation to be correctly brought forward must ensure that we have proper resources and effective coordination so it is understood how this will take place.

The more rapid response we can have to correct this problem will ensure that those who see Canada as an opportunity and a target will find another place.

However, we also want to ensure that the other place is blocked. We simply want to put an end, where possible, to those practices which have as their origins the sense of undermining the credibility and the integrity of communicating and the effectiveness of the legitimate use of the Internet, which belongs to us all.

As many members know, spam emails also contain viruses, various dangerous bugs, that can turn people's private home computers, people who perhaps do not understand computers that much, into very dangerous machines that then send out all sorts of emails, disrupting businesses and other Canadians, their friends and the people they deal with on a business basis, ultimately costing millions of dollars.

It is simply fraud when they send emails and disguise them so one will open it. Once again, it could have the unwanted effect of having to deal with an email that was unsolicited and businesses and individuals have to buy more expensive equipment, perhaps try to use spam filters which, as we all know, does not work on everything. One needs to have bigger storage because there are more emails on the machine and it leads to many more problems than simply getting an unwanted email. One's name and information can then be sent to all sorts of other sources who will then start sending these unsolicited emails.

It is just a pyramid scheme that is very bad for everyone. It can also lead to the exposure of one's personal information. Every member of Parliament knows from a previous bill how dangerous and how proliferating this is in the world. With very little personal information, one can become a victim of crime, Many thousands of Canadians have already become victims of crime when their information has been provided.

These types of emails can ultimately be used by installing unwanted illegal software on one's computer without one knowing it when one of these emails is opened.

In 1993 and 1994, the Industry minister at the time, John Manley, talked about the great opportunities of the Internet as the super highway, as it was called at the time because it was the wonderful dawning of a new age. Unfortunately, that super highway has become badly clogged to the point where I think it is fair to say that there have been serious traffic jams, if not serious accidents along the way.

Therefore, the legislation is timely, necessary and has a very reasonable opportunity to pass.

In the rural and northern areas, our access is sometimes through limited pipes, whether it be hard wire or through satellite. Expanding the usage by these huge amounts of unwanted, wasteful, almost illegal emails makes it so people do not get access or have very slow access and it can shut down the access that other people have in rural and northern areas.

The government must follow up on the legislation with real action and real enforcement resources. It must actively engage all partners everywhere in industry internationally. It must continue the consultation process and develop longer term opportunities to combat spam.

What plan does the government have in moving forward to engage industry partners and building strong codes of this practice? We will have to ensure that it is not just based on a blue ribbon panel that was struck some years ago but, in fact, that we have an ongoing ability to ensure that partners, stakeholders and consumers, those who have been tremendously affected by this, will be able to benchmark and give us feedback as to how effectively the legislation would be, particularly from the point of enforcement.

What plan does the government have to work with international partners in building a strong international effort to combat spam? Spam can be incredibly destructive. Besides consuming time and band width, spam is a delivery vehicle for malware, programs that access one's computer without authorization and can do a number of dangerous things. Malware includes viruses and spyware, which attack the individual user. However, some of these programs turn the user's computer into a zombie on a botnet which then can be used to attack major websites on the Internet.

This is something we could not have contemplated three, four, five years ago but it is currently taking place. Many consumers and many constituents have talked to me about this and talked to other members of the House. We need to ensure that we have a pragmatic policy, a pragmatic document that is capable of changing with the times as the Internet and electronic information becomes more sophisticated.

All these attacks have serious economic impacts when websites like Google and other information websites are brought down. Even for a few hours billions of dollars can be lost. Spyware can be used for identity theft which is a constantly growing threat in the Internet age.

Therefore, I call upon all members to support the bill to go to committee and get it through. I am sure all Canadians and businesses will be very happy to remove this aggravating and dangerous problem.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Minister of Industry]

moved that Bill C-28, 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 now read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to begin the second reading of Bill C-28, Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act.

Hon. members will no doubt recall that this bill was debated extensively in this House and the other place in the last session as Bill C-27. Now it is Bill C-28, so we have moved up at least one notch in the world, anyway.

I should inform members that this bill has not changed substantially since the last session and remains as it was following its review by the House industry committee at that time.

At the outset I would like members to consider the bill in a larger context, as part of an overall plan to help put Canada at the forefront of the digital economy, in part through modernizing our framework of laws for the digital age.

Soon we expect to bring up to date other important legislation, including the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, and of course, the Copyright Act. Together these bills will contribute to improving cyber security practices by consumers and industry, to promote trust and confidence in online commerce.

As we know, the Internet has become the central nervous system for the digital economy. It provides a common global platform for communication and commerce. Its use by businesses and consumers has led to the emergence of a borderless international marketplace.

Since 2000, online sales for Canadian companies have increased nearly tenfold. Ten years ago, online sales in our country were less than $7.2 billion. In 2007, sales reached almost $63 billion.

Businesses and consumers have grown to depend on the Internet. They count on it to be safe and reliable. Online security threats can erode the degree of trust and confidence in the Internet as a safe and reliable environment for electronic commerce.

Our government is committed to building the necessary confidence. We understand what a harmful economic impact spam and other online threats can have on the online economy. We know that the government has an important role to play through legislative measures.

Threats to the online economy include more than just spam. They include spyware, malware, computer viruses, phishing, viral attachments, false or misleading emails, the use of fraudulent websites, and the harvesting of electronic addresses.

These threats are not just nuisances. Some are fraudulent, some invade privacy, and some are used to infect and gain control over computers. It is estimated that spam costs the worldwide economy $130 billion a year.

The bill before us contains important provisions that will protect Canadian businesses and consumers from the most harmful and misleading forms of online threats. It improves the privacy and economic security of Canadians in the electronic environment. It offers a host of clear rules that all Canadians will benefit from. It will promote confidence in online communication and electronic commerce.

The bill before us stakes out new ground in Canada. Currently we are the only G8 country and one of only four OECD countries without legislation dealing with spam. This bill will rectify that situation.

In developing the bill, we have been able to incorporate the best practices of other countries that have launched similar efforts.

We have seen, for example, how effective the private right of action has been in combatting spam in the United States. Under the bill before us, businesses will be able to sue spammers who use their brand to lure unsuspecting customers to divulge private information online as a result of unsolicited email. The bill enables class action suits by individuals who have been spammed or whose computers have been subjected to spyware or botnets.

We have learned from approaches taken elsewhere that a civil administrative regime is more responsive and therefore more effective than using the criminal law to combat spam. Other countries such as Australia, the United States and Japan use regulatory authorities rather than law enforcement to enforce anti-spam legislation. With this bill, Canada will have a comprehensive enforcement regime enforced by existing specialized agencies rather than the police.

What enforcement agencies will be involved? The new law will be enforced by the CRTC as Canada's communications authority, by the Competition Bureau as the federal agency that deals with false or misleading commercial messages, and by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, the agency tasked with the administration of PIPEDA. The bill specifically enables these agencies to work and share information with each other, as well as work with and share information with their international counterparts.

The CRTC will enforce the provisions against sending unsolicited commercial messages. It will also have responsibility for the provisions that prohibit the altering of transmission data without authorization and the unauthorized installation of computer programs.

The Competition Bureau will address false or misleading representations online and deceptive marketplace practices such as false headers and website content.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner will address the collection of personal information without consent through unauthorized access to computer systems and the unauthorized compiling or supplying of lists of electronic addresses, commonly referred to as address harvesting.

The bill provides that both the CRTC and the Competition Bureau can seek what we call “administrative monetary penalties”, AMPs, against violators. The maximum AMP for the CRTC is up to $1 million per violation for individuals, and up to $10 million for businesses.

The Competition Bureau, through application of the Competition Tribunal, may seek AMPs under the current AMPs regime in the Competition Act. That regime specifies AMPs of up to $750,000 for the first violation and up to $1 million per subsequent violation in the case of individuals, up to $10 million for an initial violation by a business and up to $15 million per subsequent violation.

These AMP regimes demonstrate that we are serious about driving spammers out of Canada.

Industry Canada will have oversight responsibilities and will ensure that the work of the three agencies is coordinated. A spam reporting centre will be established to help the three enforcement agencies in their investigations and to give businesses and consumers a one-stop shop where they can report spam and other online threats.

I would remind hon. members that after wide-ranging discussions in this place and in the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology we were able to pass the predecessor, Bill C-27, as amended, with unanimous consent at third reading during the last session.

The amendments that have been incorporated into this bill, based on the thorough review done at committee for the previous bill, fine-tune this legislation so it strikes the right balance between protecting consumers and giving them control over their inboxes, while effectively enabling online commerce.

Hon. members may recall that we 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 purpose of the bill, after all, is not to limit legitimate online business. It is to promote electronic commerce by increasing confidence in the use of the Internet to carry out business transactions.

The implied consent provisions were expanded to include the conspicuous publication of an electronic address such as a website or a print advertisement, provided that the sender's message relates to the business or office held by the recipient. This is consistent with provisions under PIPEDA and accepted in the current code of ethics of the Canadian Marketing Association.

Under the bill, no commercial electronic message can be sent without some form of expressed or implied consent. Implied consent is also extended to existing business and non-business relationships. We have, I believe, preserved the ability to extend by regulation the situations in which it is reasonable to believe that consent to receive commercial emails is to be implied.

Hon. members will also remember that after the committee hearings, the bill was amended by the committee to ensure that legitimate businesses can periodically install updates to their software and that businesses and consumers can continue to use navigation features on the web.

The effect of these amendments was to make a good bill even better. Each of these provisions has been brought forward in the bill before us.

Nonetheless, I want to point out that in addition to these changes made at third reading during the last session, we also incorporated a number of technical changes and clarifications to the bill before us today. Two changes in particular are worth going over in greater detail because they are more important.

The first deals with the order of precedence of two laws that affect privacy: the bill before us; and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA. Hon. members may be aware that PIPEDA contains a primacy clause that otherwise ensures its provisions take precedence over subsequently enacted bills when dealing with personal information or consent. This primacy provision ensures that the efficacy of PIPEDA is not undermined by other legislation with weaker consent requirements.

Compared with PIPEDA, the bill before us has stricter rules regarding consent when dealing with personal information respecting email addresses. Its rules are also more strict when dealing with consent to the receipt of commercial messages. This bill must take precedence.

Accordingly, a new clause 3 clarifies that in the event of a conflict between the provision of this bill and a provision of Part 1 of PIPEDA, the provision of this bill, the Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, would take precedence. Hon. members, I should add that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner supports this amendment.

The second amendment I wish to discuss responds to an issue raised concerning the former Bill C-27. An amendment was added before the bill went to the committee in the other place, but Parliament was prorogued before it could be discussed there. It involves provisions of PIPEDA that prohibit the collection and use of personal information through unauthorized access to a computer system.

Our goal is to increase the protection of personal information stored on personal computers or private business networks. The bill requires private sector firms and investigators to obtain consent to collect that information. It includes a provision that private enterprises do not have the right to collect personal information through access to a computer system “without authorization”. The main focus of the amendment is the term “without authorization”.

In drafting the bill, it was never our intent to limit the ability of private investigators and search engines to access and collect personal information that is already available to the public on the World Wide Web or other similar networks.

Several witnesses have expressed concern that the term “without authorization” clouds the issue. It leaves a great deal to interpretation by the courts. For example, persons who post terms of use on a website could easily render the collection of information from that site “unauthorized”. This could leave industry at risk of civil lawsuits by those seeking statutory damages under the private right of action contained in this bill.

We have consulted with privacy advocates, telecommunications carriers, search engine companies, copyright-dependent industries, and other stakeholders. They agree that an amendment is necessary. As a result, we have changed the wording so that instead of “without authorization”, the bill now reads, “in contravention of an Act of Parliament”. That is, there will be no exception to PIPEDA's consent requirements for: “the collection of personal information, through any means of telecommunication, if the collection is made by accessing a computer system or causing a computer system to be accessed in contravention of an Act of Parliament”.

I believe hon. members will agree that this amendment respects the spirit of the bill as originally passed in this House in the last session, and improves upon it.

Finally, we have travelled a long journey toward bringing anti-spam legislation to Canada. From the work of Senators Oliver and Goldstein to the recommendations of the Task Force on Spam, there have been many different sources of inspiration for this bill. It was very close to receiving royal assent in the last session, and I hope we can move it through this session quickly.

This is a bill that will benefit all Canadians who use the Internet, but it is also a major piece of a much bigger agenda to put Canada in the forefront of the digital economy. If we get this right, we will do more than simplify participation in the digital economy; Canada will be a leader.

I urge hon. members to join me in supporting this bill.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

I, too, would like to congratulate you on your hard work, particularly in eliminating the backlog. Congratulations on that.

Just as a reminder, I noticed that you're doing consults in three cities, in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary. Of course, we'd always welcome you in the great Kenora riding, and it would be good, unlike previous governments, to pay some attention to some of the rural and remote areas that can no doubt make a good pitch on this issue.

I want to talk about estimates. Your report on priorities and planning--hereinafter RPP--indicates proposed increases in planned spending this year related to the implementation of the Electronic Commerce Protection Act. Your office was recently before us on the supplementary estimates (C) for 2009-10 with, I believe, a $100,000 item that was also linked to this implementation.

My questions are as follows. I'll just put them out there.

The Electronic Commerce Protection Act is Bill C-27 from the second session of the 40th Parliament. As of the date of publication of your RPP, it has not been reintroduced into the House during the third session, so how are you calculating implementation costs over a three-year period for a bill that has not yet been introduced?

Second, in your testimony to the committee on the supplementary estimates (C) for 2009-10, when you were here in March, you stated that the $100,000 allocated for this item has already been spent. Is this your projected future spending for the same kinds of activities on which that $100,000 was spent or for something else?

Finally, do you plan to include requests for these extra amounts in the upcoming supplementary estimates later in this fiscal year?

I'd be happy to repeat any of those questions if you didn't get them.

[Elizabeth Denham, Assistant Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada]

Merci.

Good morning, Chair, and members of the committee.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

It's very nice to be here again and see some familiar faces. As you've just said, I am accompanied by Tom Pulcine, our director general, corporate services, as well as Steven Johnston, our senior security and technology advisor. Steven is available in case we get into some IT technicalities that are well beyond my knowledge.

I understand that we're here to discuss supplementary estimates (C) relating to the OPC's oversight role in relation to anti-spam legislation, referred to in the last session as Bill C-27, and more commonly as the Electronic Commerce Protection Act or ECPA.

I thought it might be worthwhile to take a couple of minutes to put our role regarding that legislation in context. Would that be helpful, Mr. Chair?

I'm afraid that with the somewhat short notice our office didn't have time to write and translate a statement, and I confess that I was much more up to speed on the content of this legislation when I appeared before the House industry committee in June. As of this morning, this legislation has not been reintroduced in either House, but I am speaking now as though the legislation will be the same as that passed by the House last November.

As many of you know, the overarching purpose of ECPA is to combat spam in order to provide for a safer Internet. Spam is a serious problem that has a significant impact on the economy. I should point out that Canada is currently the only G7 country without such legislation. Once passed, the legislation would involve a triad of federal agencies in oversight: the CRTC, the Competition Bureau, and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

Our role will be to investigate the unauthorized collection and use of personal information from e-mail addresses through a variety of different techniques: harvesting, dictionary attacks, and malware or spyware. I'll be happy to talk about these later if there is interest.

The legislation doesn't change our existing enforcement powers, and we don't expect a significant increase in new complaints to our office under this law. However, we need to gear up incrementally. We need to explain this new law to our stakeholders and the public, and undertake compliance education. The investigations themselves are likely to involve increased technical complexity, as well as collaboration with domestic and international enforcement bodies, and a need for legal enforcement action in some cases.

The legislation also imported some amendments to PIPEDA that are familiar to many members of this committee. Number one is to give the commissioner discretion to decline to investigate a complaint, discontinue a complaint or refer it elsewhere, and allow for collaboration with and the exchange of information with provincial and foreign counterparts who oversee and enforce laws that are similar to PIPEDA. These are general amendments to PIPEDA and would therefore apply to all of our activities, not just those activities related to spam.

In this fiscal year of 2009-10 we have estimated $100,000 in operating costs, anticipating that this bill will receive royal assent in this fiscal year. That amount relates to communication, education, and awareness activities.

Canadians need to be aware that our office will take complaints related to spam through dictionary attacks, spyware, or other methods. We need to prepare for public inquiries and inquiries from business and other government agencies. So we've been busy drafting materials and have developed internal training materials for our own staff. We've also really ramped up our technical expertise that will be needed for investigations dealing with spyware and malware under ECPA. And we've invested in software for these online investigations.

Perhaps that's enough to give you some context for our request. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Merci.

Electronic Commerce Protection Act

[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 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.

[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.

[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.

[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, 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 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.

Criminal Code

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-31.

As a follow up to the minister's final comments when he seemed to suggest that it has to be left up to the accused to request the destruction of the fingerprints if no charges are laid, I cannot really agree with what he is proposing. I think what will happen over time is that the accused will simply forget to do it and the police will basically build a database. We have to make it a requirement.

Perhaps we could do both. We could make it a requirement that the police do it, but also have some sort of reminder for the accused to do the same. It would be a pincer movement to make sure it is done two ways. If one does not work, the other one will.

Bill C-31 is quite large. There are 39 pages to it. It is an omnibus bill. Normally we do not like omnibus bills. History shows that omnibus bills are something that governments tend to use. I am aware of one government in Manitoba a number of years ago that was great at bringing in omnibus bills. It would put in a bunch of things we liked and it would stick in some poison pills that we did not like. It was certainly a real conundrum as to how to vote on those types of bills.

That was my first experience with omnibus bills. I am sure they have been around for many years, but certainly that was one government that used them very effectively. The Conservative government has managed to do the same. In the year I have been here I have seen them a couple of times.

The NDP justice critic informs me that in the case of making legal changes, an omnibus bill approach is a good idea. As a matter of fact, he has suggested that he would actually like to see the government do more of these things. I do not think I am going to become a convert any time soon on the idea that the government should be encouraged to bring in more omnibus bills, but evidently, and I know there are a lot of learned lawyers in the chamber, in the area of crime, the NDP justice critic thinks it is a good approach.

We are dealing with some 40 changes. I want to say at the outset that we will be supporting sending this bill to committee. There is one major issue where I can see that all of the opposition parties are going to have a problem. The government probably would have known that in advance. It is the whole issue of fingerprinting. I have been reading over some of the previous speeches on the bill and pretty much everybody has focused on the fingerprinting parts of the bill. Perhaps the committee will resolve that issue with some amendments.

There are a couple of sleeper amendments that I personally would be not too happy about. They do not seem to have drawn a lot of ire from other members at this point, but there may be members in the opposition or even in my own party who may dislike some of the other provisions of this bill and may want to make some amendments.

The whole idea of the bill is to modernize the criminal justice procedures. We want to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the criminal justice system as an integral part of the Government of Canada's commitment to ensuring the safety and security of communities across Canada.

Through continual modernization of criminal procedures, the Government of Canada is creating a justice system that can respond to changes in criminal activity and constant evolution of technology, and certainly that is a point. We are dealing with that in the computer areas, struggling with this issue in the child pornography bill that we have just sent to committee as well as in Bill C-27 that is coming up. There is this whole area of technology, the huge changes in technology, and with it the criminals seem to just simply adapt. Sort of like the viruses, they adapt to the new realities, the new environment. They actually improve on their techniques, and crime continues. So, we do have to update the law. It is a constant battle.

As a matter of fact, the entire Criminal Code is probably in for a rewrite. It is quite ancient, quite old and it certainly needs a lot of work done on it. Perhaps rather than just simply constantly working on a piecemeal basis, the member opposite, who I know is listening right now, I am sure would be agreeable to get together. We are in a minority Parliament here. Perhaps the government should announce a plan to rewrite the whole Criminal Code with a view that in two or three years, or however long it would take, at the end of the day we could come up with a new, modernized Criminal Code that would perhaps be a little more understandable to people in the country.

The government has worked closely with its provincial and territorial partners to create 40 legislative amendments.The fact of the matter is that working with the provinces is a very important part. I know that on a government-to-government basis it is oftentimes very difficult to work with the provinces, because we are dealing with 10 different points of view, and sometimes that can lead to a lot of problems. It is easier for a federal government to simply bring in its own initiatives, even for provinces. However, sometimes in a province, when we bring in an initiative, it then causes a problem, a spillover effect into the next jurisdiction.

So, as much as possible, it is very important for provinces to get together as groups or to co-operate with the federal government. That, by necessity, often results in a very slow and bogged-down process, although I have seen some big improvements, certainly in the last couple of years in Manitoba with the Manitoba justice minister Mr. Chomiak and with Gord Mackintosh actually taking a very strong position on various crime initiatives and driving the agenda through their provincial associations and actually getting results here in Ottawa. That, to me, was proof that one little province, if it is determined and wants to push a certain agenda, can actually get results, even with Ottawa.

So, I do commend the government for actively working with the provinces. I think it should continue to do that, because out of that process, we have developed quite a few good initiatives, even over the last couple of years.

The proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, the Identification of Criminals Act, the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act and the Canada Evidence Act will all help to ensure that Canada's laws continue to protect Canadians.

The flight offence is an interesting one. Basically this is a new offence that would target individuals who leave a jurisdiction in violation of the bail conditions. This would create a clear deterrent to fleeing a jurisdiction and would establish a record of such behaviour. Having access to this record would help prevent the release of an accused person who has, in the past, failed to abide by conditions to stay within a jurisdiction. As well, the onus would be placed on the accused to justify why he or she should be subsequently released on bail. In addition, more time may be made available for the arranging for the return of the accused to the originating jurisdiction for trial.

What that really means is that a certain area of the country, in this particular case British Columbia, and I have this in my notes, has, I believe, 700 people hanging out who are wanted on outstanding warrants in other parts of the country. I remember seeing on television and reading in the papers in the last couple of years how authorities had developed this program through which they were providing people with bus fares and sending them back to Ontario or wherever they came from. Now they have a program backed by the business community to return the people to the jurisdictions that they came from, but I believe they are turning them over to the police force. Before they would just put them on a bus and get them out of B.C. They could, of course, simply hide where they went to as well, but this would turn them over to authorities.

What was happening was that a lot of the warrants the police had for the people they were finding in B.C. covered a very limited area. The warrant was written out, for example, for shoplifting and it applied perhaps within a radius of 50 miles of Brockville or Belleville, but of course now the person was in B.C. The authorities looked at this warrant and found they could not do anything about it because they were outside the jurisdiction. So this is probably a very good provision. As I said, it is a new offence and hopefully it will take care of some of this because we should not be tolerating people shoplifting and doing other crimes and then just simply heading out of the province to hide, hoping they never get caught.

These amendments, as I indicated, are the result of an initiative led by British Columbia in a federal-provincial-territorial working group that was endorsed by ministers responsible for justice, in September 2008. That was just September 2008, and we are only a year down the road and already dealing with legislation. Who says that a minority government cannot work? I say that to the government members, but we also have the element of the Senate to deal with, so that is a different issue.

The next part of the bill deals with the identification of criminals. The Identification of Criminals Act does not currently authorize police officers to fingerprint or photograph individuals in lawful custody until they are charged or convicted. This often results in unnecessary delays, according to the police and the government, and can prolong an accused individual's stay at the police station.

The proposed amendments would streamline the process by adding the authority to fingerprint and photograph an individual who is in lawful custody involving an arrest but who is not yet charged. So once again, this is extremely controversial. It will perhaps be amended or deleted at committee, but at a bare minimum, it would have to be amended so that the police themselves would be required to destroy fingerprints that were taken. If doing that is not required, and it is left up to the accused, over time people are going to forget about this and it is not going to be done. If we have time at the end we will come back to this fingerprinting issue, because there are 40 parts to this bill and I am probably halfway through my allotted time at this point.

As for telewarrants, this sounds like a fairly reasonable position. The telewarrants will allow police officers to apply for search and seizure-related warrants by providing information to a justice of the peace on oath via telephone or other means of telecommunications. This is going to save the travel and wait time it would take if the officer had to apply in person. I can certainly see that in the northern parts of the country this should be a huge improvement, rather than having to drive 100 miles at 3 a.m. to get a warrant. The telewarrant system probably should be in place.

Under the current system, telewarrants are available only when it is impractical for the officer to appear in person and are available only on certain types of warrants, so once again, if the officer can drive the 100 miles, then that is what he or she is required to do. This change is going to make doing that optional, so that the officer can simply get the telewarrant instead.

The proposed amendments would eliminate the need to satisfy the impracticality requirement in cases where the telewarrant request is submitted in writing. The amendments would also expand the availability of telewarrants to public officers. These are officials who enforce federal non-Criminal Code legislation but who are not police officers.

Then there are provisions with regard to expert witness evidence. Certainly there is another provision dealing with the use of non-lawyers, and I might spend a minute or two talking about that.

When individuals are charged with summary offences, which are less serious offences that involve fewer procedural requirements, it is important that they have access to adequate representation. The proposed amendments would give each province the power to authorize programs and establish criteria outlining when an agent or non-lawyer can represent a defendant charged with a summary offence.

These amendments would allow for different approaches, depending upon the maximum term of imprisonment associated with the offence, among other things. The proposed amendments would, however, allow agents to appear on behalf of defendants to seek an adjournment of summary proceedings, regardless of the maximum term of imprisonment.

I do want to spend some time talking about the prize-fighting amendments to this bill. Under the current law, it is an offence to have any involvement in prize fighting, defined as an encounter or fight with fists or hands, except for amateur boxing, under the authority of the province. Once again, here we are dealing basically with the devolution of letting the provinces decide.

Many amateur sports, even those without monetary prizes, are technically included in the offence. The proposed amendments would expand the list of permitted exceptions to the prize-fighting offence so that the amateur combative sports such as judo and karate, currently in the Olympic program, would be allowed. The amendments would also permit a province to decide whether to expand the list of sports permitted to take place within the province and authorize specific contests.

Now we get to the issue of mixed martial arts fighting, which many members have seen take off in North America. It is a big deal and is certainly popular. I believe most provinces still ban it, but by approving this legislation, what we are doing is giving the provinces the right to approve these mixed martial arts. Senator John McCain once described mixed martial arts, which is a whirlwind mix of jiu-jitsu, judo, karate, boxing, kick-boxing and wrestling, as human cockfighting, so he obviously did not like it.

Just before I run out of time, a news report talked about Canada's love of hockey brawls. The company that promotes this fighting claimed that men between the ages of 18 and 35 have attention spans that are too short to watch 15 rounds of boxing, so mixed martial arts have bouts that usually last no more than 15 minutes, which are made for today's video culture.

Just before I finish, I just want to point out that with football players today, we are finding traumatic brain injuries. We are finding that football players are dying in greater numbers at young ages after they retire. We are finding, for example, that some wrestlers have the demented brains of 80-year-olds.

Clearly there are a lot of things we have to look at here within our existing sports, without promoting even more sporting activities like this, which could have even worse consequences.

Business of the House

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, the House leader for the official opposition, for his question.

This Thursday I will contain myself mainly to the traditional question which is the business ahead for the next week for the House of Commons.

This week we are focusing yet again on the government's justice bills. Yesterday we completed the final reading of Bill C-36, the serious time for serious crime bill. We expect to send Bill C-58, the child protection bill, to committee later today. I had hoped that debate might have collapsed before question period and that bill would have already been on its way to committee. Hopefully that will happen this afternoon.

We will then be debating at second reading Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act and the Identification of Criminals Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act. We are hopeful debate will conclude on this bill as well today.

Other bills scheduled for debate this week are Bill C-54, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to the National Defence Act, and Bill C-55, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, which is the response to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Shoker bill.

Next week we will be calling for debate: Bill C-27, anti-spam, at third reading; Bill C-44, the Canada Post remailers bill, at second reading; Bill C-57, the Canada-Jordan free trade bill, at second reading; Bill C-56, fairness for the self-employed bill, at report stage and third reading; and of course, as always, I will give consideration to any bill that is reported back from committee.

My hon. colleague asked about allotted days. Next Tuesday, it would be my intention to have as the next allotted day.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

We had settled on the schedule at the beginning, after concluding our study of Bill C-27.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the brief question from my hon. colleague this week in honour of the tributes that we are about to hear.

Today we began and hopefully will conclude the second reading stage of C-56, the Fairness for the Self-Employed Act. That bill is receiving rave reviews all across the land and it is my hope that it will move very expeditiously through the House.

On Tuesday, we sent another employment insurance act to the Senate, Bill C-50. My understanding is that it has completed third reading over in the other place and we hope that will receive royal assent today.

Following Bill C-56, it is my intention to continue the debate at third reading of C-27, the anti-spam bill, which will be followed by Bill C-44, An Act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act, which is at second reading.

Bill C-56 will continue tomorrow if not completed today. Backup bills for Friday are Bill C-51, the Economic Recovery Act, which was reported back from committee this week, followed by any bills not completed from today.

When the House returns from our constituency Remembrance Day week, the schedule of bills will include Bill C-23, Canada-Colombia, and bills not concluded from this week. We will give consideration to any bills reported back from committee or new bills yet to be introduced.

Electronic Commerce Protection Act

[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.

[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, 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.

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.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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, 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.

[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.

[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.

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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.

Business of the House

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, in relation to what day the House will be doing its annual tributes to the sacrifices of our veterans and those in the Canadian Forces currently serving, that will be under negotiation. I suspect that is something that will be discussed among all House leaders in the days ahead. We will decide, obviously, collectively and co-operatively on the appropriate time to make that important tribute.

In regard to our ongoing justice program, obviously we are going to continue along, as we have last week and this week, for the remainder of the week with our justice legislation. I would note that since my last statement, we introduced Bill C-53, Protecting Canadians by Ending Early Release for Criminals Act, and Bill C-54, Protecting Canadians by Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murders Act. Both of those additional bills are a key part of our ongoing efforts to reform the justice system in our country.

We sent to committee this week Bill C-42, Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and other Serious Crimes Act; Bill C-52, Retribution on Behalf of Victims of White Collar Crime Act; Bill C-46, Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act; and Bill C-47, Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act.

By the day's end, we hope to conclude debate on Bill C-43, Strengthening Canada's Corrections System Act. If we do that, I intend to call Bill C-31, the modernizing criminal procedure bill, and Bill C-19, the anti-terrorism bill.

Tomorrow we will continue with yet another justice bill, Bill C-35, Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, followed by the remainder of the justice bills that I noted if they have not been completed.

Next week I intend to call Bill C-50, the employment insurance for long tenured workers' bill, which is at report stage, having had it returned from committee.

Following Bill C-50, we will call for debate the report and third reading stage of Bill C-27, Electronic Commerce Protection Act, and second reading of Bill C-44, An Act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act,

Finally, Wednesday, November 4, will be an allotted day.

Industry, Science and Technology

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

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology.

In accordance with its order of reference of Friday, May 8, 2009, the committee has considered 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, and agreed on Monday, October 26, 2009, to report it with amendments.

The committee has ordered a reprint of Bill C-27, as amended, as a working copy for the use of the House of Commons at the report stage.

Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak again on this matter.

Before I came to this House, I was a member of the Durham Regional Police Services Board. When I was there, I had the opportunity obviously on a regular basis to talk with officers around the changing technologies and the fact that our laws simply had not kept pace. People were committing fraud online or hiding behind anonymity on Internet service providers and performing serious crimes, and the police simply could not follow them.

I was first elected in 2004 and when I came to Parliament, I was pleased to support the work of the then Liberal government to create what was the modernization of investigative techniques act. That bill which was introduced in 2005 is ostensibly what is before the House today in both bills, Bill C-46 and Bill C-47, which is now being debated. Unfortunately, in 2005 the Conservatives precipitated an election and that killed the bill.

The member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine then reintroduced that as a private member's bill in the next session and again that bill was killed when the Prime Minister walked to the Governor General's office and then killed that legislation.

In this session of Parliament that same Liberal member of Parliament introduced that Liberal legislation yet again. We had to wait until the end of the last session before the Conservatives finally introduced it.

As I said, just before we began question period, it is a little rich to me that the Conservatives would be going on about the imperative need to pass the bill and how much it is needed for police and how critical it is when they in fact have had four years to introduce it and are the ones responsible for killing it in various stages at various moments in time.

When they finally did introduce it, they introduced it in the last week the House was sitting before summer when there was no opportunity to debate it, there was no opportunity to move it forward. Now, it has been left until the end of October before we are finally dealing with the bill.

It shows that the Conservatives' commitment to the bill is fragile at best. In fact, we have seen what they do on criminal justice matters. They introduce bills and let them languish on the order paper. Then they wait for a scandal or a problem to hit and then they seek refuge in those same crime bills, suddenly bringing them back with great urgency saying they need to be dealt with immediately and any opposition party that dares to ask a question on them is somehow soft on crime.

The facts do not measure up. The facts are that they have allowed these things to languish for years and something that should have been dealt with, the Liberal legislation that was introduced so long ago, has meant that those people are committing online fraud and the police officers who need those additional investigative techniques and tools have been left without them as the government has completely failed them.

I think it is important to note as well that this is not the only area where we have seen this problem with the government. I spoke a great deal yesterday about the importance of these new investigative techniques for police. My intention is not today to repeat all of those comments but to make a comment more generally on the direction the Conservatives are heading on crime.

Today, in the public safety and national security committee we had a couple of different witnesses. One of the witnesses was Dr. Craig Jones who is the executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada. His insights into the direction in which the government is heading on crime I think is very telling. I will quote from his comments today. He said at the beginning of his statement:

My second audience is the future. I suffer no illusions that I will be able to alter the course of this government’s crime agenda--which legislative components contradict evidence, logic, effectiveness, justice and humanity. The government has repeatedly signalled that its crime agenda will not be influenced by evidence of what does and does not actually reduce crime and create safer communities.

What we heard as well from Mr. Stewart along with Michael Jackson, who wrote a report about the government's broken direction on corrections and crime, is that we are walking down the same road that the Americans embarked on in the early 1980s, when Republicans came forward and presented the same type of one-type solution for crime, which is incarceration, more incarceration and only incarceration.

If we did not have that example and the example that was in the United Kingdom, perhaps the Conservatives would be forgiven for thinking that would work. The reality of the United States is that this is a catastrophic disaster. In fact, the governor of California is now saying the state is being crushed under the weight of the mistake of these decisions, that the prisons are literally overflowing. The supreme court of California had to release thousands of offenders into the streets because the prisons simply had no room for them.

We also see that these prisons become crime factories. Minor criminals go in often for drug-related crimes, break and enters or smaller but still serious crimes, but instead of getting help for the addiction or mental health issues they face, they get sent into prison environments where they learn to be much worse criminals. We could make the analogy of putting in a butter knife and getting out a machine gun.

In fact, in committee today the director of the John Howard Society quoted an individual who deals with aboriginal inmates and said that our prison systems are turning into “gladiator schools”. He stated:

So our federal prisons have become “gladiator schools” where we train young men in the art of extreme violence or where we warehouse mentally ill people. All of this was foreseeable by anyone who cared to examine the historical experience of alcohol prohibition, but since we refuse to learn from history we are condemned to repeat it.

Everyone can imagine that as we continually overpopulate these prisons and do not provide the services to rehabilitate people, it has to come out somewhere. Where it comes out is in a system that continually degenerates.

In California the rate of recidivism, the rate at which people reoffend, is now 70%. Imagine that, 7 out of every 10 criminals who go into that system come out and reoffend, and those offences are often more serious than the ones they went in for first. In other words, people are going into the system and then coming out much worse.

We have to remember that even when we increase sentences, over 90% of offenders will get out. We can extend the length of time they are staying in there, but at a certain time they are going to get out, and it is the concern of anybody who wants a safe country or community that when people come out of these facilities, they come out ready to be reintegrated, to contribute to society and not reoffend.

The other fundamental problem with the Conservative approach to crime is that it waits for victims. Conservatives think the only way to deal with crime is to wait until somebody has been victimized and a crime has occurred, and then to punish the person.

Of course, we believe in serious sentences. We have to have serious sentences for serious crimes, but that is not nearly enough. If it were enough, if simply having tough sentences were enough to stop crime, then places like Detroit, Houston and Los Angeles would be the safest cities in North America. We know that is certainly not the case.

What the Conservatives are doing is slashing crime prevention budgets. Actual spending in crime prevention has been slashed by more than 50% since the Conservatives came into power. They have cut programs.

I have gone to communities like Summerside and talked to the Boys and Girls Clubs or the Salvation Army in different communities. They said they have either lost funding for community projects to help youth at risk or, instead of being given the power to decide how to stop crime in their own communities, they are prescribed solutions from on high in Ottawa, which is disconnected and often does not work in those local communities.

The net result is that the community, which has the greatest capacity to stop crime, has its ability removed of stopping that crime from happening in the first place, which means even more people go to these prisons, continually feeding this factory of crime the Conservatives are marching forward with.

When we look at the costs of all of this, not only does it not provide a benefit, not only does it make our communities less safe, as has been proven in the United States, but there is a staggering cost to these policies. Pursuing a failed Republican agenda on crime that not even the Republicans would subscribe to any more in most states and most quarters in the United States comes with a staggering cost.

The Conservatives are refusing to release those figures. The minister has been refusing to tell us what exactly the price tag is for all of these measures they are putting on the table. That is why I have asked the Parliamentary Budget Officer to take a look at all of these measures and their approach on crime, and tell us just what the cost is.

That bears some important questions to be asked. Where are the Conservatives going to get the money to build these new super prisons that they are talking about? Where are they going to get the money to house all of these additional inmates? Presumably, they would provide programs and services to make these inmates better. Where is that money going to come from?

If the example in the United States is any evidence, or if the example of the Conservatives' own action in slashing crime prevention budgets is any example, then we know that they will cut from the very things that stop crime from happening in the first place. Imagine the irony of that. To pay for prisons, they are going to cut the very things that stop people from going to prison. It is a backward philosophy under any logic. Upon examination of more than a minute or two, one would recognize that it is a recipe for disaster.

If that were not bad enough, and I think that it speaks directly to this bill, the Conservatives have also betrayed police. I have talked with the Canadian Police Association about the government's commitment to put 2,500 new officers on the street. That association has called that broken promise a betrayal. However, we also know that, with respect to the RCMP, the Prime Minister went out to Vancouver where he made a solemn commitment to RCMP officers that they would get the same wage as other police officers and that they would receive parity with other police officers.

Right after making that promise and signing a contract, he ripped that contract up and broke the promise. Worse, as if that was not enough of an insult to the men and women who are our national police force, the government then challenged in court the right of RCMP officers to have the choice of whether or not they wanted to have collective bargaining. The government decided to challenge a right that is enjoyed by every other police force in the country.

At the same time, the government has ignored call after call by public inquiry after public inquiry for proper and adequate oversight. The reports and conclusions of Justice Iacobucci and Justice O'Connor made it clear that new oversight mechanisms were critical to ensure that public confidence remained in our national security institutions and our national police force, yet the government ignored it. In this example, it ignored for four years Liberal legislation that had been put forward to give officers the tools that they needed to do the job of keeping our communities safe.

In all of this, the government's response is to skew the Liberal record and be dishonest about what exactly Liberals have done on crime. Here is an inconvenient fact that it does not like to talk about. For every year the Liberal government was in power, crime rates went down. Every single year that we were in power, Canada became a safer place. The communities were safer and that is because we took a balanced approach to crime.

However, the government also says that we have blocked its crime bills. That is incredibly disingenuous. Here is the reality. Maybe I will go over a couple of bills just from this session. These are bills that the Liberal Patry not only supported but moved to accelerate and tried to find a way to get passed as expediently as possible in the House.

The government caused an election, so it killed all of its own bill. When it brought back Bill C-2, it included Bill C-10, Bill C-32, Bill C-35, Bill C-27 and Bill C-22, all of which we supported. We supported and looked to accelerate Bill C-14, Bill C-15, Bill C-25 and C-26.

That is the record of Liberals in this session of Parliament on crime, not to mention the Liberal record of reducing crime every year that we were in office previously.

Today I was doing an Atlantic radio talk show with a Conservative member of Parliament who ascribed the motive to the Liberal Party that we did not care about crime, that we are soft on criminals, and that we like to let people get away with things. I will say one thing about the Conservatives. I think that they believe what they say. I think that they honestly believe that these policies will work, even though they have failed. Even though Republicans have tried them and they have been utter disasters, I do believe that the Conservatives think they will work.

However, to ascribe motive to this side of the House and to say that we somehow care less about the safety of our communities is disingenuous. To say that I care less about the safety of my children, family or community is unacceptable. This debate needs to be about who has the best approach to crime.

I would suggest that we have the best approach to stop crime before it happens, to build safe communities, to ensure we strike the right balance between being tough on those who commit serious crimes, but, most important, working with every ounce of our bodies to ensure those who begin to turn down dark paths have people who step in and intervene to ensure they do not commit those crimes in the first place. That is the type of approach we advocate on crime and it is one that I am proud of.

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

I do not have a motion to propose, but this is to committee members.

Why do we not instruct department officials to create something for us to exclude the National Do Not Call List? In other words, the purpose would be to not have this fairly recent measure included in Bill C-27. You have to admit that a year ago is pretty recent. Bill C-27 should not affect or do away with the National Do Not Call List.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Earlier, Mr. Leduc was saying that the list works very well. When the head of the CRTC appeared before us, I asked him whether the list was working well. He said that everything was going swell. Even when I asked about holes, he said that that was not the case.

My main question is this: Why use Bill C-27 to try to do away with the National Do Not Call List?

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

You may or may not be surprised to learn what Desjardins—which owns a number of businesses—did to comply with the National Do Not Call List. According to its estimates, the company invested or spent approximately $5 million. That is also for the information of the committee members.

I am almost certain that any businesses that are aware of this intention in Bill C-27 would, in my opinion, be very surprised, since most of them adapted to the measures that the government put forward a year ago. It cost them money.

Desjardins expressed its concern to us. There is concern as to whether the implementation or amendment of the provisions in Bill C-27 will come with costs. Desjardins believes that the National Do Not Call List works well. What is being asked is that Bill C-27 not include the possibility of doing away with the National Do Not Call List.

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

Thank you very much.

On a number of occasions at committee we've heard people calling for the removal of sections referring to the “do not call” list. Mr. Palmer is trying to clarify that while the sections under Bill C-27 will go forward, they will not be gazetted but will be available to be gazetted.

I appreciate your assurances of public consultation, but if you are willing to go through public consultations and seek the viewpoints of others who have only had this for 13 months and spent the last two years implementing it, why wouldn't you hold out until it's required and we can have some assurances that you will do public consultations and ensure that things happening to the “do not call list” are occurring, which would be effective for both the consumers as well as for businesses?

[Philip Palmer]

No, it is not in Bill C-27. But based on our knowledge of other legislation, we can assure the committee that consultations on the necessary regulations will take place before the provisions come into force, prior to the transition.

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

But it is not in Bill C-27.

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

If I may, Mr. Chair, I have another question.

Does the bill set out the obligation to hold consultations before the provision about eliminating the list is added to Bill C-27?

[Philip Palmer]

We tried to find a technological difference between the National Do Not Call List and what is in Bill C-27, the provisions dealing with spam and others. In the end, it was impossible to separate the two. In light of developments such as Voice Over Internet Protocol, we were fully aware that we might have to act fairly swiftly in certain situations to ensure that there is always a regime in place to protect Canadians.

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

To summarize what you just said, you do not intend to do away with the National Do Not Call List. You are waiting to see how things develop. That being said, we can assume there is some uncertainty on your part.

Why include a provision in Bill C-27 to deal with something that may never happen?

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

I would like to thank the Conservative Party for allowing me to bring this matter up. We have just seen that we could have debated a question on clause 64. But I am going to talk about clause 86 exclusively. I have some questions for the department representatives.

You seem determined to abolish the National Do Not Call List. Why do you want to include the provisions allowing it to be abolished in Bill C-27?

Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Madam Speaker, I find that comment by the member opposite very curious. I will start my comments by saying that I think he has forgotten who caused the last election. It was in fact the Prime Minister who walked over to the Governor General's residence and precipitated the last election, therefore killing every bill on the order paper, including a bill dealing with this very matter which was introduced by the Liberal member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine. I find the member's comment curious that he is blaming the frequency of elections, every single one of which the Conservatives precipitated in the last two instances, and using that as an excuse for why this was not adopted.

A point that bears mentioning is that in 2005 the Liberal Party introduced the modernization of investigative techniques act, which is essentially the same bill that we are working with here today. With very minor modifications, it is essentially the same legislation, so why would it take four years essentially to deal with the same bill that we had written so many years ago?

The member talked about things like voice over Internet protocol in terms of changes to Internet service provisions. All of those things were present four years ago when that work was done, yet the government refused to introduce it. Even recently, when this was brought back, the decision that was made by the government was to bring it in at the end of the last session. It was in the last week immediately leading up to the summer recess when suddenly this was a priority put on the order paper. It languished there for months and months and now the government is bringing it back. And the Conservatives have the audacity to try to talk about us delaying bills. The Conservatives themselves have had their crime bills sitting on the order paper, not only for months but in some instances for years, only to bring them back when they are a hit politically.

What they do is when there is a scandal, the most recent one being the cheque scandal, they decide to resurrect their crime bills that they have been ignoring for months on end. Suddenly it is an imperative national priority to deal with whatever particular crime bill they put on the table at that particular moment, when we all know that the real objective is to change the political channel away from whatever political troubles they are having. In this particular instance, it is the cheque fiasco. As this bill has been ignored and ignored and left to languish and we have been calling again and again for it to be dealt with, we can know that is essentially what their strategy is.

Now they have come to this bill and said that it is important to deal with it but only after we have been pushing for it for four years. I hope something does not distract them and we do not find this bill suddenly being lost yet again.

It is important to mention that the bill we have been advocating for the last four years is badly needed by police. Technology has changed and evolved in many different ways. While criminals have evolved with it, our legislation simply has not. For the last number of years while the Conservatives have been sitting on this, whether the criminals are involved in cyber fraud or are using technology like BlackBerries in the commission of crimes, to which the police cannot get access, the criminals have had a huge advantage against the law enforcement agencies.

One of the areas in which they have had a great advantage is in their anonymity. People are able to do things on line and police are not able to uncover who exactly they are, even if they know they are committing acts of a criminal nature. Police have been calling on us for years to change that and only now are the Conservatives bringing something forward to do something about it.

I have had many conversations with police, not just about things that were mentioned by the hon. member, but about other things, such as child pornography. Obviously child pornography is a deep concern and we want to root that out and give police every tool to be able to go after those individuals. I have also spoken with the police about instances where a criminal is known to have a particular phone and his whereabouts cannot be ascertained. The police want to be able to use the GPS tracking device in that device in order to figure out where the individual is. The current laws do not allow the police to do that.

I was talking to the chief of police in Calgary who was expressing deep frustration at the number of dial-a-dope operations. Individuals are using cell phones almost like a pizza service to deliver drugs to people's doors. When the police find these cell phones they are unable to access them because of the encryption software. The maker of the device is under no obligation to help open it up to reveal all of the phone numbers and the client base. It is a crime that is almost impossible to catch someone doing because it is locked behind that wall of encryption. That has been going on for years and the Conservatives have been refusing to give the police the tools they need to deal with it, even though solutions are present.

At the same time, it is important to mention that one of the things we are going to have to look at and study in committee is to ensure that there is balance. A number of people have expressed concerns that a law of this nature could be misused to allow access into people's searching history and people's personal messages or could be used maliciously by somebody to gain access to people's Internet search records and history. We have to ensure that balance exists. We have to protect individual rights to protect people's freedom to do what they want without somebody being able to go through willy-nilly, without warrant, their information. At the same time, we have to provide police with the opportunities to chase those individuals who we have reasonable grounds to believe have committed a crime.

It is worth mentioning as we talk about this bill, that the Conservative approach to crime is, I think, in general, disingenuous. We listened all day today to speeches by members about how the Liberal Party had held up a variety of bills. Of course, factually, that is entirely incorrect.

If we were to talk about the Liberal Party record in this session of Parliament in terms of bills that we have supported and helped to accelerate, I can list the following: Bill C-2, which was an omnibus bill which included provisions from Bill C-10, Bill C-32, Bill C-35, Bill C-27, and Bill C-22; Bill C-14; Bill C-15; Bill C-25; and Bill C-26. It is important to mention that in every instance we tried to get those bills accelerated and pushed forward.

That does not stop the Conservatives from talking about other parties holding up their crime bills. The problem is the facts do not match their rhetoric. In this specific instance and many others, the reality is the exact opposite of what they have said. In many instances, the Conservative crime bills have been languishing on the order paper, forgotten. They are sitting there waiting to be implemented. The Conservatives are not waiting for the right time for the public interest, not waiting for the right time to ensure there is adequate information to get the bills passed, but they are waiting for the right political moment to put the bills forward to try to turn the political channel.

If that were not bad enough, the other reality is that they are fundamentally letting down the Canadian public by only offering one solution to crime, and that solution invariably is to lock up people.

I do not have any problem with the notion of tough sentences. We have to have harsh, stiff sentences for people who commit serious crimes. However, if tough sentences were the only answer, then places like Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Detroit would be some of the safest cities in North America. In fact, we know the opposite to be true.

The reality is that places with the stiffest sentences are more often than not some of the most dangerous cities in North America. Why? The Americans are being crushed under the weight of their own correctional system. They are literally in a position where there are so many people pouring into the prisons that they cannot possibly keep up with the costs of building all of the prisons, let alone the programs and services to ensure that people do not repeat offend. In fact, in California the situation has become so bad that its rate of recidivism is now 70%. They are creating crime factories. People go in for a minor crime and come out as a major criminal. It is like putting in a butter knife and getting out a machine gun.

That is the strategy the Conservatives are trying to bring here: a failed Republican strategy in dealing with crime that we know as a fact does not work. They are trying to apply it here to change the channel, to use it as a political game changer. If they are in trouble with the cheque fiasco, they talk about locking up people longer. If they are in trouble because a minister is caught in a fiscal indiscretion, they talk about locking people up longer. That is what they do.

I think most of them, I would hope most of them, realize that it is a disastrous strategy, that it leads to less safe communities, that it leads to billions of dollars in additional costs, and that it is exactly following down the road that even Republican governors say was a huge mistake to walk down. If anyone doubts that, I will point quickly to what has happened specifically with incarceration in the United States compared with Canada.

In 1981, before the United States began a similar agenda on which the Conservatives are now embarking, locking people up longer and longer, the gap between the rate of incarceration in Canada and the U.S. was much narrower. In Canada, 91 per 100,000 people were incarcerated, while the figure in the United States was 243 for every 100,000 people.

By 2001, Canada's rate had grown only slightly in terms of the number of people who were incarcerated, to 101 incarcerated for every 100,000 people, while in the United States that rate had soared to 689 for every 100,000, a rate almost 700% higher than that in Canada. In that same period of time, Canada and the U.S. had the same decline in their overall rate of crime. Imagine that.

The United States' rate of incarceration went up 500% over ours, and yet over that same period of time we had the identical reduction in the amount of crime. The only difference was that 500% more individuals were being incarcerated per 100,000 people, and it cost billions of dollars more.

In fact, if we continue to follow this model suggested by the Conservatives and we extrapolate to the same path that the Republicans took the United States, where they put them right to the brink, we are talking about roughly $9 billion a year in additional costs to have the same rate of incarceration.

As for the difference for public safety, well, unfortunately, I wish I could say it just kept it the same, that the only impact of that was the loss of $9 billion a year, but we all know that that $9 billion a year has to come from somewhere. We have already seen where the Conservatives' priorities are on crime. Let us take a look at the crime prevention budget.

Since 2005 the crime prevention budget has been slashed by more than 50%. That is actual spending. At the same time as they are increasing sentences and chasing after a failed Republican model, the Conservatives are slashing the money that is given to crime prevention. It is crazy. Anybody who would look at it objectively would say that this is a path to disaster, and yet that is exactly the road they have decided to head down.

There are opportunities here to be smarter on crime, to listen to police, to talk to them about what the real solutions are, to invest in prevention, to invest in making sure people turn down the right path instead of the wrong one. I had the opportunity to go around with the former chief of police in Regina and see a neighbourhood which is designated as one of the most dangerous in Canada. He was able to show me a home that had no septic system, no heat and where the child in that home was going to school hungry. That same child predictably, just scant years later, could be committing his or her first crime by starting to get involved in drugs.

For more than 60% of our inmates, addiction is the root cause of the problem and yet they do not get help. They get thrown into prison and forgotten about, and they come out worse because the core problem was never addressed. In this case it would be an addiction problem that sent them there. They go in for a minor crime, usually break and enter, and they have an addiction. They go into a system that is not providing them any rehabilitation services, and they come out and commit worse crimes. So goes the cycle. It is a constant cycle of things getting continually ever worse.

When we look at our prison system and we ask where these criminals come from, not often enough do we take a hard look at that. Imagine. Sixty per cent of those in prison face addiction issues. Over 10% face serious mental health issues. Not only are our prisons turning into crime factories, but the Conservatives are trying to use them as hospitals, by sending people with serious mental health issues into prisons. The prisons are so ill-equipped to deal with them that they are putting them in solitary confinement. They are often released directly from solitary confinement into the general population, only to reoffend again. Whether it is the facilities in St. John's, Grandview or different facilities across the country, we see this time and time again.

The reality here is we have a bill that has been called for by police for years. The government is only now finally bringing it forward, after its having been on the table since 2005. It is trying to use crime as a political game changer, misrepresenting what crime is really about and how to stop it, and at the same time it is taking us down a path that has been tried and failed before in the United States.

We need to do better than this. We need to be honest on crime and offer real solutions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the 39th meeting of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology.

We're here to review Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, clause by clause. This is a continuation of the clause-by-clause consideration of our last meeting. We will begin today by considering clause 63.

(On clause 63--Regulations--Governor in Council)

I understand that we have two amendments to clause 63, government amendments 49.1 and 50.

You all should have in front of you a package of amendments that are listed in order.

Go ahead, Madam Coady.

Industry

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government introduced anti-spam legislation, Bill C-27, and now it is at risk of being weakened.

Both the Liberals and the Bloc have left consumers wondering as they cave to the corporate lobby and move motions that are against the public interest.

Now the government has an amendment on the table that would allow serious violations of individual privacy, as private companies would get access to Canadians' personal computers.

Why does the minister believe personal privacy is not an issue and that computers can be invaded by others? Why is he softening on spam? Will the minister stand up for Internet users or sell them out to the spammers and the fraudsters?

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

If I understand correctly, you've detailed the measures. This part of Bill C-27 was originally much more restricted. What was presented to us at the outset included no explanation. It was really an addition. Are you providing more details, clarification, or are you making changes?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Order, please.

Good afternoon. Welcome to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology and to our 38th meeting on this day, October 21, 2009.

We're here pursuant to the order of reference of Friday, May 8, 2009, concerning Bill C-27, otherwise known as the Electronic Commerce Protection Act.

Today, we will be going clause by clause on this bill. So without further ado, we'll begin.

Before I do, I just want to recognize our three departmental officials here. We have Madam DiFrancesco, who is director general of the electronic commerce branch; we have Mr. Palmer, who is the senior general counsel of the legal services group; and we have Monsieur André Leduc, who is the policy analyst with the e-commerce policy group.

I believe I have an intervention from Mr. Lake.

Go ahead.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Good afternoon, members of the committee.

Welcome to the 37th meeting of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. We're here pursuant to the order of reference of Friday, May 8, 2009, concerning Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act.

We have in front of us today three witnesses from the Department of Industry: Madam Janet DiFrancesco, Mr. Philip Palmer, and Monsieur André Leduc.

Thank you all very much for coming here today.

Before we begin clause-by-clause consideration, I have two interventions, one from Mr. Lake and puis Monsieur Bouchard.

Mr. Lake.

[Janet DiFrancesco, Director General, Electronic Commerce Branch, Department of Industry]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm pleased to be here today as the new director general of the electronic commerce branch at Industry Canada, having recently replaced Richard Simpson, who appeared alongside Minister Clement and Assistant Deputy Minister Helen McDonald in June.

As you indicated, I'm joined here today by our legal counsel, Philip Palmer, and from my staff, André Leduc.

Industry Canada has made a commitment to increasing confidence in the digital economy, to clarifying the rules of the domestic and international markets, promoting the adoption and use of e-business and eliminating barriers to the use of e-business. The electronic commerce protection bill represents an importing step in achieving these objectives. Our department is pleased with the support this initiative has received in the testimony and briefs that have been submitted to the committee.

It is no surprise that there has been such interest in this legislation, as the Internet is now the communications platform of the emerging economy. ECPA is about more than just the nuisance of spam; it is about malicious and detrimental activities that dissuade Canadians and Canadian businesses from taking part in the online marketplace.

I should note that ECPA could not have been drafted without the important work of the task force on spam and their recommendations, as well as the experience shared with us by global partners, specifically New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. By working closely with these counterparts, Canada has drafted world-leading legislation based on the best and most effective aspects from legislative initiatives from around the world.

Spam and on-line threats come from both inside and outside Canada. The current bill contains important provisions designed to protect Canadian consumers and businesses from the most dangerous and harmful types of spam and will introduce a regulatory system that will protect the privacy and personal safety of Canadians in the on-line environment. The bill will include a set of clear rules that will benefit all Canadians and that will increase their trust in on-line communications and electronic business.

I would like to take this opportunity to address a couple of the common misperceptions about the legislation.

The committee has heard a number of witnesses express concern about the consent regime. It should be noted that there is no time limit to express consent. Once an individual has provided express consent to a person, the consent can only end when the individual opts out or unsubscribes. The 18-month period with respect to existing business relationships allows companies to imply consent in order to give them time to obtain the individual's express consent.

Secondly, with regard to the private right of action, some witnesses have indicated that they do not see a need for it. We believe this provision provides an important mechanism that will allow individuals and groups of individuals to pursue violators and enable telecommunications service providers and Internet service providers to pursue those who threaten their networks. It would, for example, enable a bank or financial institution to take civil action against phishers who falsely impersonate their organizations in an attempt to defraud their customers.

Mr. Chairman, we have examined the concerns expressed before your committee and have prepared motions respecting a number of them. At Mr. Lake's request, we have distributed to all members an annotated version of the bill indicating the amendments proposed by the government. More than 40 amendments are planned, a number of which are of a technical nature.

Our purpose is to strengthen confidence in online commerce, and the opportunity for public comment presented by the committee's study of Bill C-27 has been most helpful. Of all the areas discussed, those that provoked the most comments were those relating to the perceived breadth of the legislation and the requirements respecting express and implied consent. We considered these concerns carefully, and amendments are being proposed to better focus those provisions that were considered too broad.

In brief, the amendments deal with the definition of commercial electronic messages, existing business relationships, business-to-business relationships, third party referrals, and the installation and update of programs and applets.

First, with regard to commercial electronic messages, we recommend expanding the range of situations in which the sending of e-mails is excepted from the requirements of express consent. For instance, correspondence in reply to an inquiry is clearly exempt, as would be ongoing correspondence relating to insurance policies, warranties, subscriptions, and other longer-term relationships.

Secondly, amendments have been drafted concerning existing business relationships. For example, for those relationships that are in effect prior to the act coming into force, a transitional or grandfather clause will extend the implied consent regime for a period of 36 months to allow commercial entities time to contact existing clients and obtain their express consent for future communications. Similarly, we have clarified by way of proposed amendment that the 18-month period concerning an “existing business relationship” referred to in subclause 10(4) commences on the date that the subscription, membership, account, or loan has been terminated, as opposed to the beginning of that relationship.

You will also find an amendment that clarifies that in the instance of the sale of a business, the purchaser is deemed to have an existing business relationship with the seller's clientele.

In the context of business-to-business relationships, we have suggested expanding implied consent to encompass the conspicuous publication of an electronic address, such as on a website or in a print advertisement. In these circumstances, the sender's message must relate to the business or office held by the recipients. Implied consent would also be extended to cover situations where it is reasonable to believe that consent has been given—for instance, in giving out a business card or providing an e-mail address in a letter.

We have recognized the importance in certain industries of being able to contact referrals through e-mail and have drafted an amendment to this effect. In the document before you, you will find a provision permitting under certain conditions unsolicited commercial messages that are follow-ups to third party referrals.

In terms of consent to installation of computer programs, you will find proposed amendments to clarify that automatic updates—for example, daily or weekly updates to anti-virus software—will not require consent for each update as long as this is set out as part of the original contract under which the software was installed.

Similarly, you will find that there are proposals to ensure that running applets such as JavaScript or Flash programs will not require express consent each time they are run.

Last, during witness testimony, a suggestion was made to have the administrative monetary penalties, or AMPs, provision amended to provide further assurance that companies that make an honest mistake will not be subject to heavy fines. It has been suggested that the CRTC be given the capability to suspend AMPs for a specified period of time, and that if the business does not violate the act again during that time period, the AMP could be lifted. As a result, we propose that clause 25 be amended to indicate that the CRTC has the ability to reduce, suspend, or waive an administrative monetary penalty.

I want to thank you for your review of the Electronic Business Protection Act. We are convinced that this work will result in healthy regulation and that the bill will take into account the interests of businesses and consumers in an equitable manner.

We welcome the committee's questions. Thank you.

[Tamir Israel, Staff Lawyer, Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic]

We would like to thank you, Chair and honourable members, for inviting us to speak before you today on this important issue.

My name is Tamir Israel. I am staff counsel with CIPPIC. With me is David Fewer, our acting director. We apologize for not providing you with a brief of our position today.

CIPPIC is a legal clinic based in the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law. Much of our mandate involves addressing the legal and policy concerns that arise from new technologies and specifically from the ever-increasing availability of private and personal information in electronic formats.

For a long time, we have been concerned with the many facets of identity theft and have researched legal and policy approaches to that problem. This work has resulted in, among other things, a public-private multidisciplinary project funded by the Ontario Research Network for Electronic Commerce, ORNEC, and a series of six working papers available on our website at www.cippic.ca. These cover most aspects of the issue.

We will be releasing a final white paper later this year, updating and summarizing our work on this issue and making specific recommendations for law and policy reform needed to address identity theft in a comprehensive manner.

We would like to point out that identity theft is a very serious phenomenon with specific impacts on individuals and society at large. You've heard that ID theft costs our economy $2 billion annually and that this is a conservative number.

There is an associated loss of confidence that is much more difficult to quantify, but equally serious. We have seen figures estimating that individual victims in Canada spend approximately $164 million of their own money and over 18 million hours annually just addressing the fallout from having their identities stolen, just to re-establish their identities.

In addition to this social and individual financial cost, there is also the invasiveness of such offences. People who have their personal information or identities taken from them for such fraudulent purposes often feel violated. People have told us that victims of ID theft often exhibit feelings similar to those seen in victims of home burglaries. There is serious psychological harm here, as well as the financial costs.

We feel that the magnitude and nature of these harms calls for a criminal component as part of any response to the problem of ID theft.

Our study of Bill S-4 has convinced us that it is well-tailored to address the specific and fairly well-documented problems raised by identity theft in the criminal sphere. It manages to provide police with the tools they need in this sphere to address these problems, while avoiding the problems of overbreadth. It does so while managing to maintain flexibility and technical neutrality. The reason it is able to do this is that it directly addresses the specific issues posed by identity theft and does not overreach in that respect.

We're here today to say that we support this bill and would gladly try to answer any outstanding questions or concerns you might have on it. We've been paying attention to your committee hearings and we've noticed that some have been raised.

But we'd also like to remind the government, in brief, that its job with respect to identity theft is not done. ID theft requires a comprehensive response. This bill largely and effectively addresses the criminal portion of this response. In addition, the government's Bill C-27, which is also currently in committee, takes important regulatory steps that will deter a great deal of ID theft activity.

But more reforms are essential to address prevention and to help individual victims deal with the problems that identity theft raises for them. Many of these additional reforms are beyond the scope of a criminal bill such as this one, and we would not want to delay the implementation of Bill S-4. However, we have your attention, so we would like to point out to you the ways in which the Criminal Code can be improved to better accommodate the needs of victims. The victim restitution provisions in clause 11 of this bill will go some way to doing that, but we feel that more can be done.

We have suggested in the past and do so here again that it would be helpful to add provisions to the Criminal Code giving victims the right to local police reports. We have found from our research that this helps victims address jurisdictional issues.

What often happens is that a resident of one city, let's say Ottawa, will have their identity stolen or the ID fraud will manifest in another city, let's say Edmonton. The victim will be directed to Edmonton police, who will have jurisdiction. The local police force will generally refuse to open an additional file because they don't like to investigate claims committed in other jurisdictions. Although I note in defence of Ottawa that we were told the OPS in particular is willing to do this, most other police forces will not.

This is a serious problem. ID theft often requires immediate action, and for an Ottawa denizen to have to contact Edmonton before a file is opened, that takes a lot of time. In the meantime, they are having credit problems.

On the other hand, ID theft also has long-term, recurring ramifications, and it simplifies matters a great deal for victims to have local police as their point of contact for any investigation. The police can then forward the investigation to a more appropriate jurisdiction, but they should remain the point of contact. It should be clarified that this applies to victims, even if the financial institution in question absorbed all the financial harm in a particular instance.

In addition, we have heard that police reports often don't contain a great deal of information. They do not even state that the offence being investigated is fraud. This means they're not very helpful to victims, in and of themselves, if they're trying to vindicate themselves with persistent creditors or with Equifax or anybody else.

To remedy this, other jurisdictions have provided, within their criminal statutes, a right to a judicial determination of factual innocence from a court of law, once an investigation is successfully completed. We point you to section 530.6 of California’s Penal Code, if you would like guidance on provisions of this nature either now or in the future. There are other examples from other jurisdictions that can be found in our working papers on our website. A broader range of suggestions is available in our working papers as well and will be collected and updated in the white paper we intend to release shortly.

We invite any questions on the issues we've raised here, on any outstanding concerns you may have with respect to the current bill that have been raised in the past hearings before you, or on any other steps that can be taken to alleviate identity theft.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Order.

Good afternoon, everyone.

We're here to conduct meeting 36 of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. The meeting is pursuant to the order of reference of Friday, May 8, 2009, concerning Bill C-27, the anti-spam bill, otherwise known, in its short form, as the Electronic Commerce Protection Act.

Welcome to all of you, members of the committee and our three witnesses today.

From the Department of Industry, we have Madam Janet DiFrancesco, director general of the electronic commerce branch.

Welcome.

We also have Mr. Philip Palmer, senior general counsel of legal services at Industry Canada, and

Mr. André Leduc, Policy Analyst, E-Commerce Policy.

Welcome, everyone.

Before we begin with an opening statement from officials, I want to wish Mr. Van Kesteren a happy 54th birthday today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you.

Thank you very much to our witnesses for appearing today.

We must adjourn; it's 5:30 p.m. However, just before we do, I have two points of information for committee members.

First, the clerk has distributed to members of the committee contact information for personnel or members who wish to suggest amendments to Bill C-27, which we are studying today. Before you submit your amendments to the clerk, so that all members can have them in both official languages, we strongly suggest that you consult with the legislative clerk and legislative counsel to ensure that the wording of your amendment is proper and in good form.

Secondly, we received an invitation from the International Astronautical Federation for a parliamentarian event in Taejon, Korea, concerning climate change. If any members, individually or in a larger group, are interested in attending this event, talk to the clerk and she can put you in touch with the international organization.

Without further ado, this meeting is adjourned.

[Nathalie Clark, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Canadian Bankers Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting us to be here with you today to contribute to your study of Bill C-27, the proposed Electronic Commerce Protection Act, ECPA.

We welcome this opportunity to comment on this important bill.

My name is Nathalie Clark. I am the general counsel and the corporate secretary of the Canadian Bankers Association. With me today is Bill Randle, our assistant general counsel.

In the submission we have provided to the committee, we have commented on Bill C-27 in some detail. But in these opening remarks, I will briefly review our main concerns with the bill.

In recent years, criminals abused e-mail both to deliver spyware, which can steal personal information from its targets, and to send counterfeit messages that lure individuals into disclosing personal information that results in identity theft.

It is widely recognized that these types of spam are a significant threat to individuals, businesses and the Canadian economy. For several years, the CBA has encouraged the government to introduce legislation to address the most malicious forms of spam.

Canada is the only G8 country that does not currently have specific anti-spam laws and the banking industry agrees that legislation is required to protect consumers and businesses from these dangerous and damaging forms of spam.

As a result, we welcome the government's decision to proceed with draft anti-spam legislation and we support the stated goal of Bill C-27 to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating commercial conduct that discourages the use of electronic means to carry out commercial activities. We note, however, that Bill C-27 is clearly more extensive and restrictive than similar legislation in other jurisdictions, including the United States.

We are concerned with the broad range of the bill and the potential negative impact that some of its provisions may have on legitimate business activities. In particular, we believe the opt-in framework proposed in the bill, combined with the need--with some limited exceptions--to obtain express consent from a person to send them a commercial electronic message, will have a negative impact on the ability of legitimate businesses to market their goods and services electronically. Most importantly, express consent cannot be obtained by sending an e-mail or other electronic communications to a person requesting consent. It can only be obtained in some other manner through some prior contact with the recipient. In other words, a business cannot send an unsolicited electronic message seeking consent to send more messages.

We recommend, therefore, that Bill C-27 be amended to allow the sending of an initial contact message without consent, while strengthening the content requirements of the initial contact message to ensure it is consistent with the principles of the do-not-call list legislation and the anti-spam legislation of other countries.

We acknowledge that consent can be implied when there is an existing business relationship--we welcome this exception--but believe some changes are needed to the definition of “existing business relationship”. We also recommend an amendment to extend the exception to affiliates of a company with which a person has a business relationship.

We note that express consent is required every time a “computer program” is installed, even when there is an existing business relationship. We would like some clarification that tools such as “cookies” are not included in the definition of “computer program” set out in the bill.

There is an extensive system of administrative monetary penalties set out in the bill as well. While we accept that there is a need for an enforcement regime, including penalties for persons who breach the provisions of the act, we believe that some aspects of the regime, and especially the penalties proposed in the bill, are excessive and would discourage businesses from engaging in legitimate marketing activities. This could have the effect of stifling the development of legitimate electronic marketing and could adversely affect the ability of businesses to reach their consumers.

The bill states that the purpose of these substantial AMPs is to encourage cooperation and compliance with the legislation and is not to punish. If that is the primary objective of the AMP provision in Bill C-27, we recommend that the CRTC be given the ability to suspend an AMP for a period of time, and if the persons subject to the AMP satisfy the CRTC that they have made changes to comply fully with the law, then the AMP could be withdrawn.

The bill also includes a private right of action that allows for statutory damages without proof of loss. We believe that the appropriate enforcement regime is government based. We do not support a private right of action, as we believe that these actions are generally motivated more by private monetary considerations than by general deterrence, and that a private right of action will have a chilling effect on businesses that wish to engage in legitimate marketing activities. While the bill provides for various factors to be considered in assessing damages under a private right of action, legitimate businesses are still put to the significant cost and task of defending themselves in this context. In particular, the private right of action that allows for statutory damages without proof of loss will encourage class actions that will lead to substantive legal costs and reputational risk for businesses.

Summing up, the CBA stands firmly behind this legislation that protects individuals, businesses and the Canadian economy from the serious threat of malicious forms of spams. We are very pleased to have had this opportunity to work closely with the government and with members of Parliament to ensure that Canada is no longer the only G8 without specific anti-spam laws on the books.

Thank you once again for providing the CBA with the opportunity to offer our views on Bill C-27. We would be pleased to answer any questions.

[Geneviève Reed, Head, Research and Representation Department, Option consommateurs]

Mr. Chair, Mr. Vice-Chair, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to present out views on Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act.

Option consommateurs dates back to 1983. We are a non-profit association with a mission to promote and to defend the interests of consumers and to ensure respect of their interests. Our head office is in Montreal. We also have an office in Ottawa.

The Task Force on Spam submitted its report to the federal Minister of Industry more than four years ago. The Task Force consisted of the ten official members, of whom I was one, drawn from private industry, government and the non-governmental sector. About 100 others with a deep-rooted interest in the question also contributed. The Task Force submitted a unanimous report in which it recommended, among other things, the drafting of a stand-alone law that would clearly address spam, spam-related offences and emerging threats such as spyware and botnets.

We therefore welcome the tabling of Bill C-27 as a first step in improving Canadian consumer confidence in electronic commerce.

It is the recipients, namely Internet Service Providers, business and consumers, who bear the cost of massive volumes of commercial email, not the senders. And these direct costs—bandwidth, filtering technology, the hiring of extra staff—and indirect costs—loss of productivity, loss of genuine messages, corruption of information technology infrastructure and identity theft—are as numerous as they are hard to quantify.

Fraudulent use of email addresses directly undermines the public confidence necessary for electronic commerce. Spam violates two different principles of privacy protection: the collection and use of information and the Internet user's right to withhold consent to such collection. Spam is also an important vector for phishing attacks which enable Internet criminals to carry out identity theft. According to the OECD, spam levels are high enough that they are undermining user confidence in email and other electronic media as well as creating a negative impact on global communications networks.

This situation makes it urgent that Parliament adopt clear precise legislation banning the sending of unsolicited and unauthorized commercial emails—as stipulated in subsection 6.1; modification of message headers—section 7; the installation or use in an individual's computer of programs without that individual's consent—section 8; misleading and fraudulent representations—section 71; the use of computer program for searching for, and collecting, electronic addresses and the use of an individual's electronic address collected by such a program—section 78; as well as the unauthorized use of a computer for the purposes of collecting personal information—section 78. It is just as important that this legislation should allow commercial email only if the consumer has clearly agreed to receive them.

In discussion groups and in a Canada-wide survey which we conducted in 2004, Canadian consumers expressed a preference for a system requiring a consumer's explicit prior consent before any commercial email is sent. We would have preferred a strict regime of explicit consent, but we consider that the thrust of sections 10 through 13 of the bill represents a reasonable compromise between explicit and implied consent in cases of an existing business relationship. For the sake of greater clarity on the point of implied consent, we recommend the addition of the following clause after clause 10.4:

In the case of “existing business relationships“, an implied consent is valid only if the recipient provides his or her own details directly and if the goods or services being marketed are similar to those previously sold to him or her,

The bill incorporates the Task Force on Spam's recommendations, firstly, that the new offences created by the law should be covered under civil status and secondly, that there be a provision allowing individuals and businesses to lodge private actions. The high financial penalties in the proposed legislation strike us as severe enough to discourage spammers.

Bill C-27 also incorporates several amendments to the Competition Act and to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Acts which will help to counter spammers' methods and practices more effectively.

Overall, the drafting of Bill C-27 seems to have been based on the best regulatory practices of Canada's many commercial partners who have already adopted legislation against spam and its harmful consequences.

As you undoubtedly know, the effectiveness of any legislation depends on its enforcement. As such, additional resources must necessarily be provided along with any new statutory provisions. Furthermore, this draft legislation calls for increased coordination among existing agencies named in the bill and involves the creation of a national coordination centre to monitor and report on the law's effectiveness, to support national and international cooperation, to work with industry to analyze trends in electronic threats and to develop awareness and education programs.

Finally, there is one element which needs the attention of parliamentarians and of the Government of Canada. Canadian consumers need a simple and effective complaint mechanism.

The new legislation has made provision for establishing new monitoring and new electronic risk analysis mechanisms. These will help bolster consumer confidence in electronic commerce and will help prevent potentially even more dangerous threats from developing.

Thank you very much.

[Chris Gray, Director, Canadian Intellectual Property Council]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Chris Gray. I am the director of the Canadian Intellectual Property Council.

Appearing with me today is Jason Kee, a steering committee member with the CIPC. He is also the director of policy and legal affairs with the Entertainment Software Association of Canada.

It is a pleasure to be able to present the views of the Canadian Intellectual Property Council and our members on Bill C-27.

The CIPC was founded in 2008 under the authority of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce to unite businesses and press for an improved intellectual property rights regime in Canada. While our focus of late has been on the copyright consultations and seeking better border enforcement to fight counterfeit goods, we also need to monitor other legislation that could affect businesses, such as this one.

The CIPC and all in the business community support the notion of eliminating spam. As we all know, spam is a nuisance to almost everyone. For a business, especially a small business, it can slow down legitimate business practices and it takes time to delete. However, there are some concerns about Bill C-27 that need to be addressed, and we're pleased that the committee is taking the time to get it right and consider amendments to the legislation that will make it acceptable to all.

Working with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and other business associations, we've submitted amendments to the committee members for consideration. While we support the bill's objective of deterring the most dangerous forms of spam, such as phishing and malware, that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities, we can't support the bill as currently drafted.

This new Electronic Commerce Protection Act may render thousands of commonly used computer applications illegal. It would submit Canadian businesses to potential fines of up to $10 million and potential civil action. This new bill would also amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act to submit Canadian businesses to civil suits relating to violations of the act. This bill would potentially prohibit the formation of new business relationships over the Internet or through e-mail. It would also severely limit the use of the Internet for the distribution of software and software updates.

I'm now going to turn this over to Jason to discuss some more specific concerns we have.

[Tom Copeland, Chair, Canadian Association of Internet Providers]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am grateful to the committee members for allowing me to address you today concerning Bill C-27.

In addition to being the chair of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers for the last nine years, I have for almost 15 years been an Internet service provider in Cobourg, Ontario. I've been involved with the problem of unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam, since it was first recognized as having the potential to cause harm and cost organizations and individuals millions of dollars each year to combat.

In 2004 I was invited to be a member of the ministerial task force on spam. In 12 short months we developed a tool kit approach to combatting spam, and the recommendations we presented to the Minister of Industry in May 2005 have been adopted by many nations around the world.

While junk e-mail is by far the most prevalent of online ailments facing Internet users, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act also recognizes that a seemingly benign e-mail message is often the precursor of greater viruses, such as Trojan horse programs, identity theft, fraud, and other criminal activity.

CAIP has several areas of concern that I'd like to bring forward today. Most of these are focused on enforcement. We are happy that the oversight of the ECPA will rest with Industry Canada. In my opinion, there isn't another department within the Government of Canada that has the experience with electronic communications that Industry Canada has. Our first concern regarding enforcement, however, lies in the enforcement agencies named in Bill C-27. While the chosen agencies have had some influence in electronic communications in the past, the will or ability to enforce their individual mandates has at times not been effective. In some instances, they have lacked the tools, mandate, or resources needed; in other instances, they simply failed to apply the tools at their disposal.

Our primary concern in this regard is with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. We realize that a new function within the CRTC is being developed to accommodate this new mandate. But given the commission's adversity to enforcement of decisions and orders under its traditional telecom mandate, we have reservations regarding the willingness of the commission to exercise its new powers under Bill C-27. Despite precedent, it is my hope that these fears will not be realized and that the CRTC will gain a new appreciation of the powers bestowed upon it.

We have fewer concerns with the role played by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the Competition Bureau. In fact, we're pleased that their mandates have been reinforced with additional clarity, tools, and resources through Bill C-27 and other legislation. Certainly, the privacy commissioner has shown significant leadership in combatting spam to date, and the Competition Bureau has long been the watchdog consumers could turn to regarding deceptive marketing and truth in advertising. We trust that through the focus on spam that Bill C-27 provides, the leadership will continue.

With multiple enforcement agencies, however, there can come multiple agendas. In this instance, there can be no turf wars if we want Bill C-27 to be successful. The bill quickly gained legs because parliamentarians of all stripes saw value in the effort and benefits in the outcome. Our enforcement agencies must keep this example in mind as they undertake their new duties to protect Canadians online.

CAIP would like to suggest that the three agencies consider developing a trilateral task force to implement and manage their new responsibilities, rather than attempting to work in isolation. The benefit of this approach would be a reduction in duplicative efforts, more timely and effective management of complaints, better coordination of information exchanged between agencies, better use of investigative resources, and better use of financial resources.

Our second concern over enforcement has to do with the coordination of international efforts. To be effective, coordination must go beyond these hallowed halls and beyond this country. Electronic crimes know no boundaries—their perpetrators do not respect international borders. Cyber criminals do not work nine to five in the eastern time zone—they're international in scope, plying their trade 24/7, 365 days a year. Fortunately, by many estimates there are only a few ardent spamming operations in the world. Unfortunately, they operate simultaneously in many countries in nearly every continent, using unwitting Internet users as their pawns.

Despite being one of the first nations to develop a tool-kit approach to dealing with spam, we are one of the last major economies to fully implement a spam strategy based on the recommendations of the task force. The countries that have adopted these recommendations have gained expertise and developed resources capable of benefitting Canada.

The ECPA permits Canadian enforcement agencies to exchange information with other like-minded international agencies. We'd encourage the agencies to seize this opportunity and exploit the international expertise available to them in fulfilling their mandates. Because Canada is a relatively small source of spam, it is only through open and coordinated cooperation with other like-minded international enforcement agencies that we will be able to make progress in the control of spam.

Our third concern over enforcement is in the delivery of an appropriate and measured response when dealing with offenders. It would be our hope that legitimate Canadian business owners who make honest mistakes in deploying their online marketing strategy don't become the target of overzealous enforcement simply because they are the low-hanging fruit and easy to identify. It's the egregious spammer and nefarious e-mailer for hire that we hope will be the target of enforcement.

Rather than accumulating quick numbers and claiming great success by pursuing SMBs, we would encourage all three enforcement agencies and Industry Canada to undertake a concerted business and consumer awareness campaign to educate Canadians about the ECPA. Education is far more effective and less expensive than the cost of enforcement.

Finally, there are several simple things to remember that we think will help in developing regulations that will successfully enable enforcement of the ECPA. One, focus on the egregious perpetrators. Two, focus on the intent of the action, not necessarily the action itself. Three, focus on well-defined activities deemed to be dangerous, while at the same time providing the ability to expand those defined activities as technology changes. Four, focus on education of e-mail marketing etiquette. Five, focus on the use of enforcement as a measured and targeted tool based on the harm caused, not the inconvenience perceived. Six, adopt the best practices in legislation, regulation, and enforcement of other jurisdictions. Seven, develop a legislative and enforcement response that protects Canadians and doesn't burden them with unnecessary red tape and confusion in pursuing justice. And finally, develop a legislative and enforcement response that doesn't create criminals or create financial burden when there was no intent to defraud or harm.

Thank you.

[Paul Misener, Vice-President, Global Public Policy, Amazon.com]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for inviting me to testify at this hearing on this very important topic and on this most excellent bill.

On behalf of Amazon.ca, let me add my voice to the chorus of praise, congratulations, gratitude, and support for your work on this matter and for Bill C-27.

I could easily spend my five minutes complimenting various features of the bill, but I believe my appearance here will be more valuable to you and your committee if I may suggest two areas for improvement with modest changes.

The first area is with respect to the consequences of honest mistakes. We have long said that honest e-mail mistakes should not be punished; that problem spammers wilfully and intentionally spam; and that reputable companies should be able to e-mail their customers without fear of legal retribution for honest mistakes. The market already provides very strong disincentives. Honest mistakes also aren't the source of the real spam problem; our e-mail boxes aren't barraged with messages from companies that accidentally sent them. Again, problem spammers wilfully and intentionally spam.

This is already recognized implicitly in Bill C-27, the purpose of which is “to promote compliance with the act, not to punish”. It's also somewhat more explicitly recognized in the defence sections of the bill, proposed subsections 33(1) and 54(1).

At your June 18 hearings, CRTC Chairman von Finckenstein said the question of whether someone should be fined will be answered considering whether there was a “wilful breach” of the law. To make the bill clearly state the chairman's understanding, with which I agree, I suggest that proposed subsections 20(1) and 51(1) be amended so that only those who have wilfully contravened the act are subject to fines or damages. At the very least, the bill should be clarified in the defence sections using the words of Senator Goldstein's bill, Senate Bill 202, in section 22: “A person shall not be found to be liable for a violation...or if the violation was due to inadvertence or based on an honest mistake of fact.”

These simple changes, courtesy of Senator Goldstein's wise drafting, would go a long way to clarifying in Bill C-27 the consequences of honest mistakes.

The other area that could use improvement is with respect to the duration of implied consent based on purchase. In Bill C-27, implied consent based on a purchase would expire after only 18 months. We believe that in the best interests of consumers, this period is much too short. First of all--and this is not a criticism, mind you--18 months is arbitrary, as already has been acknowledged before this committee. It's not a magic number, demonstrably different from 17 or 20 months, or 36 months. But most importantly, 18 months is much too short. It is not in line with consumer expectations and customer-friendly practices. Two obvious areas are: first, the production cycles--particularly for creators, such as authors and bands--can be much longer than 18 months. Joan Thomas won the most recent Amazon.ca First Novel Award for her book Reading by Lightning. Shouldn't consumers who bought this book be notified of her next book, even if it takes her many years to write it?

Likewise, product life cycles--for example, cars, headphones, computers--are often much longer than 18 months. Consumers expect notifications about new works or replacement products at the appropriate time, not at 17 and a half months. So from a consumer perspective, indefinite duration of this implied consent would be best. A limited period actually could increase commercial e-mail. Sellers may rush to beat an artificial deadline, causing a barrage of e-mail at 17 and a half months.

It's also hard to believe that limited-duration implied consent would make much difference. Our in-boxes are not full based on purchases in the distant past, and for the rare exceptions, consumers may opt out or block. If we must have limited-duration implied consent based on a purchase, five to seven years would be best for consumers in order to take into account production cycles and product life cycles.

I look forward to your questions.

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

We'll have it in public then at the meeting on Wednesday next week.

Without further ado, we'll now go to the order of the day, pursuant to the order of reference of Friday, May 8, 2009, to study 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 front of us today we have a number of witnesses from various organizations. They include Paul Misener from Amazon.ca; Tom Copeland from the Canadian Association of Internet Providers; Chris Gray and Jason Kee from the Canadian Intellectual Property Council; Geneviève Reed and Anu Bose from Option consommateurs; and finally we have Nathalie Clark and William Randle from the Canadian Bankers Association.

Welcome to you all.

We'll begin with five minutes of opening statements from each of the organizations represented, beginning with Amazon.ca.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dryden.

Thank you, Mr. Alexander-Cook and Mr. Fraser.

Before we adjourn our meeting, I want members of the committee to know that this afternoon the procedure and House affairs committee tabled their report to the House, and that report has been or will be concurred in this afternoon. Therefore, this committee ceases to exist at 6:30.

By Wednesday, you will receive a notice of meeting so that this committee may be reconstituted. We need to elect a new chair, which will obviously be at the discretion of the committee members, but I'd ask that you also keep your calendars free for that 3:30 to 5:30 time slot on Wednesday, because the clerk has been asked to still call the witnesses for Wednesday's meetings. Keep that time blocked off even though the notice of meeting you will receive is simply for the election of a chair.

Keep that timeframe blocked off so that, hopefully, we can elect a chair, committee members willing, and hopefully, committee members willing, start the meeting with more witnesses on Bill C-27.

Without further ado, this meeting is adjourned.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also want to thank each and every one of you for being here this afternoon.

My first question is not for anyone in particular. I would like to know if you considered the four entities that will administer this bill. I am talking about the CRTC, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Telecommunications Act.

I am wondering whether you have any thoughts on the subject and, if so, whether you foresee any harmonization difficulties for these four entities. Do you have any recommendations to ensure that Bill C-27 is implemented properly?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of you for coming out this afternoon.

As for my questions, I'm going to start off with Mr. Fraser, Mr. Alexander-Cook, and Ms. Thomson.

In the brief that you submitted to the clerk and the chair of the committee, you raised some of the most important and pressing issues and concerns of your members regarding Bill C-27. You also provide different approaches to address these concerns. Regarding your first recommendation that rather than ban all electronic communications and rely on exceptions and regulations, as the current drafting of the bill is written, we should amend it, I quote, by “targeting only that conduct that results in abusive communications”, this recommendation was also brought forward by Barry Sookman, who was representing the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, as well as many other associations that have submitted briefs to our committee. He recommended that Canada look at the Australian model, which is considered to be the best model as far as this type of legislation goes.

Have your members had the chance to review and compare legislation that exists in Australia concerning anti-spam? Other countries that are mentioned are New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore. How do they compare, and what are the big differences between them, and what can you suggest that we do differently?

[John Lawford, Counsel, Public Interest Advocacy Centre]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is John Lawford. I am counsel with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre. With me is Janet Lo, also counsel.

PIAC has been deeply involved for many years with the efforts to regulate commercial electronic messages--that is, spam--and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act from a consumer perspective. We therefore are here to give you that perspective on Bill C-27.

Make no mistake about it, Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, is intended to empower consumers, to empower them to take control of their electronic mail and to take control of their computers. In this way, it is hoped that spam and spyware, fraud such as phishing and the like that is delivered with this manner, can be greatly curtailed. And under this bill, with this focus on consumer empowerment, it can.

Based on this underlying belief in the legislation, we wish to make three basic points to the committee and mention three possible amendments to the bill.

The first basic point is that under the ECPA as drafted, an individual's personal consent, explicit in most cases and implicit only for limited exceptions, is required before an organization or individual can send them a commercial e-mail. This is the only effective way to stem the tide of spam. Exceptions from this requirement for certain senders or an enlargement of the implied consent standard should be strongly resisted by the committee.

Some of the presenters to the committee have expressed concerns that the requirement for explicit consent to receive commercial e-mail is too onerous or would be unworkable. PIAC cautions that the general requirement of explicit consent underpins the entire structure of the bill. It is only by clearly--that is, explicitly and with solid proof--requiring a person's verifiable consent to receive commercial e-mail that the tide of unwanted commercial messages can ever be truly controlled.

Marketers gain advantage from assuming consent, which is possible under an implicit consent model, as their only goal is to simply deliver the messages, leaving the work and time invested in sorting out what is relevant or what is spam to the individual. As we all know, it is the incessant time-wasting triage of e-mails from hundreds and thousands of uncoordinated marketers using this lazy technique that creates the problem of spam.

The existing business relationship exemption for implicit consent allows a wide scope for commercial contact with consumers by e-mail. Every customer of every business is deemed to consent to receiving e-mail from that business unless they go to the trouble of unsubscribing. This exemption provides businesses numerous opportunities to seek and obtain explicit consent and provides for a long tail of 18 months after dealings with that customer to again obtain explicit consent for future e-mail solicitations. We know that this time period is equal to that allowed under the national “do not call” list for the same purpose.

The second basic point is that as drafted under this bill, there is no business-to-business exemption from the explicit consent requirement, it is true, unless the e-mail otherwise falls within that existing business relationship implied consent exemption. That is, businesses under this bill may not seek out new business by sending unsolicited commercial e-mail to other businesses or consumers that they do not actively do business with, period. This practice may well be the norm in the business world and in certain industries, especially banking or insurance, which may rely on referrals, where the recipient has no relationship with the sender, but that is not permitted at the moment. We believe that is as it should be. These are, in our view, unsolicited commercial e-mails that are just as annoying and productivity-killing for people in the workplace environment as they are for consumers at home.

We note here that under the national “do not call” list, referrals are also not allowed.

Should this committee absolutely want to have a business-to-business exemption for prospecting for new business or for referrals, we recommend that the business-to-business exempted e-mails also be required to follow the same rules as are laid out in subclause 6(2). That is, the e-mail must have information on the sender and the unsubscribing mechanism.

The third point is the private right of action. We feel that the private right of action must be maintained in order to protect consumers intended to be empowered by this legislation. The private right of action will only be used in egregious cases. We note that if the company is fined or is complying with an undertaking, consumers cannot bring an action for statutory damages. Therefore, this provision likely will only be used in cases where consumers suffer actual loss or damage, which they normally would be able to sue for anyway, or when there's a serious matter of interpretation of the legislation and the CRTC has refused to issue a notice of violation.

Courts are best placed to determine the interpretation of the act and whether actual loss has occurred. However, what is missing in that private right of action, we note, is a provision that protects companies from being able to contract out of this right.

We therefore recommend to the committee that they consider a provision modelled on sections 6 to 8 of the Ontario Consumer Protection Act, 2002, which does that as well. I have three possible amendments for the committee.

The first one is that we do believe the penalities involved in the bill on the e-mail side may be too high. We've heard that today. We suggest that they be brought into line with those for the national “do not call” legislation. They do not need to be terrorizingly high; they just need to be effective.

The second amendment is that the installation of software when there is implicit or explicit consent requires a transparency section that is parallel to that for e-mail, which is now found in subclause 6(2). There is subclause10(2) of the present bill, which requires the software supplier for spyware to describe clearly and simply the function, purpose, and impact of every computer program that is installed. However, that's not parallel to subclause 6(2). It doesn't tell you which company, and it doesn't tell you how to contact them. As well, it doesn't give you information about how to unsubscribe, and in this context that would be how to get off of automatic updates in the future. PIAC studied spyware in 2006 and issued a report at that time. We have further recommendations for the legislation that could go into the regulations with regard to more spyware requirements.

Our last amendment is to repeal the bill's potential to remove the national “do not call” list. Therefore, we agree with the Canadian Marketing Association that clauses 64 and 86 would be removed from this bill. We agree with them because we feel that the national “do not call” list needs time, and that the Electronic Commerce Protection Act approach is necessary for spam but will not work for telemarketing and vice versa.

Those are our comments. Merci.

[Kim Alexander-Cook, Vice-Chair, Marketing Practices Committee, Competition Law Section, Canadian Bar Association]

Thank you.

In addition to the concerns raised by Mr. Fraser, we have two concerns that relate specifically to the way in which Bill C-27 proposes to amend the Competition Act.

The first concern is, in essence, a concern about a single word, or at least a single phrase. It's only a single phrase, but we think you will agree that it's a very important one.

At clause 71 of the bill, added to the Competition Act is a new proposed section that provides for a criminal false and misleading representation offence that applies specifically to electronic messages. There's already a general false and misleading advertising provision in the Competition Act. This provides a very specific one.

This new proposed section would specifically prohibit sending an electronic message knowingly and recklessly with one or more of the following three features: either misleading or false header information, that is sender or subject matter information; content within the message that is false or misleading; or locator information that's false or misleading.

Our concern is that only in respect of one of those features is the important phrase “in a material respect” included. In all other prohibitions for false and misleading representations in the Competition Act, there is a qualifier.

The false or misleading representation has to be in a material respect. There is an important reason for that. We all make mistakes, and in fact, many people in business make what are actually false representations but which ought not to be pursued for false or misleading representations under the Competition Act. I can give you a very simple example.

Last week I sat on an expert panel at a conference where we considered environmental product marketing claims, including the following claim: “Save the planet, use our biodegradable shampoo”. We talked at length about this claim. One of the issues that were not raised was that “save the planet”, although it's obviously false in respect of the shampoo, was problematic under the Competition Act. It's considered playful puffery or hyperbole. Is it false? Yes, you're not going to save the planet by using this shampoo. Is it actionable under the Competition Act as a criminal or civilly reviewable offence? Not under the general provision. Would it be if it were included in the header of an e-mail? Under Bill C-27, arguably it would be. That's our first issue.

The second issue concerns the proposed lowering of the threshold that must be met under the Competition Act for a temporary order to be issued by a court in respect of any allegedly reviewable conduct under the act. That includes not just misleading advertising, but it includes tied selling, exclusive dealing, and a number of other pieces of conduct that businesses may or may not be engaged in.

Bill C-27, perhaps unaware to many on the committee, makes a fundamental change to the standard that must be observed by a judge in deciding whether to issue a temporary order to stop a representation from being made. It will not only apply to electronic message representations, but it will apply in respect of all of the conduct under the Competition Act to which it currently speaks. This is an over-breadth that, in our view, defies any real rational connection to this legislation.

Thanks very much.

[David Fraser, Chair, Privacy and Access Law Section, Canadian Bar Association]

Thank you very much.

As a preface to all of our comments, we'd like to emphasize for the benefit of the committee that we agree wholeheartedly with the intent of the legislation. I think there's general consensus that spam wastes time, energy, and significant resources, is a source of fraud, and makes it difficult for legitimate business to be conducted online. Notwithstanding that, we do have some serious concerns about Bill C-27 and exactly how it's implemented. I'll briefly delve into each of them, but we will of course be available for questions.

First of all, we think the legislation is a little too broad. What it does is take all commercial electronic messages and outlaw them subject to some hard-to-manage exceptions that are simply based on explicit consent, which can be altered significantly in regulations; personal or family relationships, which also are defined in the regulations that we haven't seen; and implied consent, which doesn't quite accord with what you would think implied consent means--it means simply an existing business relationship.

We're also concerned that the legislation itself is inconsistent with related regimes and other statutes that it actually seeks to amend. “Existing business relationship” is a concept that's entrenched in the national “do not call” list, but it's treated differently for the purposes of this statute. “Commercial activity” is also a term that is central to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act but is defined differently in this statute for purposes that aren't necessarily clear on their face as to why one needs to have different definitions of the same term.

Consent, which is obviously a concept that's central to the privacy provisions in PIPEDA and is central to this piece of legislation, is radically different from one to the other. We think this presents problems because many of the businesses that are going to have to deal with compliance with the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, PIPEDA, and the Competition Act are the same people who are going to be using the exact same terms, but for very different purposes or with different meanings, which makes it difficult to manage.

Otherwise, the statute is also a bit hard to follow, and we're concerned that too much of it has actually been left to the regulations. This is a statute of general application. It's going to apply to pretty well every business and it's designed to be for the benefit of every single consumer. In our view, businesses should be able to pick up the statute and have a very strong understanding of exactly what it is they have to do and what it is they can't do. Likewise, consumers should have the ability to pick up the statute and understand what their rights are and what their remedies are.

It's our feeling that too many important provisions are being left to the regulations, which may be sensible in the sense that this is a rapidly moving area. There are some central concepts that could be and should be entrenched in the statute, with regulations being left to deal with issues that come up and to deal with loopholes that might not have been foreseen.

We're also concerned that the statute may in fact actually, on its face, violate the charter, simply based on a violation of the freedom of expression provisions contained in paragraph 2(b) of the charter for anything that regulates communication that conveys expression. You may not think that most of the spam that arrives in your inbox actually conveys meaning, but the courts would find otherwise. In order to be justified, it has to meet a strict test under section 1 of the charter, the most important provision of which is that it has to be minimally impairing, so it has to be very finely tuned legislation.

We're concerned that the way it's drafted so broadly may mean that it actually might not survive a charter challenge. While we agree wholeheartedly with the intent of the legislation, we don't want to be back here in a couple of years because it has been struck down as being unconstitutional. In our view, it needs to be fine-tuned in that regard.

A number of fixes could be proposed, which we'd be happy to talk about at greater length. The most important one would be not to limit implied consent. I think you've probably heard this from others. Consent is a concept that we've been dealing with under privacy legislation for quite some time. People have a pretty good idea of it. You've been dealing with it in the medical context as well. A reasonableness standard can be put in place.

Before I run out of time--and I apologize for being a bit long-winded--I'm going to hand it over to my colleague Mr. Alexander-Cook.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

This afternoon I heard the Privacy Commissioner reiterate something I found in a May 28, 2009, statement she made, to the effect that one in six Canadians have experienced some form of identity theft. That same report also indicated that over 90% of Canadians are concerned about identity theft.

I know this bill is substantially the same as Bill C-27 from the last session.

I've seen reports from PhoneBusters that in 2007 $6 million was lost to identity theft, and up until October 31, 2008, $8 million was lost. I've seen reports that Canadian banks and credit companies estimate that we lost $2 billion per annum. There are 1.7 million victims. So I was really pleased to hear comments from the Liberal member, Mr. LeBlanc, and also from the Bloc member, Monsieur Ménard, to the effect they think we need to pass this bill quickly.

I think Canadians can be glad that we have a government that has taken this problem seriously. It is a crime of the 21st century, it's been said, and I'm glad we have a justice minister who has taken it seriously.

Thank you to all of the witnesses.

I'm grateful for your attendance today. In particular, I admire Mr. MacRury as a good example of a prosecutor who knows that in law there is not a defence side or a prosecution side, but only justice, because some of the recommendations in the CBA report are what I would otherwise think of as defence recommendations.

I would like to focus in particular on the recommendation made on page 3 of the brief.

I will start with a question for Mr. MacRury about what is called de minimus behaviour in his brief, which is very close to the legal concept we have in our common law courts of de minimis. I am thinking that a lawyers' organization like the CBA would not likely toss out a term that is so similar, unless it might be intending to refer to the same thing; but I'm not sure, and I would like to know, to begin with, if in that recommendation you are talking about what a lawyer in the common law system would refer to as de minimis conduct in a criminal case.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you for being here today.

From the start, we have been talking about consent and bulk email, but we are also talking about businesses. Indeed, you all have a business or you work for a business. We want to pass Bill C-27, which covers Quebec and Canada, and targets the mass distribution of email and spam.

But what about the other countries where these messages can originate? What kind of competition does that mean for you, since they are not regulated? Here, it will be regulated, but not abroad.

You raise the following problem: others will be allowed to distribute email in bulk, but not you. How could we adjust things in a suitable manner, so that we could obtain consent without sending out a mass email to 14 million people? We want to make it law and stop this. Consumers' inboxes are being flooded with spam. There are four or five companies here today, but there are many more all over Canada. We need to follow some kind of logic.

First, I would like to hear your thoughts on that and what your idea of business consent would be. What would you consider a reasonable distribution of email that would allow you to stay in business?

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

Mr. Brun, unless I'm mistaken, you see two types of clients to whom emails may be sent. There are emails between businesses—that is one of your categories—and then emails sent by a business to consumers.

Would you like to see these two categories of clients expressly set out in Bill C-27?

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

... yes, for the implementation of Bill C-27. You referred to a one-year transition period before its implementation.

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

Thank you very much for your testimony. What you have come to tell us this afternoon will help to improve Bill C-27.

My first question is for Mr. Morency, from the Mouvement des caisses Desjardins.

You talked about an implementation delay of one year, and among other things, you said that consultations should be held. I would like to hear more about this from you.

Who should we consult and who should do the consulting in order to arrive at a time period that would seem fair and equitable to you?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all I want to thank all of the witnesses who came to submit their views to us today on this bill, which, in order to be well drafted, practically requires the wisdom of Solomon.

On the one hand, of course, we want to get rid of spam as it is very harmful, as everyone agrees, but on the other hand, we don't want to prohibit legitimate electronic commerce communication. For a bill to make good sense, I think that two different philosophical approaches can be adopted. In one case, we impose all sorts of restrictions, but in the final analysis, these may be excessive and this could hinder electronic commerce. Consequently, those who use electronic means to do business are forced to prove that some important exceptions have been forgotten.

On the other hand, we can choose a much more open approach, with few restrictions, and then realize over time that a great deal of spam is still getting through and that the bill has to be applied in a much stricter manner. In short, this isn't easy.

Today, I have the impression that you have found arguments to prove that the bill should be amended because it will interfere with commerce and legitimate communication on the Internet. That is clearly what your presentation led me to conclude.

I would like to put a question to Mr. Morency or to another representative of the Desjardins Group.

You took issue with clause 2 in particular. You mentioned that Bill C-27 affected electronic commerce and needed to be readjusted. I understood your arguments.

Do you have any concrete suggestions to make to us in order to bring about this balance and allow you to continue to do your work in a legitimate fashion?

[Joanne De Laurentiis]

We believe the anti-spam provisions are too broad as they relate to business-to-business communications. Where a business makes its e-mail address public and the address is not accompanied by a statement that commercial messages are not welcome, Bill C-27 should treat this as implied consent by the business.

Electronic communications have evolved to be a convenient, quick, and cost-effective way to communicate employment opportunities. One way our members grow is by recruiting new financial advisers through electronic communications. We propose that clause 6 be amended to include an exemption for electronic communication that has as its sole purpose information regarding legitimate employment opportunities.

IFIC supports the proposed penalties. The maximum penalty for a violation is $1 million in the case of an individual and $10 million in the case of any other persons. For violations of clauses 7 and 8, where prohibited actions have the potential to result in large-scale system damage or fraud, these are at the right level.

In the case of clause 6, we believe the penalties are excessive and out of scale to the potential harm caused by a breach. The penalties for contravening clause 6 should be different from the penalties applicable to a contravention of clauses 7 and 8. Within clause 6, we would also propose much smaller deterrent penalties for those businesses that are simply using electronic means as a supplement to their business efforts and where individual violations are not harmful.

IFIC supports the right of public action for violations of clauses 7 and 8 where prohibited actions have the potential to result in large-scale system damage or fraud, but for clause 6, the right of public action seems unnecessary, excessive, and potentially open to abuse. We propose that the right to a public action be limited to violations under clauses 7 and 8.

As noted earlier, the investment industry has rules in place governing communications with the public. The Mutual Fund Dealers Association and the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada require that all sales communications from their members to the public must first be approved by an officer of the member company. We believe these requirements, together with the provisions of Bill C-27, provide the necessary protection to the public on matters of content as well as the need for sanctions. Accordingly, we recommend an exemption to clause 6 for industries where existing regulatory structures are in place.

We all recognize that technology has changed the way we interact, both on a personal and a business level. Whereas in the past we would have met friends and made new personal or business contacts through dinners, meetings, and other gatherings, today we are doing it through technology. Cyberspace has redefined how we communicate and interact.

Our concerns about the overly broad application of this legislation could be corrected by very simple amendments, primarily in clauses 6 and 10, to provide exemptions and safe harbours for referral business, ongoing fiduciary relationships, business-to-business communications, employment opportunities, and established social networking relationships, together with a refinement of the penalties and private right of action to target the actual wrongdoing in cyberspace.

Thank you for listening. We look forward to your questions.

[Paul Vaillancourt, Independant Financial Advisor, Investment Funds Institute of Canada]

Bonjour. My name is Paul Vaillancourt.

The proposed clause 6 prohibits one-to-one e-mails of specifically directed marketing communications, which are not by their nature intrusive in the lives of recipients and do not create economic harm. My clients are my best sources of new business. A financial adviser like me regularly sends e-mails as a follow-up to a referral from an existing client to a friend or a family member who is looking for a financial adviser. In fact, such referrals are crucial to my business.

E-mails are an efficient means of contacting potential new customers based on referrals without being a nuisance to the recipient. In years past, we used the postal service to follow up on referrals. E-mail has replaced the old technology of writing letters, but it is essentially the same thing. In addition to being less expensive, less intrusive, and more environmentally friendly, it is an accepted, indeed an expected, form of introduction. Individuals are able to access the information at their convenience and have complete control to respond or not.

Clause 6 should be limited to those who target individuals or entities through mass e-mails, where there is no reasonable identifiable relationship between the recipient and the sender. Where the recipient has been referred to the sender, there should be a specific exemption allowing the sender to contact the referred individual or entity. Regulations pursuant to this legislation could be developed to prevent abuse of this exemption and to ensure there was indeed a referral.

Subsection 10(4) of Bill C-27 defines “existing business relationship”. That definition may be sufficient for relationships based only on contract dates or specific sales operations, but it is ill-suited to a consultant service relationship where the consultant has a fiduciary responsibility to contact and inform his client. This type of relationship should be viewed differently.

In many cases, our relationship with the client is linked to an investment made by the client that is followed by none of the operations targeted in subsection 10(4). Consequently, we recommend that in the case of persons who have a fiduciary relationship with the client, the 18-month period targeting subsequent communications begin when the professional relationship or the consultancy relationship ends.

Canadians are world leaders in the use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, clubs, and associations. The proposed legislation does not contemplate the popularity and widespread use of these social networking groups or the fact that these groups already effectively govern the boundaries of the communications. The definition of “existing non-business relationship” in subclause 10(6) should be expanded to include members of established electronic social networks to better reflect this emerging reality.

[Joanne De Laurentiis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Investment Funds Institute of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.

My name is Joanne De Laurentiis. I'm president and CEO of the Investment Funds Institute of Canada. I'm joined by Paul Vaillancourt, who is an independent financial consultant who runs his own successful business here in Ottawa. We will share our comments this afternoon.

The Investment Funds Institute of Canada is the national association of the Canadian investment funds industry. Like Paul, individuals representing our members work in almost every town and city across Canada. IFIC's mutual fund manager members manage over $560 billion in mutual fund assets, and 70% of these assets are held in retirement saving vehicles and are helping Canadians build their wealth.

We believe the clauses in Bill C-27 that combat and punish illegal and harmful activities and that damage the trust surrounding electronic commerce are necessary. We support the recommendations in clauses 7 and 8 regarding the prohibition of the altering of transmission data and the unauthorized installation of computer programs on another's computer. We also support the proposed amendments to the Competition Act to prohibit misleading commercial e-mails and amendments to PIPEDA regarding the use of e-mails collected through selected computer programs.

We are here to encourage you to better balance the protection of individuals and businesses from unwanted e-mails while still allowing responsible communications by legitimate businesses to their potential clients and customers. We think this can be accomplished with several simple amendments.

[Peter Goldthorpe, General Director, Marketplace Regulations Issues, Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association Inc.]

Thank you, Frank.

Mr. Chair, the stated purpose of the bill is to regulate the commercial conduct that discourages the use of electronic means to carry out commercial activities. Everyone, I think, agrees that this is an important objective, so it is equally important that we avoid restrictions that would have the effect of discouraging or making impossible exactly what the bill seeks to protect.

Our contention is that within an opt-in framework contemplated by Bill C-27, greater flexibility can and in fact should be provided as it relates to the means of obtaining consent. As we noted in our written comments that were circulated earlier in the summer, the proposed restrictions threaten to undermine the viability of commercial communication by electronic means. The problem is that in a great many instances people will simply not use one medium to give consent to communicate in another medium.

In the life and health insurance industry, and I think more generally in the financial services industry, many contacts are developed through referrals. By and large, the referral process is an informal process, and that sets up an important disconnect. The person being referred may be quite happy to be contacted by e-mail, but it is extremely unlikely that many will be willing to take the time and effort to write out express consent or take the initiative to contact an adviser.

We appreciate that there is a concern that e-mails intended to obtain consent could be misused. But it is important to keep in mind that e-mails following up on a referral need to clearly identify the person who is sending them. Our suggestion is that e-mails to obtain consent be permitted if they clearly state the purpose and do nothing else to promote the sender's services or products.

It's important to keep in mind that an e-mail that's doing this must clearly identify the sender who is using the e-mail for these purposes. So if there is any misconduct, if they're deviating from any of the restrictions you care to put in place, their identification is all over the e-mail. This fact should be more than enough to discourage misuse.

Mr. Chair, the use of electronic communication has important economic and environmental advantages. It would be unfortunate if the restrictions in Bill C-27 had the effect of forcing businesses to rely on more costly and less environmentally friendly ways of communicating with prospective customers. An important step in avoiding this outcome is to permit e-mails intended to obtain consent.

The industry greatly appreciates this opportunity to contribute to the committee's review of Bill C-27. I would like to thank you for your attention. We'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

[Frank Zinatelli, Vice-President, Legal Services and Associate General Counsel, Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association Inc.]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I would like to thank the committee very much for giving us this opportunity to contribute to your review of Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act.

My name is Frank Zinatelli, and I am vice-president of legal services and associate general counsel of the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association. I am accompanied today by my colleague Peter Goldthorpe, who is the CLHIA's director of marketplace regulations issues. We welcome this opportunity to make constructive contributions to the committee as you seek to develop your report to Parliament on this important bill.

By way of background, the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association represents life and health insurance companies accounting for 99% of the life and health insurance in force across Canada. The industry protects 26 million Canadians and some 20 million people internationally.

With your permission, Mr. Chairman, we would like to make a few introductory comments.

In August, we submitted written comments to the committee. Several of the matters were technical in nature and involved providing greater clarity and certainty to the language of the bill. We trust that these are relatively free of controversy and will be addressed by the committee.

This afternoon we would like to focus our remarks on a broader issue. The issue is the proposed restrictions on obtaining consent by electronic means, and my colleague Peter Goldthorpe will now address this.

[Yves Morency, Vice-President, Government Relations, Mouvement des caisses Desjardins]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good afternoon, members of the committee. The Desjardins Group thanks you for giving it this opportunity to share its views on bill C-27 with you today.

First of all, allow me to briefly introduce the organization we represent. Desjardins Group is ranked 26th among the 50 most reliable financial institutions in the world, according to the list entitled “World's 50 Safest Banks 2009”. With total assets of approximately $160 billion, it is the largest cooperative financial group in Canada and the 9th largest in the world. Supported by its network of caisses in Quebec and Ontario, as well as the contributions of its subsidiaries, several of which are active across Canada, it offers a complete line of financial products and services to its 5.8 million individual and business members and clients.

Desjardins Group is also a hub of expertise in wealth management, life and health insurance, property and casualty insurance, services for businesses large and small, securities, asset management, venture capital and cutting-edge technology, all within an integrated service model that is one of a kind in Canada.

It must be noted that Desjardins Group has been concerned for quite some time about the problems caused by spam proliferation. The bill is without a doubt an initiative that targets more reliable, safe and secure electronic commerce. However, Desjardins Group believes that some of the bill's provisions will do more to restrict legitimate electronic commerce than to dispel the efforts of ill-intentioned users of this technology.

Bill C-27 needs to be adjusted in such a way as to slow down the proliferation of spam while allowing for the development of electronic commerce and the competitiveness of the Canadian economy. As regards consent, section 2 of the bill is excessively limiting and poses a threat to legitimate electronic commerce. Under the bill, it would be prohibited to send an electronic message requesting consent to receive commercial electronic messages. Desjardins Group believes that it is unrealistic to think that Canadians will give express consent to receive commercial electronic messages on their own initiative. Being far too restrictive, the prohibition of electronic messages requesting consent should be stricken from the bill.

As well, the bill should recognize that certain commercial practices do not constitute unsolicited commercial electronic messages. For example, a company should be able to solicit a client if it has first received a referral. It should be able to do the same if it holds an individual's email address as part of a prior business relationship, where the individual has not withdrawn his or her consent for solicitation purposes, or when a potential client contacts a company to obtain information and does not withdraw his or her consent. Electronic communications following referrals are common practice, they are legitimate and appreciated by clients. As such, the recognition of implied consent should be added to the bill with the possibility of such consent being regulated thereafter.

Another major source of concern not only for Desjardins Group, but for all Canadian companies are the clauses related to the Do Not Call List. We understand that the government does not plan to implement those clauses at this time, but their mere presence within the bill is worrisome. In this respect, it is important to remember that those subject to the act and their partners in government worked for three years on establishing effective regulations for this tool and significant financial and labour resources have gone into achieving compliance. It is therefore quite astonishing that the longevity of the Do Not Call List could be jeopardized just one year after coming into effect. Given these considerations, Desjardins Group recommends that a detailed study and public consultations be carried out before making any modifications to the DNCL.

In conclusion, in Desjardins Group's view, the current text of the EPCA will threaten legitimate electronic commerce.

Quite honestly, the bill seems more geared to protecting service provider bandwidth than electronic commerce itself. With this in mind, we believe that it is essential for certain parameters to be readjusted and for more flexibility to be added to the ECPA in order for it to achieve its intended objectives without discouraging growth in the Canadian economy.

Thank you for your attention.

My colleagues and I would be happy to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Good afternoon to members of the committee. I hope you all had good weeks in your constituency.

Welcome to the 34th meeting of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. We are meeting today pursuant to the order of reference of Friday, May 8, 2009, to study 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.

Welcome to our three groups of witnesses on our first panel, which will meet until 5 p.m. We have Mr. Yves Morency, vice-president, government relations; Mr. Bernard Brun, senior counsel, commerce and technology, Desjardins sécurité financière; and Yvan-Pierre Grimard, government relations adviser. All three are with Mouvement des caisses Desjardins.

We also have with us today Mr. Frank Zinatelli, vice-president of legal services and associate general counsel; and Mr. Peter Goldthorpe, general director of marketplace regulations issues. Both are with the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association Inc.

Finally, in our third group of witnesses on our first panel we have Ms. Joanne De Laurentiis, president and chief executive officer; and Mr. Paul Vaillancourt, independent financial adviser. They are with the Independent Funds Institute of Canada.

Welcome to all three groups. We will begin with the Mouvement des caisses Desjardins and an opening statement of five minutes.

[Joanne Klineberg]

With journalists, no. But many members of this committee may recall a private members bill, C-299, from a few years ago. It dealt with identity theft, but it was tabled prior to Bill C-27. What that bill did was it said anyone who pretends to be someone else essentially commits a criminal offence. We narrowed that, because what was missing from that idea was that you have to be doing it for a criminal purpose. Lots of people pretend to be other people or engage in deception, such as journalists, for a whole range of purposes.

We did not consult with journalist associations. We were certainly aware of the practice of going undercover in order to gather information, but that's not for a criminal purpose. In developing the identity theft and trafficking offences here we absolutely were mindful of that situation, even though we didn't have direct consultations with journalists.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you for that.

At some point, we're going to be asked to do a clause-by-clause examination of this bill. I wasn't part of the 39th Parliament, but I understand that Bill S-4 in its original form is substantially the same as Bill C-27. The Senate made some amendments to Bill S-4.

In your view, Minister, are the amendments appropriate? Did they strengthen the bill?

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. I first want to compliment you and the Department of Justice on this legislation.

With the compliment comes a comment, of course. I've been here almost four years, and I can say that this is new legislation. It's not just tacking on a mandatory minimum to an existing law as a band-aid to make it seem as if society is safer. This is real, important work, as you know. Bill C-27 was almost up the ladder when the plug was pulled on Parliament.

So we've been through this before, and what I think is quite interesting and gratifying is to see that you've given praise to the Senate work. I hope it's not just because the Conservatives are close to getting a majority in the Senate that you have a new thought on the good work of the Senate, but--

[Konrad W. von Finckenstein, Chairman, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to meet with the committee to discuss the Electronic Commerce Protection Act.

We are here to support Bill C-27 and explain our role, as envisaged in the bill. We are glad that the government has introduced this legislation, which is essential to Canada's growing digital economy. It will also have the added benefit of bringing Canadian law in line with our peers in the G8 who have already enacted similar anti-spam legislation.

As the committee knows, the bill is designed to counter commercial spam and related online problems, such as spyware, malware and phishing. These are problems that undermine confidence in the electronic marketplace.

Under the bill, the main enforcement responsibilities for spam will fall under the responsibility of the CRTC. We will be responsible for investigating violations and ensuring compliance.

The Competition Bureau will address false or misleading representations made through electronic messages. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner will address the invasion of privacy stemming from the collection and use of email addresses by computer programs.

The CRTC will be responsible for enforcing three types of violations under the act. First, we will enforce the “no spam” provisions of the act.

The ECPA provides for an “opt-in” regime, whereby people must first consent to receive commercial electronic messages. If there is no express or implied consent, spammers are subject to monetary penalties. Consent will be considered implied under one of two conditions: (a) where there is a business relationship that has been in existence for any time during the last 18 months, or where the recipient has made an inquiry or application within the last six months; and (b) in a non-business relationship where, in the last 18 months, the recipient has made a donation or gift, provided volunteer work, or signed a membership.

Second, the CRTC will prosecute violations involving the alteration of transmission data in an electronic message. Altering transmission data without express consent is prohibited.

Thirdly, the CRTC will enforce the prohibition against installing software or causing it to be installed without express consent. This has been a growing problem, as some spam has been designed to install software into a host computer, and this software in turn broadcasts further spam messages.

The bill provides for tools to permit the CRTC to enforce the act. The CRTC will be able to require telephone companies that provide Internet services to preserve time-sensitive transmission data. We will also be able to require telecom service providers and other institutions to provide documents and reports. Furthermore, there is a provision for searches with a warrant.

The act will be enforced on two separate tracks. The CRTC will have the authority to issue administrative monetary penalties of up to $1 million for an individual and up to $10 million for a business. We will also have the authority to negotiate binding undertakings. The second track involves the right to sue, which will allow individuals and businesses to take civil action through the courts to (a) recover damages for losses suffered and (b) to obtain additional damages for violations of the act.

However, lawsuits under (b) above will not be permitted if the CRTC has already issued a notice of violation or if an undertaking has been agreed upon. Similarly, the CRTC cannot start enforcement action if lawsuits have already been launched under (b) regarding the same violation.

One of the most important features of this bill is that it gives each of the federal partners—the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Privacy Commissioner—the ability to share information with one another, as well as with foreign partners.

While there is much to commend in Bill C-27, we believe there is room for improvement in two key areas.

The first concerns section 27, which provides the right to appeal certain CRTC decisions to the Federal Court of Appeal. We propose amending this section to provide a timeframe for bringing such appeals to the Federal Court, and suggest that 30 days would be sufficient. The wording for this proposed amendment can be found in the appendix to this speech.

Secondly, we would like to propose an amendment to the information-sharing provisions of the bill to strengthen the CRTC's ability to work with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and other international bodies operating under similar anti-spam legislation.

As it has been drafted, the bill allows the CRTC, the Competition Bureau, or the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to share information with other countries provided there is an international agreement or arrangement. In our view, these provisions fall short of what will be required to effectively counter spam. We know that spammers can be very adept at locating in one jurisdiction and directing spam at another jurisdiction. Living in North America, we can expect that a good deal of spam originates or will originate from our southern neighbours.

In its 2005 report, the task force on spam recognized that international enforcement of spam is essential. It recommended that:

The federal government, in coordination with the provinces and territories, should conclude and implement cooperative enforcement agreements with other countries. These efforts should include examining and amending existing legislative provisions as required to allow for seamless international cooperative investigative and enforcement action.

We agree that cooperation with other countries, and particularly with the United States, is essential. But clause 60 of the bill allows for cooperation only on the basis of intergovernmental or interagency agreements or arrangements. From my own experience as Commissioner of Competition, I know how difficult it can be to reach such agreements and how time-consuming and complex the process has become. It is essential that once the legislation has been enacted we can move quickly to cooperate with the United States. We can't afford to wait years until there's an international agreement. The process of negotiating the agreement should not be a barrier to working together to counter spam.

In 2006, the United States passed the Safe Web Act. It gives the FTC the authority to conduct investigations on behalf of a foreign agency, such as the CRTC, that is investigating conduct that is also prohibited under laws enforced by the FTC. However, in our view, and based on past experience, the FTC will provide assistance only if the country in question has reciprocal legislation. No such reciprocal provision is found in Bill C-27.

If Bill C-27 were amended so that it would mirror the provisions in the Safe Web Act, such cooperation would not be problematic; it would be automatic, and it would obviate the need for lengthy negotiations of arrangements or agreements.

We have drafted a proposed amendment, numbered 60A. You will find it in the appendix to this speech. Subject to certain safeguards, it would specifically empower the commission to gather information and evidence on behalf of a foreign country with similar reciprocal legislation, i.e., the United States. This assistance would be provided further, through a written request, in cases of alleged civil contraventions of foreign laws regarding conduct that is substantially similar to that prohibited in Canada. The proposed amendment would also allow the CRTC to share that information with the foreign entity in question.

In essence, clause 60A would provide for mutual assistance between Canada and other countries. I would emphasize that this provision would apply only to the gathering and sharing of information. The decision regarding whether to proceed would be entirely up to the CRTC and would depend on whether the foreign agency had agreed to provide reciprocal assistance.

The addition of clause 60A will require minor changes to the wording elsewhere in the bill to ensure consistency. For that purpose, the proposed changes to clauses 15, 17, and 19 are set out in the appendix.

In conclusion, both proposed amendments, with respect to the appeal period and cooperating on investigations, are very much in keeping with the spirit of the bill as passed for second reading in the House.

In the absence of section 60A, we believe it will be difficult to work quickly and cooperatively with foreign entities, and in particular the FTC. Without this amendment, the Commission's ability to address spam will be compromised significantly.

Thank you very much.

We will be pleased to answer any questions.

[Duane Schippers]

We did two things. First, we did a comparative study of the current legislation and the new powers we would have under Bill C-27. We also compared what is going on in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.

At the end of the day, in each of those countries, the types of changes made to the competition or consumer protection legislation were very similar, we think, to the types of changes being made here. Their mandates were expanded slightly, but the core focus of their mandate remained false and misleading advertising--not a huge change in the mandate.

Then we looked at our own resources and determined what we'd need to purchase in terms of additional software and other technology equipment to carry out our role, and also what additional people resources we'd need.

That's how we came to determine what our resource requirement would be.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here this afternoon to share with us on behalf of each one of your organizations, your respective expertise.

My first question can be addressed to either the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, or the Competition Bureau. Both your organizations must work with one another, but when it comes to implementing Bill C-27, the CRTC joins forces with you.

Will your respective mandates be changed? If so, what would the changes be?

[Duane Schippers, Deputy Commissioner of Competition, Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Competition Bureau]

Good afternoon everyone.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for inviting the Competition Bureau to appear before the committee to discuss Bill C-27, a legislative initiative that targets spam.

It is rare that one finds an idea or a point of view that almost every Canadian can agree upon. Unsolicited electronic communication, or spam, is one of the most universally reviled features of the Internet age. While its most malicious forms may be designed to spread viruses or facilitate identity theft, a significant proportion of spam involves the false or misleading promotion of products or services, particularly in the health and financial sectors.

For those less familiar with the Bureau, our mandate is to protect and promote competitive markets and to enable informed consumer choice in Canada. Our principle statute, the Competition Act, allows us to carry out both civil and criminal enforcement against, among other things, deceptive marketing practices.

With the passage of Bill C-10, the law implementing the federal budget, the penalties for deceptive marketing practices under the Competition Act were strengthened, both in terms of the monetary penalties and through the introduction of restitution orders to get victims their money back. These amendments were designed to harmonize the act with our international counterparts and to improve the bureau's ability to promote truth in advertising.

The proposed legislation before you, Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, would amend the Competition Act to allow the Bureau to more effectively combat false or misleading advertising in electronic communications and better protect the integrity of electronic commerce in Canada.

Along with the CRTC and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, the bureau would be one of three partners carrying out responsibilities under this initiative.

The 2005 report of the Task Force on Spam established by the Minister of Industry identified “gaps in current Canadian law that must be filled”. As it stands now, the Competition Act contains both civil and criminal provisions to curb the use of false or misleading advertising.

However, Canada still has no equivalent to laws found in other industrialized countries that relate specifically to electronic commerce, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States or the Spam Act in Australia.

The additions to the Competition Act outlined in Bill C-27 would help to clarify more precisely what cannot be done in electronic messaging and how competition laws would apply in cyberspace.

Specifically Bill C-27 would add more targeted civil and criminal provisions with respect to false and misleading advertising in electronic messages. It would provide authority for court injunctions to restrain conduct that falls within these new provisions and make certain that the act is technologically neutral. False or misleading representations in header information, such as subject lines or sender names in e-mails, in the content of the communication itself, or in locators, such as web addresses or URLs, would now be more broadly covered.

An example of a message that we have all received is one in which the subject line suggests that the message is a greeting from a familiar friend or trusted business, but whose content turns out to be an advertisement for a dubious product from a less than reputable source. This activity would fall under the new provisions as a false or misleading header.

An e-mail or text message advertising a bogus fuel additive, for example, falsely claiming to double your car's fuel efficiency, would be an example of a false or misleading representation made in the content of a message.

Similarly, a Canadian website that chooses a domain name or search terms to suggest that it is a source of job opportunities when it is merely a collection of links and vague advice would be caught under the “false or misleading locator” provisions.

While these examples may be covered to some extent under the current act, Bill C-27 would make it clear that they are, thus making it simpler and faster to take enforcement action against these forms of misleading advertising.

In addition to administrative monetary penalties and potentially even criminal prosecution, Bill C-27 proposes to expand court injunctive powers. The bureau will be able to seek court injunctions against spammers based in Canada or using Canadian equipment to engage in false or misleading advertising, and also against those persons and businesses supplying the spammers with the equipment and services used to carry out false or misleading advertising.

To ensure that the Competition Act remains in step with technological innovation, Bill C-27 amends definitions in the Competition Act to ensure that the act applies broadly to new technologies. For example, voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP, and text messaging would now clearly be within the scope of the Competition Act.

Furthermore, the framework provided for in the new Competition Act civil provisions serves as the basis to empower those affected by false or misleading spam to launch private actions under the remedial scheme in the Electronic Commerce Protection Act.

This means that enforcement will be coming from all angles, not just the Bureau or its government partners. In addition to a statutory per-message amount of damages, this scheme also allows plaintiffs to sue specifically for losses incurred as a result of the deceptive communications, ensuring that victims of scams, false advertising claims and other forms of deception have a potential way to get their money back.

In these difficult economic times, we can expect to see an increase in messages targeting not only consumers but also small and medium-sized businesses, which may suffer serious financial harm if they fall prey to misleading or false advertising messages contained in spam. It is the job of the Competition Bureau to protect Canadians from this kind of activity in all economic environments and to foster confidence in an honest marketplace.

The Competition Bureau has decades of experience in conducting investigations into false and misleading advertising and working with our domestic and international partners to achieve common enforcement objectives. For example, the bureau recently launched Project False Hope, an education and enforcement initiative that targeted false or unproven cancer cure claims found online. The project has resulted in 98% of those websites targeted by the bureau changing or removing the claims at issue in order to comply with the Competition Act. As part of the initiative, the bureau worked in collaboration with the Canadian Cancer Society to produce an awareness campaign and an informative pamphlet that has reached tens of thousands of individuals.

In other collaborative efforts, the bureau has worked with domestic and international partners, such as Health Canada, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to combat false or misleading claims surrounding weight loss and diabetes treatments. The bureau successfully took action against almost 100 Canadian-operated websites, with the vast majority changing or removing the claims at issue in order to comply with the Competition Act.

Cooperation is key to ensuring deceptive marketers cannot hide from authorities, in any jurisdiction. Experience conducting investigations, in both the on and offline world, combined with established cooperation networks, provides the right foundation to take action against spam.

Technological progress is a positive and powerful economic driver, but it comes with new ways to engage in deception, and Canadian law must keep pace. The new provisions, combined with the current provisions in the Competition Act, will provide a more complete framework to facilitate more effective and timely enforcement against deceptive conduct in the electronic marketplace in all of its forms.

Canada has been without anti-spam legislation and is lagging behind our major international trading partners. These changes allow the bureau, together with its partners, to more confidently and effectively enforce the law in an undeniably problematic but complex area.

We at the bureau are enthusiastic about the prospect of Bill C-27 becoming law. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the bureau's role and respond to any questions the committee members may have.

Thank you.

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

Thank you.

My second question is for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce representative.

Judging from your comments, you are rather critical of Bill C-27. You alluded to the thousands of spam messages that would be considered illegal and to the prohibition of business relationships. You say that the bill needs to be improved.

What provisions of the bill do you find acceptable? Are there sections of the bill that you would be prepared to defend and that you would like us to go forward with?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would also like to thank each and every witness for their testimony.

My first question is for Mr. Hill, the Vice President of the Canadian Marketing Association.

You have proposed a number of changes or amendments. You have even suggested that certain clauses of the bill be amended. You also talked about the spam that circulates between the United States and Canada. Which brings me to this question: are you at all concerned about spam originating from country's other than Canada?

In Canada, Bill C-27 sets out the rules which allow for a certain amount of control. At the very least, it provides for measures that are applied within Canada. However, have you looked at what is happening outside Canada? If so, have you any recommendations to make on ways of curbing, eliminating or reducing spam originating from outside Canada?

A considerable amount of spam is indeed generated outside of Canada.

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

Okay.

New Zealand put it on the website that they could not send commercial electronic messages and that got around this. Bill C-27 hasn't addressed that. Do you think there's something that we should be doing in this regard? It would capture Mike Lake's point about having his e-mail address published. Also, on Facebook, your e-mail addresses are published.

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

Thank you.

I want to talk to two issues. One goes back to Mr. Lake' s point about having his e-mail address on the web. I was CEO of my company and I had my e-mail address on the web; luckily, it went to a different box than my inbox. That is a concern for this particular bill as well, and I think Bill C-27 should look at it. We have a lot of precedents around the world, so we can draw on the best approaches.

To go back to Mr. Lake's point, I'm going to draw your attention to a case in New Zealand. New Zealand had an issue when they had their school addresses published on the web, which is a very common occurrence here in Canada. They ended up having a challenge. E-mails were being sent from businesses offering them goods related to education and they weren't being allowed to go through. The ministry added a note to the web page saying that the addresses could not be used to send commercial electronic messages. Are you familiar with this?

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

Mr. Chairman, I am going to share my time with my colleague. But first I would like to ask another question.

Let us talk about coordination. Three agencies have a role to play under Bill C-27: the Competition Bureau, the CRTC and the Privy Council. When the minister last appeared before the committee, he told us that a coordination agency would be set up and that it would not be very large. I would like to hear your views on this. You mentioned that each organization should have a specific mandate. I understood you to say that it will be important to assign a clear mandate to each organization. Is Bill C-27 clear enough in terms of coordination?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My question is for Mr. Geist. You stated that legislation is effective when there are penalties. If I understood you correctly, without penalties, enforcement is just about nil or in any event weak.

Are you happy with the penalties included in Bill C-27? What can you tell us about the penalties under this bill?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here today.

I'm looking at the areas of resourcing and enforcement of the law. In 2002 the Utah legislature passed an anti-spam bill in an attempt to stem spam from being in the inbox of its citizens. The law classified spam as unsolicited e-mail sent to someone who was without a prior business relationship with the company, and the definition is very similar to that in Bill C-27, from what I understand. In their bill, they provided for a right to civil action for violation, much as clauses 47 and 51 of Bill C-27 do. Any spam sent to a person gave that person the right to file a civil suit against the company.

Although damages were limited to $10 per e-mail, the law also allowed for attorney's fees to be paid if the spam recipient was successful in court. Utah's anti-spam law resulted in a flood of anti-spam suits in the court. By the end of 2003, two Salt Lake City attorneys had filed more than a thousand lawsuits under Utah anti-spam law against companies such as Verizon, eBay, and Columbia House. These are clearly larger corporations.

In December of 2003 the U.S. Congress passed the federal anti-spam law, the CAN-SPAM Act, which trumps the state law, and in 2004 Utah's anti-spam law was repealed, but not before the Utah courts were basically clogged with anti-spam lawsuits. Many legal experts have said that it was because of the civil action for violations that this particular law was struck down.

That concerns me when I look at our legal system, and how backed up it is. When I look at this, I see this mad influx of civil lawsuits against companies that normally wouldn't be sued and that seemed to be doing the right thing. As Bill C-27 includes that private right-of-action clause, how do you see this affecting our legal system?

[Prof. Michael Geist]

I do know that one of the recommendations that came out of the spam task force was on the resource side. One of the barriers that we consistently encountered was that there were agencies or enforcement agencies that were willing to take action, or said they were willing to take action, but there was a resource problem.

Are the enforcement provisions deficient? I think on paper they are. I will tell you that throughout the process of the anti-spam task force, we consistently looked for action from some of these enforcement agencies, and frankly we had a hard time getting it. In fact it hasn't come up, but I launched the first anti-spam privacy complaint under PIPEDA with the Privacy Commissioner's office. It was a successful complaint in the sense that it was found to be well founded, but it didn't really get much further than that.

I realized from that, and I think other people realized throughout that process, that it's going to take a clear mandate so that enforcement agencies understand that this is a priority of government. It became very clear that the way you do that is you pass legislation that really targets it, and then you resource it appropriately. That's clearly what Bill C-27 is trying to do.

[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.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, When I was asked to speak about Bill C-27, I have to admit that I was very excited as a young person who knows that anything that has to do with the Internet is increasingly popular among young people in particular, but mainly as a parliamentarian. In 2009, we all use the Internet a great deal to keep in touch with the people in our ridings. I have only to think about how we as parliamentarians have used email every day for years now and about the new Internet technologies, such as Facebook, of which I am a member and where I have a huge number of friends and supporters. I would like to take this opportunity to invite all Quebeckers to add me to their list of friends. Using the Internet, we can keep in touch with people in the field and know what they are thinking.

We used to use the telephone and send letters through the mail, but today we have much greater access with the Internet. Some of my colleagues still write letters by hand. It may be that they see this as a romantic notion, but today the Internet is the vehicle of choice for interacting with others. There are still some people who put pen to paper, but today everything is on the Net.

Bill C-27 is part of this trend. Unfortunately, the Internet is not all good. As with anything, there will be people who misuse it, as is the case with spam. As an avid Internet user, I have received a lot of spam. I agree that it is frustrating. It is annoying to see our inboxes filled with hundreds of mass emails on topics we want nothing to do with.

Bill C-27 attempts to address part of the problem. That is one reason why the Bloc Québécois supports this bill. We are in favour of the principle, but some parts of the bill, which I will talk about later, can be considered biased. They will have to be examined in committee, and we will have to take the time to analyze every single comma, to protect not only consumers and Internet users, but also businesses that are using the Internet and email more and more. We must find some common ground for both parties.

Bill C-27 is a new bill that specifically targets unsolicited commercial electronic messages. Citizens have been demanding such a bill for some time, and it is sorely needed. Governments, service providers, network operators and consumers are all affected by spam, as I just mentioned. We must create safeguards for legitimate electronic commerce, and we must do so now. 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.

The Bloc Québécois is pleased to see that Bill C-27 takes into account most of the recommendations in the final report of the task force on spam. However, we are upset that the legislative process has taken four long years. The government says that it has acted quickly. The Conservatives have been in power for three years, and it took four long years—there was also one year with the Liberals, who are just as slow, I must say—for us to finally get to the point of examining Bill C-27.

As I said, computer technology is evolving at astonishing speeds, and spammers, those who send spam, keep finding new ways to achieve their goal. Therefore, committee consideration of the bill should give many industry stakeholders and consumer protection groups an opportunity to express their views on the new electronic commerce protection legislation.

This being a constantly evolving issue, the task force on spam was struck in 2004 to look into this problem and find ways of dealing with it. It brought together Internet service providers and representatives, electronic marketing experts, and government and consumer representatives.

I will note, as an aside, that electronic marketing is increasingly popular, even in political circles, as was seen during Barack Obama's recent campaign in the United States. His team made massive use of the Internet, with great success.

That having been said, more than 60 groups from the sectors concerned took part in the discussions, contributing their views on topics such as legislation and enforcement, international cooperation and raising public awareness.

In addition to the Stop Spam Here campaign launched on the Internet to raise awareness and provide users with tips on how to limit and control the amount of spam they receive, on May 17, 2005, the task force on spam presented its final report to the Minister of Industry.

This report, entitled “Stopping Spam: Creating a Stronger, Safer Internet”, recommends new, targeted legislation and more vigorous enforcement of current laws to reinforce the legal and regulatory arsenal Canada could use in the global fight against spam.

The report also promotes the establishment of a focal point or centre within government to coordinate the actions taken against spamming activity and related issues, such as spyware.

The main recommendations contained in this report were: the proposed legislation and more vigorous enforcement; the drafting of legislation prohibiting spamming; protection of personal information and privacy and protection of computers, emails and 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. In addition, new and existing resources of the organizations responsible for the administration and enforcement of anti-spam laws should be strengthened.

The task force also talked about a centre of expertise on spam. The task force recommended creating a centre to coordinate the government's anti-spam initiatives. The centre would coordinate policy and education campaigns, and support law enforcement efforts. It would also receive complaints and compile statistics on spam.

To curb the volume of spam reaching users, the task force developed a series of industry best practices for ISPs, network operators and email marketers.

Examples include allowing ISPs and other network operators to block email file attachments known to carry viruses and to stop emails with deceptive subject lines.

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. The report recommends that these groups voluntarily adopt, regularly review and enhance the best practices.

We will also need an education campaign. Talking, passing legislation and finding ways to stop spam is one thing, but we also have to raise awareness and warn people about emails that may appear to promise things.

For example, North Americans are receiving more and more emails from young African women. These emails say that the sender is having some problems at the moment, and if the recipient sends a cheque or provides a bank account number, she will give him or her $1 million in exchange. We have to warn people that these emails are actually spam. In most cases, the senders plan to get funds from the recipients under false, dishonest pretenses. We have to make sure that people are aware of this. How many times have I heard from people who naively believed these emails requesting a bank account number in exchange for cash. People have to be so careful. I myself have begun an awareness campaign by sending an email warning people to be careful because the consequences could be disastrous.

We have to start a public education campaign. To help change people's online behaviour, the task force created an online public education campaign called “Stop Spam Here”. Launched in 2004, the website offers consumers, voluntary organizations and businesses practical tips for protecting their personal information, computers and email addresses. The task force recommends that all partners continue to enhance the site's content.

International cooperation is also needed in order to put an end to spam. I mentioned emails that come from Africa, for instance. The problem of spam is not limited to Canada. It is happening around the world. The Internet created the global village, and the world has become a small town. Anything can be sent at lightning speed. Anyone can send spam to Canada or anywhere else in the world. This file will therefore require considerable international cooperation.

Since most of the spam reaching Canadians comes from outside the country, international measures to stem spam are vital. Therefore, the task force proposed that the government continue its efforts to harmonize anti-spam policies and to improve cooperation in enforcing anti-spam laws among different countries.

Four years later, on April 24, 2009, the Government of Canada finally introduced new legislation to protect electronic commerce, namely, Bill C-27. It took four years, which, I must say, was a little long.

Inspired primarily by the final report of the task force on spam, Bill C-27 establishes a framework to protect electronic commerce. To achieve that, the bill would enact the new electronic commerce protection act, as I mentioned earlier. Basically, this act would set limits on the sending of spam. First of all, we must define spam. Spam can be defined as any electronic commercial message sent without the express consent of the recipient. It can be 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.

It is important to make a distinction. Spam affects not only emails, but also what are known as SMSs, that is, messages sent directly from one cellular phone to another, and we sometimes forget that. This can become a bit of a sham. People sometimes sign up for a business's mailing list and they receive SMSs. Yet they do not realize that, at 15¢ per message, it can become quite expensive by the end of the month. People who send spam by SMS get the benefits, but since they send so many, it is very costly for users. Therefore, it is also important to stop spam sent by SMS.

Having regard to the content of the message, it would be reasonable to conclude its purpose is to encourage participation in a commercial activity, including an electronic message that offers to purchase, sell, barter or lease a product, goods, a service, land or an interest or right in land, or a business, investment or gaming opportunity.

Note that the following types of commercial messages are not considered as spam: 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; messages that are sent by means of a facsimile to a telephone account; messages that are a voice recording sent to a telephone account; and messages that are of a class, or are sent in circumstances, specified in the regulations.

This means that, under this legislation, sending spam to an electronic address—email, messenger, telephone or any other similar account—would be prohibited. The only circumstances under which it would be allowed is when the person to whom the message is sent has consented to receiving it, whether the consent is express or implied, hence the importance of raising public awareness as I said earlier.

Sometimes, in good faith, people subscribe to mailing lists or SMS distribution lists without necessarily knowing what they are getting themselves into and without understanding the fine print and the problems that can arise. It is therefore important to raise awareness. We cannot say it often enough: it is extremely important that Internet users and people who use their cell phones to send text messages be careful and make sure that they do not fall into a trap.

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. Lastly, 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.

Earlier, I mentioned how users can get caught in a trap. Companies that send SMS messages, for example, do not tell recipients how to unsubscribe. And that becomes very problematic, because the individual receiving the messages is billed for them. The recipient has to pay, but does not necessarily have the knowledge or the means to unsubscribe. The charges start to add up. At 10¢ a message, SMS can be very expensive.

The bill would also prohibit altering the transmission data in an electronic message so that it is delivered to destinations other than that specified by the initial sender. In addition, the bill would prohibit installing a computer program on another person's computer and sending an electronic message from that computer without the owner's consent.

I see that I have only a minute left. I would just like to say that the Bloc Québécois would like this bill to be referred to committee. I said at the beginning of my speech that we support the bill in principle, but there are some things that will have to be checked.

The Internet is increasingly a global phenomenon, and we will have to fight spam with our international partners.

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 second time and referred to a committee.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand in the House today and speak to Bill C-27, a bill that looks at providing new prohibitions and enforcement measures as well as changes to existing laws regarding spam.

As one of the youngest members in the House, this is a bill that I feel very strongly about. That is why I stand here very proudly and state our position as the New Democratic Party, asking for the support of the House to make sure that this bill goes to committee in order to be discussed, in order to have the proper consultation it deserves, and in order for there to be time to look at such complex legislation.

The reason why I connect it with my generation is because I am part of a generation that has truly grown up dependent on technology. Not only are we dependent on it for our professional lives, but also our personal lives. It is the tool that brings our generation together.

As we sit and spend an inordinate amount of hours on the Internet, we are frequently faced by the nuisance that is spam, phishing, Trojan horses, and whatever other forms of Internet nuisance there might be. I would also like to point out how problematic it is.

On a more humourous note, I know my colleague yesterday recited some examples of spamware and how ridiculous they are. Whether it is the solicitation of funds from another part of the world, usually unfortunately taking advantage of people's sympathies and empathies toward areas of the world that have undergone crises, or it is ridiculous notes pertaining to people's personal lives and the assumption that we know who is talking to us and who wants to meet us, and all of these kinds of things. But, in fact, once again it is taking advantage of people's dependence on the Internet to connect in terms of their personal life as opposed to getting out and actually meeting people in the real world.

Beyond the humourous, however, we get to some of the really serious problems that emerge from spam and the kind of pollution that enters our in-boxes, our Facebook sites or our BlackBerries on a daily basis. There is the nuisance in terms of time and efficiency that it takes away from us as we go through our emails and spend valuable time erasing ridiculous messages that we receive.

There are the nuisances that businesses go through in terms of erasing spam emails that they receive or else defending perhaps themselves. This is also pertinent to individuals when it is believed they are the ones who have sent the spam messages when in fact it is someone else causing havoc.

Then there is the even more serious element which is the criminal element and the theft that occurs as a result of spam messages. Identity theft is something that we in Canada are very concerned about. I recall quite a bit of media attention when there was what seemed to be a surge in identity theft.

Also, the theft of financial information is connected to identity theft. It is found that many times such spammers, as they are called, or people who take advantage of others on the Internet, usually take advantage of people who are not familiar with technology, whether it is the elderly or people who are less savvy when it comes to Internet technology. That is highly problematic for so many reasons.

What makes it even more disconcerting for members in the House is Canada's inaction when it comes to spam, when it comes to Internet pollution, and when we see so many people being taken advantage of. I particularly want to bring out the extent to which not only Canadians are being taken advantage of but also people all around the world as a result of spam activity that originates here in Canada. I found out that Canada ranked fifth worldwide as the source of web-based email spam, trailing only Iran, Nigeria, Kenya and Israel.

A research study from Cloudmark, a leading provider of anti-spam software, recently presented data on the origins of spam emanating from web-based email providers, such as Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo, at an international anti-spam conference in Germany. It found out that we are fifth in terms of truly polluting the web world and taking advantage of people, not only in our own country but around the world. We need to be ashamed of that. We take pride in being advanced in the technological age and in our efficiencies with respect to our technology. There is a serious problem in that we have gone so far ahead in our technology that our legislation is lagging behind. We have a lot of people who are taking advantage of that gap and who are acting in very malicious ways and criminal ways as well.

There have been many examples of people who have taken advantage of Facebook sites. I know that is a site on which many politicians in the House spend a great deal of time, networking with their constituents. I am not sure if they have spent enough time to see some of the spam messages pasted on people's Facebook walls in a very public manner, with which I am sure none of us would want to be associated. However, we never know when spammers are going to take advantage of the work we do and our reputation and create havoc on our Facebook sites.

These are the kinds of things that could hit very close to home in the work that we do as political representatives.

I go back to the piece about Canada being negligent when it comes to being proactive in preventing such intense span activity originating from our country. I see the reference to Canada being a lawless spam haven. Two hundred billion spam messages come out of Canada every day. How could we fathom such extensive numbers, knowing very well that this has been an ongoing discussion in our House? I understand the Liberals brought up the first legislation regarding spam in 2003. We are now in 2009. That is six years.

We know there is far more use of the Internet, both in our country and around the world. Where has the federal government been in terms of implementing legislation that would both protect us and certainly clear our name as allowing this kind of activity to take place in our country while turning a blind eye?

I want to go back to talk a bit about some of the important prohibitions that Bill C-27 provides.

The primary prohibition, known as the basic anti-spam provision, notes:

No person shall send or cause or permit to be sent to an electronic address a commercial electronic message unless

(a) the person to whom the message is sent has consented to receiving it, whether the consent is express or implied; and

(b) the message complies with subsection (2).

There are number of provisions as part of subsection (2). It enforces, for example, the importance of three key requirements, form, consent and jurisdiction.

The law establishes form requirements for those who send commercial electronic messages, for example, and identifies the people sending the message. It provides contact information of the centre and also has an unsubscribe mechanism, which is so important as many of us receive numerous emails from the same source and find it difficult to know how to stop from receiving them any more.

The second prohibition that is part of Bill C-27 is referred to as the anti-phishing provision and involves the alteration of the transmission data on electronic messages. It is designed to deal with phishing, where the electronic message appears to go to one place but goes somewhere else. It states:

No person shall, in the course of a commercial activity, alter or cause to be altered the transmission data in an electronic message so that the message is delivered to a destination other than or in addition to that specified by the sender, unless the alteration is made with the express consent of the sender or in accordance with a court order.

The third prohibition is referred to as the anti-spyware and botnet provision. It is designed to deal with the increasingly common method of delivering spam that infects a user's computer and uses the Internet connection to send millions of spam messages.

The provision states:

No person shall, in the course of a commercial activity, install or cause to be installed a computer program on any other person’s computer system or, having so installed or caused to be installed a computer program, cause an electronic message to be sent from that computer system, unless the person has obtained the express consent of the owner or an authorized user of a computer system or is acting in accordance with a court order.

For this to apply, there must be a Canadian connection to the activity. As we have just heard, there is no shortage of Canadian connections to activity, given that we rank number five on the world charts when it comes to infecting other people's Internet connections with spam.

The intent of Bill C-27 is a very good one. For many years we have been talking about the importance of being proactive in this legislation to protect Canadian citizens, consumers and businesses and to prevent the rest of the world from having to deal with the garbage, in many ways, that emanates from our country.

I know my colleague, the member for Timmins—James Bay, an advocate for efficient and fair use of Internet technologies, has spoken many times on the importance of this issue. I would also like to recognize the work of my colleague from Windsor West, the critic on this file, who has worked very hard at committee to ensure that this is a constant priority.

In that sense, this has been an ongoing discussion. What is holding us up? Given that this is such complex legislation, we need to have a proper consultation with stakeholders. We recognize that in 2004 there was some consultation that took place under the Liberals. We also know what happened shortly after that. We have been in a series of minority governments, clearly unable to properly deal with such important legislation.

However, we believe there is enough good faith in the House to recognize that this is a priority and that we can no longer pay lip service to it or leave it on the shelf to be discussed at another time.

Going back to committee is the best way to go about this. For example, there was concern raised yesterday in the House about some provisions that were included in the bill, which came directly from the do-not-call list bill.

On the do-not-call list, many colleagues and Canadians throughout the country have pointed out how problematic it has been. People have, in good will and good faith, signed their names to a list, expecting that they will no longer be harassed by telemarketers and different companies. However, what we did not know was spammers and others on the net were purchasing these lists or finding them and doing quite the opposite, targeting people even more vehemently, the exact people who had specifically requested not to be called.

We see that some of the do-not-call list provisions are in this bill, which we would like to be part of a broader debate. There was some confusion yesterday from members across with respect to whether these kinds of provisions would be part of the final reading of Bill C-27. That immediately raises a red flag and indicates the importance of bringing this bill back to committee so we can ensure that each part of it is pertinent, that it reflects lessons we have learned from the past in terms of efficiency and fairness and that the final product will actually make a difference to Canadians.

We also like to point out the importance, as my fellow colleague from Elmwood—Transcona did, of consulting properly with small businesses. In many cases, small businesses depend a great deal on email communications through the work they do in advertising and contacts with their clients and consumers. We need to ensure that this bill does not penalize them in the kinds of emails they send out and that there are provisions to protect them. We need to understand the work they do.

If a small business does send out an email sometime after a purchase has been made or an agreement has been reached, will that be recognized as spam? Based on numerous emails consumers may receive from a business, will they view that as spam and file a complaint against that business, putting that business in a very difficult situation for actions that are quite legitimate?

We also like to point out that political parties send copious amounts of emails. We use Facebook. We use the tools available to us. Will we be on the short end of facing some difficult situations if people complain about the emails we send out? What kind of balance can we find in that area?

Canadians recognize that by no means are our parties immune to scandals. We see so many in the news and, even more recently, attached to numerous prior political incarnations in the House. We want to ensure that communications, which are so important for democracy, from our political parties are recognized as such. That is why it is so important to bring this bill back to committee so we can have these kinds of discussions.

The next point I would like to make is on enforcement. We find some of the measures around enforcement problematic. We all know it is fine and well to come up with a great bill that looks at punitive measures to render people accountable. However, if we do not have the proper enforcement, what are we doing here? The bill designates the CRTC to engage in such kinds of enforcement activities.

I think we all recognize that the CRTC does very hard work, but in many cases it is stretched thin in taking responsibility for the files and departments it already has under its administration, let alone bringing in such an important and extensive responsibility and adding it to its load. It is not that it would not be the best to deal with this. However, we need to look at proper provision of resources in finances, technology and human resources to ensure the CRTC can truly do the work it has been mandated to do.

I also recognize that the Privacy Commissioner is part of this. Does she have enough resources to undertake this kind of work?

When we talk about such important points as identity theft, the theft of financial information and ensuring that Canadian citizens and businesses can use the Internet safely, these are some pretty serious points. We need to ensure that the people who will be responsible for ensuring the rules and the legislation are followed have the abilities to do so. It is incumbent upon us and the government to ensure that this is the case.

Finally, I want to bring attention to the importance of protecting consumers. This bill is fundamentally about protecting Canadians and Canadian consumers. As New Democrats, we want to believe that. This is a very positive intent. This kind of legislation needs to take place, but we want to ensure that the consultation takes place as it should, that it is implemented properly and that it is enforced properly as well.

For that reason, we look with distress at the fact that our motion on credit cards and protecting consumers in that respect has not been heeded by the government. Numerous measures that we have proposed for employment insurance changes have not been heeded by the government.

Motions have been passed by all three opposition parties, might I add, that look out for the benefit of consumers.

I know that hon. members on the other side of the House represent many consumers, and I hope they will listen to us and bring this bill back to committee to ensure it makes a difference for us as Canadian consumers.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am almost as surprised to be speaking as you are to call upon me.

This morning, we are considering Bill C-27. It is widely known how absolutely dramatic and traumatic the whole issue of spam is and the interception of messages and the relationship that has to the electronic medium that we are so dependent on today. This is a dramatic example in this legislation in its analysis of the extent to which span can create absolute chaos in the lives of individuals, businesses and governments.

Most recently, there was an example of how one of these electronic wizards, who is totally capable of developing the programs, used that knowledge to intercept military messages between aircraft. The extent to which that could have created absolute chaos was, in fact, so dangerous. It was illustrated in the press. We have had to take the kind of action that would have been able to intercept those messages, neutralize them and protect our public.

The issue of creating spam and what it will do to our capacity in a civil society to use this technology in a positive way is threatened by people who have the capacity to understand and implement evil designs on individuals, businesses and governments. It is, therefore, in the overall interest of civil society that we act on this.

It has been estimated that, to this date, many billions of dollars have been taken and applied to those who have suffered the effects of their electronic Internet capacity being undermined. They have tried to implement reactive responses by calling upon service agencies to protect their own email addresses and so on, but billions of dollars have spent on that. Naturally, people find themselves looking at government and wanting to know what government at all levels will do to protect them.

The government has responded in a positive way. In fact, it has built on the recommendations that were made by a Liberal task force in 2004. I think it would be helpful for those who are watching to know about the recommendations with respect to that task force, which held many consultations.

The recommendations were: to prohibit the sending of spam without the prior consent of recipients; to prohibit the use of false or misleading statements that disguise the origins or true intent of the email; to prohibit the installation of unauthorized programs; and, to prohibit the unauthorized collection of personal information or email addresses. Bill C-27 takes a great step forward in terms of dealing with those recommendations that were made back in 2004.

Those who are watching would also wish to be informed as to the regime that is being put in place to follow up with respect to charges that have been levelled against people who are involved in this kind of scamming process.

The bill introduces fines for the violation of these acts up to a maximum of $1 million for individuals and $10 million for businesses. It would establish rules for warrants for information during an investigation and injunctions on spam activity while under investigation. The bill also would establish the private right of action, allowing individuals and businesses the ability to seek damages from the perpetrators of spam.

While the legislation takes these steps, it also behooves us to look at what additional steps could possibly be taken.

It is important to note that the whole strategy with respect to fighting spam requires more than just a legislative regime. The willingness to enforce the law is absolutely paramount. In this regard, the task force recommended in 2004 some additional steps that it felt the government should consider and perhaps could be considered when the bill is at committee.

The task force indicated that dedicated resources and strong support should be provided to agencies to administer and enforce the anti-spam legislation. It behooves the government to reflect on whether those resources have been dedicated. The task force further recommended co-ordinated anti-spam actions with other nations. While a huge amount of spam comes from the United States, this is a battle that requires international response. The task force also recommended that international service providers and other network operators establish best business practices. The final recommendation was to establish a spam database to better monitor the sources of spam.

It is important that we understand the regime that is the foundation of support with respect to the strategic response that is embedded in the bill.

The bill would give authority to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to share information and evidence with international counterparts in order to pursue violators outside of Canada.

The minister indicated in his announcement the government's commitment to establishing Industry Canada as the national co-ordinating body in order to expand awareness and education of the whole nature of spam, what the government was doing in terms of the responding regime and to share that information with Canadians, with network operators and small businesses, and to co-ordinate the work with the private sector, and to conduct research and intelligence gathering.

Hopefully this information will be upfront so that people who have been victimized by those who are using spam to undermine their electronic systems will have a hotline to interface with immediately and the steps in the bill will kick in and they will know that the responding regime is at their service.

To that extent, the bill intends to create a spam reporting centre that would receive reports and related threats allowing it to collect evidence and gather intelligence to assist the three enforcement agencies, the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

In committee, I hope this particular part of the regime that would be put in place by the bill, will be put right up front and that the electronic and communications interface with that reporting centre is made public, the number immediately has an acknowledged and up front series of steps that will be taken on behalf of consumers so they can rest assured that the evidential and the responding follow-up is immediate and predictable. The bill attempts to do that but there is a great deal of doubt out in the wider public whether we really have a handle on this particular problem.

The bill, in terms of its content, the history leading up to the response and the substance, meets the needs and expectations of our public. The public can also be assured that there will be an additional response, particularly as it is coordinated on an international basis.

It is very important that the resources be put into fighting what has been estimated as a $27 billion annual expenditure in information technology, including increased expenditures in Internet bandwidth, storage costs, anti-spam software and user support. Just that figure alone indicates that $27 billion is being invested by consumers to try and protect themselves, and that they are doing it at a time when the legislative framework has left them wanting.

What we are now doing, through this legislation, is taking that investment and backing it up with a legislative framework that is both prescriptive and proactive. It is saying that we understand the problem and we understand the nature of the intelligence intercept and how it is undermining consumers' ability to use their email addresses with confidence and without being invaded by people who want to access private information.

The government more recently introduced legislation that attempts to protect private individuals from abuse with respect to their credit card information and their day-to-day transactions through the mail. We have been reminded of this time and time again, in particular with respect to seniors who have been vulnerable to those who have victimized them because they have laid access to that private information, even to the extent, as members will recall, where information on mortgages and home ownership was used for transactions to place, resulting in people actually losing their home. Both the province and federal government have had to respond to that with new legislation, which sets a similar regime in place to protect our public.

Again I use that as an example that there just seems to be no limit to the extent that some in our society will victimize others and they will use a variety of tools to do it, not the least of which is using spam to access private information to mislead and abuse, to undermine enforcement agencies and to victimize the vulnerable. This legislation takes a major step forward in terms of dealing with that.

This was an initiative that was predicated on the basis of need. It was recognized several years ago in 2004 by the opposition, then the government, and this legislation builds upon that. There are still some gaps but those will be addressed in committee. However, our public can rest assured that the whole issue of spam and its evil intent will be dealt with by a regime that has follow-up and follow-through.

The House resumed from May 7 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 second time and referred to a committee.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today on this issue.

It was said that email is becoming more and more common in our societies. I am an enthusiast myself. It has the advantage of enabling us to do several things at once. While listening to the debate, for instance, I had my computer open in front of me. It makes it possible to communicate with people sometimes at the far ends of the earth, whom I have not seen for a long time. It is also possible to communicate with people who are very close by, such as colleagues in the House or even the lobby coordinator, Marie-Ève. I want to salute her on behalf of all Bloc Québécois members because she does a fantastic job, like all the people who work around us and support us in our tasks.

When viewers watch us on television, they see us proceeding efficiently and think we are all very good and know what to do. The reality is that we would often be lost without the coordinators in the lobby and all the parliamentary personnel who help us. I want to thank them very much for the work they do.

Having made this aside, I want to comment on BillC-27, Electronic Commerce Protection Act. Spam is of ever greater concern in our economies and that is due in large part to the fact that email is free. I want to assure the House right away that I would not dream of changing that. However, individuals who want to send unsolicited documents, mail or advertising can easily do so. They can send them to very large numbers of people at no additional cost. Spam is not very interesting and just a tiny proportion of people pay any attention to it. The volume is so immense, though, that only a small percentage is enough to get some potentially attractive customers, while the user would have to pay for traditional methods of promotion.

If someone wants to send an advertisement to every house by regular mail, there are no laws against it, apart from certain municipal regulations. This is not a problem, though, because people rarely take advantage of the situation to send millions of people in North America a letter announcing some scheme to get millions of dollars out of a particular country, thereby making everyone rich. There is no critical mass to justify doing this by traditional mail.

But in the case of email, there is that sort of critical mass. We have to sort through our email to separate the wheat from the chaff. We also have to have software with anti-spam and anti-phishing systems to identify such messages. These automated systems sometimes make mistakes, with the result that we sometimes do not receive legitimate email messages. They drown in a sea of spam.

The Bloc Québécois believes it is high time we had anti-spam legislation. The task force on spam, which was created in 2004, has been calling for legislation for more than four years.

Four years is an eternity when it comes to computer technology. Most western countries have already passed anti-spam legislation. Canada has unfortunately not yet done so, and we are happy to be able to study this bill. A number of members have pointed out that it is not perfect and that they still have concerns. We share the view that this bill can certainly be improved, but we will support it in principle so that it is referred to committee.

When the issue of prevention and punishment on the Internet comes up, in connection with spam, we often hear the argument that, because the Internet is involved, there is no control—

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

Madam Speaker, I am very glad to rise to speak to this somewhat bizarre bill.

It is very clear that the government is setting up a bill to kill the do-not-call registry. It is talking about fraud. It is talking about fax machines. We push the government on question after question, and it tells us that just because it is in there does not mean it is actually in there. Then it asks us to speed the bill through. I would be very concerned about rushing through a bill brought forward by the Conservative government without doing due diligence.

Legislation is like trying to push a glacier. It is very cumbersome. People want to develop legislation for this, that or the other, and they tell us we have to have a law. Then we put in a law and we see the concerns. Any time the Conservatives try to bring in a law, they start howling up and down that the opposition are not willing to push it through right away. It tells us we are soft on crime because we do want to actually study a bill on mandatory minimums for furniture theft or whatever else they bring forward.

There are all kinds of booby traps in legislation. Legislation always has unintended consequences. If we do not do the due diligence, we end up using a hammer to whack a bunch of little pieces all over the place without necessarily getting what we wanted.

When we look at a bill, it has to be focused, and it to be focused right. So what are we focused on right now? The bill is focused on the issue of spam.

Is spam a problem? Spam is a big problem. Spam is a problem on two or three different levels. It is an irritant, number one. I get it all the time on my BlackBerry. There is a woman in some cafe who is waiting to meet me and she thinks I look great. This woman who emails me never has my first name. I go on my BlackBerry and someone is selling me products to make certain parts of my body bigger than they need to be. Then I go on my BlackBerry and someone is selling me a beautiful condo on a malaria-infested swamp. Those are irritants, and so I erase them. Sure it costs me a bit of time, but it is not that big a deal.

The bigger problem with spam is the use of it to defraud people across the world. Of course we know about the Nigerian 419 scam. When I ran my magazine, in the days when the fax machine was cutting-edge technology, we got these faxes from Nigeria or Bosnia, or wherever there was a crisis, from someone trying to get out of the country who needed some money. If we gave them money, we would get money back. Everybody knows the 419 scam. But it was cumbersome. It was slow. It had to be done on fax machines. It actually cost them money to do it, so they had to limit the number of scams they could get away with. Surprisingly, a lot of people got snagged in these kinds of frauds.

However, when we moved to digital technology, the ability of these fraud artists anywhere in the world to inundate millions and millions of Internet subscribers with fraudulent claims jumped astronomically, and the costs for doing it became almost nothing.

The vast majority of us look at those fraud emails, and we might be a little upset or we might laugh at them, and we erase them. However, they only need one in a thousand people or one in ten thousand people to succeed. People have lost their savings. There have been senior citizens who have been defrauded, or young people who have lost money. It is so hard to track these fraud artists down. An international effort is needed to deal with them. We have to be able to root these players out, and we have to be get them off our servers.

The other major problem with spam is the use of spyware technology and the use of Trojans, the malignant attempt to destroy people's personal or office computers. That is a level of destruction in our corporate economy that no jurisdiction should be willing to put up with. For all too long in Canada we have sat back and said it is the cost of doing business. However, it should not be the cost of doing business. We need a very clear set of laws to go after spammers, especially given the ability of spam artists to burrow into our computers, take our lists and reproduce them, or use our computers to send spam further and further afield.

The issue is that we need spam legislation. The New Democratic Party will be supporting spam legislation going to committee to ensure we have the tools to shut these operators down.

That being said, there needs to be due diligence. We need to look at this bill carefully, because it is a very large and cumbersome bill. There are a number of elements of this bill that are concerning. They really relate to how the Conservative government bungled the do-not-call registry.

We will go back to the do-not-call registry at a further point. But the idea behind the registry was great. That is how many laws are started. People phone an MP's office and say they are sick and tired of people calling them at home every day and they want something done about it. The government says, “Everyone is upset. We are going to act on it. We are going to have a do-not-call registry”.

Then we look at what happened with the do-not-call registry. The glaring gaps left millions of people who trusted in it exposed.

When there are unknown firms with cryptic names, such as “my broker office”, paying $50 so they can purchase all the numbers on that list in Toronto, we have a big problem. And when the CRTC allows companies with very dubious names to download those lists, we have a big problem.

When I am at work and I see a phone number on my BlackBerry and somebody is selling me a dodgy vacation in the Cayman Islands, I am thinking about how they got my parliamentary phone number. I think back to someone, somewhere paying $50 to get the list of all the Canadian phone numbers. That is a huge glaring problem.

Of course I could stand here and beat up on the Conservative government for completely blowing the registry and not thinking about it, but I am not going to do that. I am going to say that it meant well. Legislation is difficult. It set up a registry because it was responding to a problem. But there were gaping holes in it, and now we have a bigger problem.

The problem was that the lists were left open and all kinds of dodgy operations got access to them. Who knows where they are? They are not subject to Canadian law. They could be calling, for pennies, from anyplace around the world. We are stuck.

Our consumers are being exposed to fraudulent claims. I do not know how many times I have been told that the warranty on my car is just about done. Obviously they have never seen my Pontiac Sunfire or they would know the warranty was done on that a long, long time ago.

The other problem with the do-not-call registry is the enforcement mechanism. The government turned it over to the CRTC. The CRTC deals with just about everything under the sun. Being on the heritage committee, I am not going to beat up on the CRTC, but it can barely keep track of all the broadcast issues and the telecommunications issues.

The CRTC has the job of policing the do-not-call registry. Twenty thousand complaints a month are brought forward. As my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan put forward, Bell reviews those and decides which are the serious ones and which are not. Many of those get tossed out. I am not saying that Bell is tossing out the ones that might implicate itself, but at the end of the day there have been only 70 letters sent out calling for “corrective action”.

Of the 308 members in this House of Commons, how many have received dodgy phone calls from which this list is supposed to protect them? I bet there are 70 right here alone. Then we add our family members and people who phone our constituency offices and there are a lot more than 70 people who have had reason to complain.

For all the registry's hoopla, we have allowed millions of names to be siphoned off by fraud artists. There have been only 70 letters calling for corrective action. That is a big issue. It is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Talking about the complete failure of the phone registry brings us back to Bill C-27. There is one view that Bill C-27 might try to change the registry by saying there is an opt-in clause as opposed to an opt-out clause, that Canadians would not have to receive a message from anybody unless they have given prior consent.

This is where I have a problem with the enforceability of the bill. Requiring someone to get prior consent before they contact people, I think in the digital age is going to prove almost impossible. There might be people, who are not very active in the digital world, who do not want to be called unless they call the other people first, but the vast majority of transactions are happening without prior consent.

This is where we get into some real problems with the enforceability of the act. If we try to draw too wide a net on spammers, we are going to get caught up with a whole bunch of business transactions. Some of them are very legitimate and some are less so, but will we get to the spammers? I am concerned about this. I think we need to bring this to committee to hear from witnesses on how practical that provision would be.

If the government brings in an opting-in clause rather than an opting-out clause in this spammer's bill, then conceivably the opt-out clause for the phone registry would not be needed any more. Contrary to what the Conservative Party is telling us, on page 56, clause 86 says that sections 41.1 to 41.7 of the act would be repealed. That is the do-not-call registry.

We are being assured, after many, many questions to the Conservative ranks, that repealing the do-not-call registry is not the same as repealing the do-not-call registry. We would only repeal the do-not-call registry if it becomes law and then we decide to enact it.

We are being asked, as opposition members, to quickly push this legislation through so that once again we show we are tough on spammers. If it is in this legislation, then why not say it is in this legislation? Why not say we had a problem with the phone registry, we blew it and it is not working. The opt-out clause does not work so we are going for an opt-in clause. Put that on the table. The Conservatives did not do that. They have hidden it in the microscopic print.

That is not the way to enact legislation. Legislation is not hiding things in a bill and then calling on the opposition members to quickly vote for it to show they are supporting the government. We need to make sure this legislation will work.

The idea of multi-million dollar fines for major spam fraudsters is a perfectly reasonable solution. If we are going after the malignant spyware out there, we need serious criminal penalities. That has to be in the bill. The NDP supports that.

The problem, again, goes back to the dodgy way the phone registry played out with enforcement. Can we really expect that the CRTC, with its inability to respond to the 20,000 calls a month it got about the phone registry, is going to have the tools to go after these operators? That is the question.

I suggest that we need to look at thinning the bill down, making sure our legal teams have the clear mandate to go after the people we really need to go after, draw the net a little smaller and make sure we can do this under police powers. We are never going to get the spam cleared up until we have a way of enforcing it. At the end of the day it is very bulky, slow moving legislation that ends up being challenged in the courts. We support moving forward with this legislation, but it has to be done right.

In my time, I have seen many bills crafted in the House and passed with many nods, only to reveal a month or six months down the road that we did not see something.

For example, there was the voter registration bill. It went through once. New Democrats certainly were raising a hue and cry about problems with the bill at that time and a million rural people were disenfranchised. The bill had to be brought back a second time and there were still problems with it. We had legal experts and student organizations which said that, if we do not make the proper changes, hundreds of thousands of people will be disenfranchised and it will be subject to a court challenge. Now we have Elections Canada looking at that bill right now that had become law and it will probably be subject to a court challenge, which means it would come back for legislation again.

If we were in the private sector and did such a bad job once, twice and we were looking at it three times, everyone would get fired. Here, we just wait until it comes back to committee. I do not think that is a good enough way to do business.

On the issue of spam, of all the issues we argue about in the House of Commons, we can all agree no one likes spam. We can all agree that we want to be able to go after the fraud artists, but where we might diverge is on whether or not we rush through legislation that is not thought out.

So, we will support this going to committee. We want to see a bill that is enforceable, that hits the targets that it needs, and that it does not reproduce the debacle of the phone registry that started out as a good idea, but never delivered the goods.

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

Madam Speaker, I was talking earlier about the do-not-call list. Page 56 of Bill C-27 talks about repealing sections 41(1) to 41(7) of the act, and that has to do with the do-not-call registry. Could the member comment on the fact that we saw some pretty serious problems with enforcement with the do-not-call registry and the do-not-call list?

I mentioned the fact that the first level of complaint was Bell. If Bell determined there was a valid complaint, it would then be referred to the CRTC. The CRTC issued 70 warning letters and levied no fines in relation to the do-not-call registry, even though the ability to levy a fine was within the act.

The fines in this legislation are much more serious. However, could the member specifically comment on the requirement for enforcement and what he sees as being important aspects of that enforcement?

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak in support of Bill C-27, the electronic commerce protection act. The key reason is that for eight years I operated my own business out of my home like thousands of other Canadians. I can say from first-hand experience that spam is bad news.

High speed Internet communication by email has become the predominant communication tool worldwide. It is the greatest enabler in the information age for small business and the self-employed. It allows thousands of small-business operators and the self-employed in every province to start their businesses and operate them at a profit. That includes writers, people in public relations, journalists, photographers, engineers, lawyers, event managers, fundraisers and many other occupations.

Email and high speed Internet allow thousands of disabled persons to operate businesses and to work from home. It creates almost a level playing field in that situation for disabled persons. It is an incredibly valuable tool for the disabled to communicate with business people and their family and friends.

Parents benefit hugely from home offices and email. The Internet has been a boon to parents who choose to stay at home with infants and children, which my wife and I have done in the past. They want to work in the evenings or do their email during their children's nap time or playtime if they have infants, as does my friend in Oakville, who operates a home business and is a mother as well. She has a little one-and-a-half-year-old. She can do them simultaneously. She is connected by her notebook computer to her clients, associates and, in fact, the world.

Aside from the travel costs, the most important common denominator and resource for self-employed people in small business is their time. I would suggest that time for the self-employed and small business people is actually priceless. It is almost a currency. When someone or some organization, without any invitation or permission and with no previous business relationship, at a very little incremental cost that is too small to measure, sucks up that time by using trickery and stealth marketing to steal that time with spam, it should be stopped.

Unsolicited, unlimited junk mail trying to sell people watches and many other products of very dubious value should also be stopped. Forwarding fraudulent messages designed to dupe innocent people and cheat them out of their savings should be stopped. For example, I would expect most of the people in the House today have received an email from a prince in Nigeria who only needs a little bit of money to get out of prison and is willing to share his resources for the rest of his life. The sad part is that if enough of those emails are sent out and enough mud is thrown against the wall, somebody will respond and somebody will be duped.

The key problem is that in normal marketing and in normal business, the legitimate kind, those wishing to sell goods and services are restrained to reasonable efforts by cost. It costs money to send letters, to make phone calls, to place ads and to get the attention of consumers and other businesses. In fact, the average cost for a letter is 70 cents to a dollar. However, on the Internet, the cost per contact for spam is actually too small to measure. It is not even pennies. Technology, which is our greatest tool, is also subject to abuse.

The Internet is a precious resource. Effectively it belongs to all of us. As subscribers to telephone and Internet services, we pay a fair amount and we are allowed fair usage. Millions of Canadians rely on the telecommunications network to conduct business. They move goods across continents and the oceans. They keep industry moving to help provide thousands of jobs in thousands of businesses. We share this resource, the Internet, to our mutual benefit.

However, there are limits to this shared network. The network cannot carry an unlimited number of messages. People who have ever tried to call their mother on Mother's Day might have had a busy signal, because that happens to be the busiest day of the year on the telephone network. If they try again and again, they will finally get through. Christmas morning and New Year's Eve are similar. There is a limit to the network.

When a relatively few companies, often not owned or operated by Canadians, send out millions of unwanted and unwelcome messages, they utilize more than their fair share of the network. They use a proportion of resources they have not paid for in fairness and they slow down or stop the email messages everyone else is trying to send or receive. They rob us again of more of our time. These spam senders suffer no significant costs when they send out thousands of emails and demonstrate a wanton disregard for the time of others.

Unfortunately, they are some of the most clever and seedy people on the planet. They devise ways to interrupt our shared network and waste the time of thousands of business people. It is very difficult to put a value on that time, but it is certainly in the millions of dollars. They pitch some products that few people would ever buy. It gets worse.

Recently, my own PC network adviser, Paul Lebl, explained to me that these spammers have developed viruses or worms. The emails have very deceptive subject lines and if the wrong email is opened, the virus or worm will search the hard drive and find every email address on the hard drive and send the spam to every one of those email addresses as well. It is a very insidious practice. I view it as vandalism and it has to be deterred or stopped.

No one is saying that this legislation is going to end all spam in Canada or worldwide, but it will help us work with other countries to reduce spam worldwide. It is about improving Canada's competitiveness in the electronic marketplace as well as protecting Canadian consumers from the most dangerous types of spam. Boosting the competitiveness of our economy and protecting Canadians are two primary priorities of our Conservative government.

Since taking office a little over three years ago, our government has taken action to improve the competitiveness of Canadian companies and of our economy as a whole. Budget 2009 continued to create a competitive advantage which will drive our economy forward for years to come.

We are taking steps to enhance our traditional industries with new knowledge and to create opportunities for the development of new industries.

While our economy obviously faces significant challenges as a result of the dramatically reduced demand in the United States, the proactive initiatives of this government have lessened the blow. The good news is we are positioned to come out of this crisis faster than other countries.

Some members of the House have expressed interest in introducing new taxes and raising existing ones. Our government believes that this would be the wrong approach.

New measures taken by our government have been aimed at improving competition and not just filling government coffers or satisfying special interests.

As mentioned, this bill is about continuing to improve Canada's competitiveness. We are already leading the way in e-commerce, but our online economy is under threat from unsolicited commercial email which undermines consumer confidence and hurts productivity.

The global cost of this unsolicited email, or spam, is estimated at $100 billion a year. Spam costs Canada an estimated $3 billion annually. As has been mentioned, spam represents about 87% of the email traffic around the world at 62 trillion spam emails during that time period.

Spam is a nuisance. It undermines competitiveness and it puts Canadians at risk. Our proposed electronic commerce protection act would deter the most dangerous forms of spam, like identity theft, phishing and spyware. It would help drive spammers out of Canada and allow us to work with our international partners to pursue spammers outside the country.

As usual, our Conservative government is taking action to protect consumers and businesses. We are not just talking. We are acting. This initiative will mean a lot to individuals and to businesses. Individuals will be more confident when they choose to shop online. Businesses will be able to more effectively protect their brand and their online reputation while improving their productivity.

As well as being consistently committed to competitiveness, our Conservative government has always believed in acting when people break the rules. This bill is accompanied by significant and tangible penalties. Offences carry fines of up to $1 million for individuals and $10 million for businesses. Spammers beware.

There are a number of other aspects of this issue which I want to quickly highlight before I conclude.

First, the bill covers text messaging or cellphone spam. The provisions in the bill are not limited to certain types of technology. They target all spam and will continue to be relevant as technology evolves.

Second, this will not affect legitimate or responsible businesses that contact customers or potential customers who have signalled their desire to be contacted.

Third, this approach has been implemented in many other countries with substantial success. Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. have passed strong domestic laws combatting spam, similar to this one. In Australia, for example, the spam act significantly reduced the country's proportion of global spam. Some Australian spammers shut down altogether.

Unfortunately, the bill would not eliminate spam altogether, but it would serve to deter the most dangerous, destructive and deceptive forms of spam, especially those that facilitate other criminal activities, like identity theft.

Finally, the bill would deliver on a commitment made in our 2008 election platform, I am proud to say. That platform stated:

A re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper will introduce legislation to prohibit the use of spam (unsolicited commercial email) to collect personal information under false pretences and to engage in criminal conduct. The new law will reduce dangerous, destructive and deceptive email and web site practices, and will establish new fines for those who break the law.

We made a commitment, and we are getting the job done. We are improving competitiveness and we are protecting Canadians.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to correct a piece of information the member has put out there.

When I was talking about the do-not-call list, I was specifically talking about Bill C-27. I could refer the member to page 56 of the bill, and the clause relating to sections 41.1 to 41.7, which specifically relate to the do-not-call registry. Therefore, I was talking about the current piece of legislation.

When the member talks about what the NDP will do around the passage of this bill, it is incumbent upon members of this House to ensure that when they pass legislation, it actually is going to do the job that it purports to do. Again I just need to reference the do-not-call registry to demonstrate how we now have another bill having to deal with a past mistake. That is a waste of this House's time. We are now having to talk about the do-not-call registry once again because we did not get it right the first time. New Democrats will ensure that they study this bill very carefully to make sure that it is going to do the job it is supposed to do.

I also want to go back to the member's statement about businesses getting their customers' consent, and I specifically did say that. What I said was that the bill requires all senders to obtain express consent before sending commercial electronic messages. That is an important aspect of this bill and we would support getting permission to receive mail from a business.

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

Madam Speaker, I have a couple of key points from the background information that was provided on the bill. It reads:

The bill also addresses the legislative recommendations of the Task Force on Spam, which brought together industry, consumers and academic experts to design a comprehensive package of measures to combat threats to the online economy.

The intention of the proposed legislation is to deter the most dangerous and damaging forms of spam from occurring in Canada and to help drive spammers out of Canada.

This bill proposes a private right of action, modelled on U.S. legislation, which would allow businesses and consumers to take civil action against anyone who violates the ECPA. The proposed ECPA's technology-neutral approach allows all forms of commercial electronic messages to be treated the same way. This means that the proposed bill would also address unsolicited text messages, or “cellphone spam”, as a form of “unsolicited commercial electronic message”.

The bill would establish a clear regulatory enforcement regime consistent with international best practices and a multi-faceted approach to enforcement that protects consumers and empowers the private sector to take action against spammers.

An important proponent of the proposed ECPA is the enforcement regime whereby the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner would be given the authority to share the information and evidence with their counterparts who enforce similar laws internationally....

It goes on to talk about the administrative monetary penalties of up to $1 million for individuals and $10 million in all other cases. It talks about the CRTC role and the role of the Privacy Commissioner.

I know that many of the people listening to this debate know what spam is but I want to give a definition because, like anything else, spam means one thing to one person and something else to another. Spam is identified as the abuse of electronic messaging systems, including most broadcast mediums' digital delivery systems, to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term applies to similar abuses in other media instant messaging: news net news groups spam, web search engine spam, spam and blogs, wikispam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions and the file sharing network.

Spamming remains economically viable because advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, and it is difficult to hold centres accountable for their mass mailing. Because the barrier to entry is so low, spammers are numerous and the volume of unsolicited mail has become very high.

The costs, such as lost productivity and fraud, are borne by the public and by Internet service providers, which have been forced to add extra capacity to cope with the deluge. Spamming is widely reviled and has been the subject of legislation in many jurisdictions.

I want to talk briefly about the costs. There are certainly costs to business when we talk about the filters and all the mechanisms that they need to put in place in order to prevent spam from getting into their systems, whether it is their cell phone systems or their Internet or email systems.

There is also the cost to workers. Many times when we are talking about businesses in the House, we are often talking about productivity and efficiency. In some of the previous work I have done, when we talked to businesses about how to improve productivity and efficiency, we often looked at time management techniques. One of the statistics that came from looking at time management techniques was that every time people were interrupted at a task, it would take them seven minutes to get back to the level where they left off.

Every time workers have their systems infiltrated by spam, we see a direct impact on the productivity of that company. Even if workers set time aside to look at their email, when they are dealing with junk email, it prevents them from dealing with the other activities before them. We know it takes a significant amount of time to get back to the place they left off. Therefore, there is a direct impact on worker productivity.

Many of us in the House have experienced spam on what should be a fairly highly protected system. It is an annoyance, a cost factor and extremely disruptive.

Some citizens are more vulnerable to spam. Fraud is involved, both in terms of stealing identity and in terms of having vulnerable people being hooked into purchasing goods and services that they do not need and which are often not of the quality and substance one would expect.

Therefore, there is a very real cost to businesses, to consumers and to the average citizen.

The important thing to point out about this legislation is that Canada is the only G7 country without anti-spam legislation. We often like to tout ourselves as being a proactive and progressive country and here we are lagging seriously behind. In fact, Canada ranked fifth worldwide as a source of web-based email spam, trailing only Iran, Nigeria, Kenya and Israel. It is a pretty sad track record to say that we are one of the countries that is a haven for spammers. Our track record is so bad that we are considered almost lawless when it comes to preventing spam.

Part of what we know about this is that companies anxious to target Canadian-based spammers have been forced to turn to other countries to do the job because we do not have legislation. They actually need to go to international law enforcement agencies that look at criminal spam activities. However, they have difficult enforcing any legislation because the Canadian authorities lack the requisite investigatory powers.

Michael Geist said:

The fact that organizations are forced to use U.S. courts and laws to deal with Canadian spammers points to an inconvenient truth -- Canadian anti-spam laws are woefully inadequate and we are rapidly emerging as a haven for spammers eager to exploit the weak legal framework.

We can see that there is sufficient information out there to say that Canada needs to take action and it is long past due.

In an article from December 16, 2008, CBC News, it says:

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...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.

I talked earlier about the cost to business, the cost to workers and the cost to citizens. When we look at that volume, it is shocking. Again, Canada has known about this problem for many years and it is only now that we are getting legislation.

I want to talk briefly about some of the key components of the legislation. There are three primary prohibitions. This bill would require all senders to obtain express consent before sending commercial electronic messages, including email, instant messages and so on, and to include contact and unsubscribed information. It would also require provisions designed to counter phishing, spyware and botnets used to send spam.

Various sections deal with this but I want to deal with three requirements: the form, consent and jurisdiction. The law requires that the identification of the person sending the message, as well as on whose behalf it is sent is included, contact information of the sender, because I think many of us have ended up with messages that we have no idea who is behind the sending, and an unsubscribe mechanism. The unsubscribe mechanism must allow for an easy opt-out by email or hyperlink that remains valid for at least 60 days after the message is sent. The sender has 10 days to comply with the unsubscribe request, and currently we know that spammers use the unsubscribe button to actually send more spam. If this is truly enforced, this unsubscribe mechanism, it will actually cut off some of the junk email that we are currently getting.

I want to touch briefly on the enforcement provisions. What we know is that the enforcement provisions do not have any real teeth. We can put all the fines we want in the act, but if we do not have the resources and the tools to commit to enforcement, they are meaningless.

I want to briefly talk about the do-not-call list because some changes to that legislation are embedded in Bill C-27.

In an article by Geist, he says:

Government Quietly Lays Groundwork For Overhaul of Do-Not-Call List....

We know in this House that there have been some serious problems with the do-not-call list. When I talked earlier about the need to have this bill go to committee, what we want to do is ensure the bill accurately deals with the problem that is before this House. We saw this with the do-not-call legislation and with the voter identification where a bill was put before the House but the government did not get it right and it had to make amendments to the bills, which was time-consuming and costly.

Therefore, it is very important that the bill comes before the committee and has a full and extensive review to make sure that the bill is actually going to deal with the spam problem.

In Geist's article, he said:

Four years after the National Task on Spam unanimously recommended that the Canadian government introduce anti-spam legislation...the Government took action by tabling Bill C-27....

While the introduction of anti-spam legislation is 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.

It is interesting that it was buried at the end of the bill and not included in any briefing documents, because what it actually says is, “Oops, we blew that initial piece of legislation”.

He continued:

The proposed approach is very complicated, but boils down to the government repealing the provisions that establish and govern the do-not-call list. In its place, the ECPA approach of requiring an opt-in would apply, meaning that Canadians would no longer need to register their phone numbers on a do-not-call list. Instead, the presumption would be that telemarkets could not call without prior consent. The ECPA would also bring with it stronger penalties (up to $10 million) and fewer exceptions.

Although the do-not-call list is less than a year old, change cannot come soon enough. It faced severe criticism earlier this year when it was reported that out-of-country telemarketers, who are out of the regulatory reach of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, were accessing the list and making unwanted calls to Canadians. With more than six million numbers now registered on the list, the prospect of do-not-call registration leading to more calls rather than less instantly became a disturbing reality for millions of Canadians.

What that is talking about is people who registered their numbers, and then telemarketers outside of the country accessed the do-not-call list to call people. That seems like a pretty good gap in the legislation.

I hear some of my colleagues calling it a boondoggle. I would certainly say that it is a serious problem when the very legislation that is supposed to protect consumers actually results in more calls to them.

This is buried in this piece of legislation, changing the goof-up.

Geist said:

While the misuse of the do-not-call list remains a concern, a review of thousands of pages of internal government documents released under the Access to Information Act reveal that it is only the tip of the iceberg. In addition to lax list distribution policies, the enforcement side of the do-not-call list raises serious alarm bells with the majority of complaints being dismissed as invalid without CRTC investigation, the appearance of a conflict of interest in sorting through complaints, and a regulator that has been content to issue to “warnings” rather than levying the tough penalties contained in the law.

He went on to say:

The proliferation of the do-not-call list is certainly disconcerting, but [the] picture that emerges about its enforcement is even more troubling. The documents reveal that the CRTC receives over 20,000 telemarketing complaints each month, many involving the do-not-call list (some complaints may relate to other telecommunications rules that cover automated dialers or curfews).

The article goes on to talk about the fact that the initial evaluation of complaints is handled by Bell, which manages the do-not-call list rather than the CRTC. Here we have industry policing the do-not-call list and deciding whether complaints are legitimate or not. It goes on to talk about the fact that, for example, in January, Bell reported there were only 42 valid prima facie national do-not-call violations, while 3,033 national do-not-call complaints were ruled invalid. That is, in 42 out of 3,033 complaints, it was ruled by industry, Bell, that the complaints were not valid.

That does sound a little bit like the fox in the henhouse to me. So when we are talking about enforcement, as the member for Windsor West has rightly pointed out, there are some concerns about whether the enforcement mechanisms in the bill will actually be applied.

Geist goes on to say:

Complaints that survive Bell’s initial round of scrutiny go to the CRTC for further investigation. To date, the CRTC has sent out approximately 70 warning letters where it believes there are reasonable grounds to conclude that the organization is not in compliance with the do-not-call list legislation. Recipients of the letters are asked to take “corrective action” to address the concerns and warned that failure to do so could lead to penalties of up to $15,000 per violation for corporations. Notwithstanding that threat, the CRTC has yet to levy any fines.

When we have legislation that proposes a maximum penalty for individuals of $1 million, and $10 million for any other person, it sounds like pretty hefty fines. However, we need to put forward a mechanism that, first of all, allows appropriate investigation without interference by industry.

With regard to Bell, I do not know about anybody else, but I certainly receive messages from Bell. If I were to complain in regard to the do-not-call list and Bell is the investigator, I wonder what kind of independent scrutiny would be paid to that investigation.

The enforcement piece of this is critical. Canada's reputation internationally with regard to spam is in shreds. In order for us to tell the international community that we are going to walk the talk on this, we need to ensure that resources are put in place to make sure that the enforcement mechanism actually happens.

In conclusion, the New Democrats are in support of sending this bill to committee. I want to reiterate our position that it is very important that we have experts and technical witnesses who can deal with the content of this bill to ensure that Canada will actually be able to say, “Yes, we have anti-spam legislation that is going to stand up to international scrutiny, has appropriate enforcement mechanisms, and will actually protect businesses, consumers and Canadian citizens against both fraud and impact on the cost to productivity in this country.

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-27, the electronic commerce protection act, on behalf of New Democrats. We will be supporting the bill, in principle, but we feel that it is important for it to go to committee for extensive review to ensure we get it right. I will be speaking a little later about some previous legislation where we did not get it right, and, in fact, the correction is buried in this bill.

I thank the member for Windsor West for the good work he has done on this file and look forward to more comments from him when it gets to committee.

I want to talk about some key elements of the bill, why it is needed, the cost of spam to business and citizens and some other details that are in the bill that are not directly related to electronic commerce protection.

When the government came forward with this bill it said that it was about protecting the privacy and personal security concerns associated with spam, counterfeit websites and spyware. It said that spam and related online threats were a real concern to all Internet users as they can lead to the theft of personal data, such as credit card information, which is identity theft; online fraud involving counterfeit websites, phishing; the collection of personal information through illicit access to computer systems, spyware; and false or misleading representations in the online marketplace.

The proposed legislation would also treat unsolicited text messages or cellphone spam as--

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

Mr. Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise in the House, especially on a matter that affects the vast majority of people.

I am referring to Bill C-27, whose purpose is to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain fraudulent commercial practices that use email. To do this, the bill would amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act and the Personal Information Protection Act.

With all the modern means of communication at our disposal, we are constantly being solicited. This bill seems at first glance, therefore, to be a good idea. When the House of Commons passed the Telemarketing Act in 2006, a national do not call list was established to reduce telephone solicitation. People who so desire can now put their telephone number on the list, which greatly reduces telephone solicitation.

I say “reduces” because there are still regulations that allow solicitation, although the new act clearly stipulates that if a person asks not to be called any more, the company must immediately stop contacting him. In addition, companies or individuals who want to have the right to contact people must be registered on the list.

Under the act, any person or organization that is not registered or fails to comply with the regulations under the act is liable to a maximum fine of $1,500 for an individual or $15,000 for a corporation.

Initial results show that the list created in September 2008 seems to have had a major effect on solicitation.

There is a simple connection I wanted to draw with the telephone do not call list. All email users are very familiar with spam, that is to say, email sent to sell us products and offer prices and many other annoying things.

In short, I do not know whether other members have noticed, but there seems to have been a considerable increase in the amount of spam over the last few months. It makes me wonder whether companies have not just changed the way they contact consumers.

I do not know specifically whether this Bill C-27 to protect electronic commerce will have the same effect as the telephone do not call list, but it goes without saying that the vast majority of email users I know would greatly appreciate an initiative of this kind.

Bill C-27 has a number of objectives. Its main purpose is to prohibit the sending of commercial electronic messages without the prior consent of the recipient.

Another objective is to protect the integrity of data transmissions by prohibiting other practices related to the unauthorized installation of computer programs. It seems only natural we would want to avoid the use of consumers’ personal information to send spam.

Bill C-27 would therefore prohibit the collection of personal information by means of unauthorized access to computer systems and the unauthorized compiling and distribution of lists of electronic addresses.

It is hard to be against motherhood and apple pie, and we in the Bloc Québécois think that companies that want to email consumers should obtain their consent first.

This bill has some fine objectives therefore. How the act will actually be enforced, though, appears rather complicated. It seems to me upon reading it that three agencies will be involved.

The CRTC must take the necessary steps to take action against the sending of unsolicited commercial electronic messages.

At the same time, the Competition Bureau must address misleading and deceptive practices and representations online, including fraudulent emails from financial institutions.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner must also take measures against the collection of personal information via access to a computer and the unauthorized communication of lists of electronic addresses. Lastly, the Telecommunications Act will be amended by the provisions that provide the framework for this new dimension.

I know the government wants to tackle spam, and I agree that it should. Will this bill successfully prevent an American company, for instance, from sending information by email to electronic companies in Quebec and Canada? That is an important question.

I know that a number of countries have established measures like the ones proposed in Bill C-27, and they seem to be producing positive results. In Australia, the United States and Great Britain, the various pieces of legislation to combat spam seem to be making a real difference.

Those countries probably also have a mechanism to reduce the amount of spam coming from other countries.

At first glance, Bill C-27 deserves to be studied further in committee. Establishing measures that will help prevent as much spam as possible from being sent by people who use false representation, prohibited software or who exchange information about email addresses appears to be a good idea.

Of course, we would like to examine the bill's impact and application more carefully with witnesses. We are in favour of the principle of this bill, but we would like it to go to committee so we can hear from and consult with witnesses, and see if Bill C-27 would really meet needs. We would also like to know if it will properly address the spam that consumers are currently receiving.

The Bloc Québécois supports the principle of Bill C-27. It appears to respond to a problem. Unsolicited commercial electronic messages are becoming a serious social and economic problem that undermines the personal and commercial productivity of Quebeckers.

Spam is a real nuisance. It damages computers and networks, contributes to deceptive marketing scams, and invades people's privacy. Spam directly threatens the viability of the Internet as an effective means of communication. The Internet is supposed to be an effective means of communication but clogging it up with spam decreases its effectiveness. It undermines consumer confidence in legitimate e-businesses and hinders electronic transactions.

This is a constantly evolving problem, and the government has finally presented a bill four years after setting up a spam task force. That bill is C-27, 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 account would be prohibited.

The only circumstances under which 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.

Here are some of the other prohibitions: 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.

Bill C-27 suggests a number of administrative recourses, such as a fine of up to $1 million for an individual and $10 million in other cases. The CRTC would be responsible for investigating all complaints and must have the appropriate powers to do so.

Bill C-27 also proposes the provision of a private right of action that would enable companies and individuals to institute proceedings against any wrongdoer, which is similar to a law that has been passed in the U.S. .

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 an international organization.

Canada is not the only country to legislate the protection of electronic commerce. As mentioned earlier, other countries have adopted legislation in this regard. I heard one of my colleagues say that Canada is lagging behind in terms of introducing spam legislation.

I also looked at one country among others, France, which introduced a law called “law to support confidence in the digital economy“. This law was adopted in June 2004, and had a six-month transition period. Apart from specific rules set out in the postal and electronic communications code as well as the consumer code, France is required to ensure that solicitations by email, no matter their nature—business, charitable, political, religious, or membership, for example—are subject to personal information protection legislation.

Bill C-27 is not unique when we look at what other countries are doing. The Bloc Québécois is in favour of the principle of this bill. It meets several objectives that I mentioned earlier and that I would like to summarize. It will prohibit unsolicited emails from a business, protect the integrity of data transmitted by prohibiting practices related to the unauthorized installation of computer programs, prohibit the collection of personal information by accessing computers without the consent of the individuals involved and prohibit the unauthorized compiling or distribution of electronic address lists.

I will close my statement by repeating that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of the principle of Bill C-27, which seeks to assign responsibilities to three organizations we are familiar with and which will regulate email in order to have a much more efficient system of Internet communication.

The proposed legislation is interesting. We are prepared to support it, in principle, so that the bill can be studied in committee.

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 second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the questions and the suggestion from my hon. colleague, the House leader for the official opposition.

For today and tomorrow, we will continue debate on Bill C-27, the anti-spam bill, which is at second reading. If we complete Bill C-27, it is my intention to call Bill C-20, the nuclear liability bill and Bill C-8, the matrimonial real property bill. All of these bills are at second reading.

On Monday, we will begin debate at the second reading stage of Bill C-29, the agricultural loans bill, to which the member just referred. Once that bill is completed, we will continue with the unfinished business that I mentioned earlier plus Bill C-30, the Senate ethics bill.

It is my intention to give top priority to any legislation that is reported back from committee next week.

Finally, in response to my colleague's question about committee of the whole, I would like to designate Thursday, May 14 as the evening the estimates of the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada are considered in committee of the whole pursuant to Standing Order 81(4).

I will be announcing the date of committee of the whole study of the estimates of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans at a later date.

As to the member's suggestion about debating all stages and moving Bill C-29, which is so important for our agricultural producers heading into the spring planting season, I would note that one of the reasons we are not debating it today is because there was a request from his critic, the member for Malpeque, who will be returning to the House on Monday. Therefore, we have scheduled that for Monday.

In trying to continue in our spirit of working together with all opposition members, I would certainly be open to his suggestion. I know the Minister of Agriculture would be eager to work with the three opposition parties to try and move Bill C-29 through the House at all stages and get it down the hall to the other place as quickly as possible.

Electronic Commerce Protection Act

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Madam Speaker, when I first introduced legislation back in 2003, I was the first member of Parliament to do so and the first member of Parliament from a Liberal party that took this issue very seriously.

I am glad to see my hon. colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry, has joined with us after many years of effort. It was a very tough thing over the years to try and manage 15 or 16 different files. I am very pleased to say that I know the parliamentary secretary is doing due diligence on that committee, a committee on which I am very proud of having worked over the years. Many of the issues that we raised many years ago are now starting to bear fruit.

I am happy to see the government is finally taking action on spam, what all of us will know is unsolicited electronic mail. Many of us who have computers, all know how dangerous and how much of a problem this is for both Canadian consumers and businesses.

In 2003 it was estimated that spam cost the economy over $27 billion worldwide. Since then, the problem has only grown worse. I am sure there is more updated information which the parliamentary secretary and others may be able to illustrate. However, to say the least, we are now looking at a far more serious problem, which hopefully will be corrected by the bill, as it relates to issues such as identity theft, phishing and spyware, all of which give concern to Canadians and to the world. We have to deal with this in legislation both locally and internationally.

In the early 2000s, the Liberal Party recognized the problem that spam created. In 2003 I tabled a private member's bill to make spam illegal. Unfortunately, the bill never made it to second reading. However, on the strength of Bill C-460, introduced in mid-2003 in the 37th Parliament, the minister of industry struck a committee to examine the issue of spam and to report to the minister about how the government could most effectively stop this obvious and serious, growing problem.

That report entitled “Stopping Spam: Creating a Stronger, Safer Internet” was released in May of 2005. The report was created by a committee of 10 experts on information technology and Internet law. The task force also worked with dozens of stakeholders in the technology industry to develop sound proposals and to look at and observe best practices at the time.

The primary recommendations of the task force were that the government legislate prohibitions on the following: the sending of unsolicited email; the use of false or misleading statements that disguise the origin and the true intent of the email; the installing of unauthorized programs such as spyware; and the unauthorized collection of personal information and email addresses, particularly by using fake websites, through the selling of lists where those on the list were not told the list would be sold to another third, unknown party.

The official opposition supports the bill as it follows through on the recommendations of the committee, which was created by the Liberal government. However, much more remains ahead of us and much more needs to be done.

The committee highlighted the need for the government to play a central role in coordinating the actions of both government and the private sector. All actors agree that spam needs to be stopped. Internet service providers, web hosts and online marketing agencies need a set of best practices for email solicitation. The government must work, in coordination with industry partners, to establish a strong code of practice that prevents the proliferation of electronic emails that are unsolicited, unwanted and constitute spam.

These days spam is no longer a problem exclusive to email. In 2004 and 2005, when the committee was writing the report, spam was starting to move to other electronic platforms. Today Canadians must contend with cellphone spam, either by means of text message or by something we may not all be familiar with, robo calling.

It is important that the act recognize the facts and is technologically neutral, encompassing all forms of commercial electronic communication. I believe the legislation must meet that test to ensure there is proper, effective and adaptable application to current, existing and future modalities that may be able to circumvent not only technologies to prevent and to protect consumers in business, but also to remain faithful to the act.

This is why I hope the act can be revisited on a yearly basis as technology evolves. It is something the Liberal Party will look to see the government amend or to look at in committee.

Moreover, the issue of text message spam is being aggravated obviously by yet another announcement of a major cellular service provider over the last year to start charging for received text messages.

There has been plenty of discussion among members of Parliament. It is obvious to everyone that it is unfair, to say the least, that consumers are charged for something they had no choice whatsoever in receiving. Spam is not just a Canadian problem, as I indicated earlier. Given the borderless nature of the Internet, it means that spam can originate from anywhere and be delivered to anywhere.

I strongly point out that the legislation takes measures within Canada. There has to be, obviously, an attempt to work internationally with our other partners so that we can also go after those companies and those organizations that are doing this remotely from other countries that do not have the same level of proposed enforcement or legislation. As a result, because of the international nature of this problem, any government that is serious about combatting spam must be willing to engage other governments around the world in an international strategy to reduce this ongoing problem.

The government's ability to combat spam is not simply about legislation. I am asking, and I am hoping, and my party calls on the government to show its concern by raising this internationally at all international fora and working with other governments to produce a coordinated international anti-spam and anti-counterfeit strategy. The effectiveness of this law will be measured by the government's commitment to enforcement.

I take the comments that have already been raised in the parliamentary secretary's presentation of Bill C-27, that we have to ensure there is adequate support for enforcement of the legislation, which is being complimented and certainly being recommended here.

That is tall order. There is no point in putting forth legislation if there is a reasonable chance that the legislation will not have the intended impact of deterring, stopping, correcting and preventing what is continuously more than just a nuisance, but a very costly one at that.

Of course, policing Internet traffic is incredibly difficult because any Internet crime crosses jurisdictions and borders, both provincial and federal. This is why the attempt to control or to stop spam in the report called on the government to create a central office that would coordinate anti-spam activities. I am looking at the parliamentary secretary, hoping that in fact he will move diligently on that if speedy passage is indeed given to this piece of legislation.

According to the minister, Industry Canada is being designated the official coordinating body. I would like to ask the government what kind of resources Industry Canada is being given to coordinate the three other agencies that the parliamentary secretary has referred to that have responsibilities under this act, those being the Privacy Commissioner, the CRTC and the Competition Bureau, as well as, of course, the RCMP.

What resources can we see coming from the government with respect to these offices so that we can in fact see spam corrected in this country?

I realize that question may come back to me, but it is certainly a question that I would think the government will have to answer time and again here to ensure that we have a correct and appropriate measure.

It is extremely important that, everywhere in Canada, we can have confidence in the legislation proposed by the government. I expect that the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology will deal quickly with the issue before us. We have been waiting for a bill for six years. I had hoped that my bill in 2003 would be adopted. It was deserving; but that was not the case.

Central to this issue, if the government passes legislation and walks away from the issue, all these initiatives that are proposed, well-intended, well-researched and up-to-date, will indeed fall. I believe that legislation, to be correctly brought forward, must also ensure that we have proper resources and effective coordination so that it is understood how this is going to take place. The more rapid response we can have to correct this problem, I think, will ensure that those who see Canada as an opportunity, as a target, will find another place. But we also want to make sure that other place is blocked. We simply want to put an end, where possible, to these practices, which have as their origins and as their sense the undermining of the credibility and integrity of communicating and the effectiveness of legitimate use of the Internet, which belongs to us all.

I was here in 1993 and 1994 when the industry minister at the time, Mr. John Manley, talked about the great opportunities of the Internet as the superhighway, as we used to call it at the time, because it was the wonderful dawning of new age.

Unfortunately, that superhighway has become badly clogged, to the point where I think it is fair to say that there have been serious traffic jams, if not serious accidents, along the way. Therefore, this legislation is timely, it is necessary, and I hope it has a reasonable opportunity to in fact pass.

The government must follow up on the legislation with real action and real enforcement resources. It must actively engage all partners everywhere and industry internationally. It must continue the consultation process and develop longer term opportunities to combat spam. So I ask the government what plans it has, moving forward, to engage industry partners in building strong codes of this practice.

We will have to ensure that it is not just based on a blue-ribbon panel that was struck some years ago but that in fact we have an ongoing ability to ensure that partners, stakeholders and consumers, those who have been tremendously affected by this, will be able to benchmark and give us feedback as to how effective this legislation will be, particularly from the point of enforcement.

What plan does the government have to work with our international partners in building a strong international effort to combat spam? Spam can be incredibly destructive. Besides consuming time and bandwidth, spam is a delivery vehicle for malware, programs that access one's computer without authorization and can do a number of nasty things. Malware includes viruses and spyware, which attack the individual user. However, some of these programs turn the user's computer into a zombie on a botnet, which then can be used to attack major websites on the Internet.

This is something that we could not have contemplated three, four or five years ago, but it is currently taking place. Many consumers and many constituents have talked to me about this and have talked to other members of the House. We need to ensure that we have a pragmatic policy, a pragmatic document that is capable of changing with changing times as Internet and electronic information becomes more sophisticated.

All these attacks have serious economic impacts when websites like eBay or Google are brought down. Even for a few hours, billions of dollars are lost. Spyware can be used for identity theft, which is a constantly growing threat in the Internet age.

I do not need to say that even our own electronic system here in the House of Commons has been subjected to several attacks over the past several months. These have caused enormous difficulty for many of us as we communicate. I notice some members of Parliament sporting a BlackBerry, and others, a computer. It is important that we get the platform, or the framework, of this legislation correct.

I call upon all members to support the bill at second reading so it can go to committee. However, I have serious concerns about the will or the interest of the government in enforcing these rules and to work co-operatively with other stakeholders and with other governments.

Madam Speaker, I will end there but I am eager to hear the comments and questions of my colleagues.

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to begin second reading of Bill C-27, the electronic commerce protection act. This is a bill to protect and promote the Canadian economy to allow electronic commerce to reach its full potential and to increase confidence in the e-economy.

We need to take strong steps to protect the integrity of the electronic marketplace by reducing the harmful effects of threats to the online economy. The Internet has emerged as a significant medium for the conduct of commerce and communications, both in Canada and around the world. An efficient and dynamic electronic marketplace can boost the competitiveness of an economy.

In the past decade, online commerce and e-business has continued its rapid growth in Canada and around the world. In fact, Canada has become one of the most connected countries in the world and Canadians are avid users of the Internet, but there are some areas of Internet use where we should not be proud of our distinction. When measured by the percentage of spam that originates in a particular country, Canada stands in fourth place worldwide, behind Russia and just ahead of Brazil. Some 4.7% of the world's spam originates in Canada.

All hon. members are familiar with spam. It is unsolicited electronic commercial messages. Most of us have become accustomed to turning on our computers and finding the in-baskets of our email cluttered with these unwanted messages. Some of them are just a nuisance, but many of them are much more harmful. Some of them are fraudulent such as the Nigerian bank account scam. Some spam is used to invade privacy, including phishing. These are emails that lure recipients into providing personal information.

Spam is used to infect computers with malware, designed to gain control over a computer, communications device, or network. Malware is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Sometimes it connects infected computers so that they become part of a botnet and their processing power and bandwidth are made available to others. Botnets are often used to send out massive amounts of spam.

The issues surrounding spam are more than a simple nuisance. They deter consumers from participating in the online marketplace. Malware represents some of the most harmful aspects of spam. But even in the apparently least harmful, the unsolicited email that gets dumped into our in-baskets urging us to buy mail order drugs, or show up at some New York City nightclub, even these nuisance messages exact a toll on the economy.

Spam represents about 87% of email traffic around the world. It is estimated that last year a total of 62 trillion spam emails were sent.

In June 2007, Ipsos Reid found that Canadians received an average of 130 spam messages each week. This is up 51% from the previous year. In April 2008 an EKOS survey showed 72% of Canadians considered spam a major problem. In spring 2008 Phoenix surveyed Canadian CEOs and senior executives, and found that 80% considered spam to be a problem for their company; 21% considered it to be a big problem. Their greatest concern was wasted time and reduced productivity. More than two-thirds believed that the Government of Canada should bring in anti-spam legislation.

There are ways to combat spam. Most Internet service providers have put up filters to try to screen out spam. The filters tie up their resources and their bandwidth, but spam manages to get through to consumers and businesses nonetheless.

Technology represents part of the solution, but it is not the whole solution. Other countries have found that one of the most effective ways to combat spam is through effective anti-spam legislation. Take the example of Australia. A few years ago, like Canada, it was on the top 10 list of countries where spam originated. After introducing anti-spam legislation in 2003, and with the help of a carefully crafted public awareness campaign, Australia dropped off the top 10 list by 2005. Anti-spam legislation works.

Canada represents the only G8 country and one of only four OECD countries without anti-spam legislation. It is time that we joined with our key global partners, including the U.S., the U.K. and Australia in passing strong domestic laws to combat spam and related threats.

The bill before us will reduce the burden of spam on Canadian businesses and the risks to individual Canadians. Our goal is to ensure continued confidence in electronic commerce by addressing the personal privacy and security concerns that surround Internet spam and related threats.

The foundation of the bill before us is to create laws based on the federal trade and commerce power. The bill proposes a scheme of regulation designed to discourage forms of commercial practices which are detrimental to the economy.

The bill proposes an opt-in approach for all forms of unsolicited commercial electronic messages without a pre-existing business relationship or consent. It would introduce a regime that would follow the money. This would ensure that anyone who benefits commercially from the spam would be held as equally responsible as the person who sent the spam.

At the same time, I want to assure hon. members that businesses that use email to market their products to Canadians would be able to do so within the parameters of the ECPA.

The regime would allow for email marketing based on a consumer opt-in approach long practised by the Canadian Marketing Association and reflected in its code of conduct. Businesses will need to get consent prior to sending commercial emails or have a pre-existing business relationship with the customer.

The bill before us provides two different kinds of remedy to eliminate spam and related online threats. One is a regulatory approach. The other involves actions that can be taken by individuals and businesses. Let me describe each to the House.

On the one hand, we have the regulatory approach in which the enforcement agencies would be the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Privacy Commissioner. The CRTC would be able to investigate and take action against the sending of unsolicited commercial electronic messages, installation of computer programs, and the altering of Internet addresses without consent.

The CRTC would be able to take action on these matters in a manner that will be technology neutral. The bill prohibits certain spam-related activities regardless of the network technology employed for its distribution. However, it does not include voice telemarketing as this is already regulated by the CRTC under the do-not-call regime. We see no need to merge the spam and the do-not-call provisions at this time. The Competition Bureau would be responsible for those aspects of spam that relate to unfair and deceptive marketing practices, including false headers and website content.

Under the bill before us, both the CRTC and the Competition Bureau would be able to impose administrative monetary penalties, or AMPs, to those who violate the act. The AMPs would be substantial. This law will have teeth. The amounts of the penalties would not exceed $1 million for individuals and $10 million in all other cases. In other words, the penalties would amount to much more than simply a cost of doing business. They would disrupt the spam business model, making it less profitable to continue their operations in Canada.

The third agency in the regulatory approach is the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, which would address the misuse of personal information. This would include specific provisions added by amendments to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. This would deal with the electronic compiling or supplying of lists of personal electronic addresses without consent.

Here are three regulatory agencies that would use their respective mandates to combat spam and related online threats: the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Privacy Commissioner. Just as important, the bill before us would give these bodies the ability to share evidence and information with one another, as well as with counterparts in other countries. This will help us pursue violators beyond our borders.

Consistent with this bill, we would establish a spam reporting centre which would monitor the legislation's effectiveness through trend analysis and metrics. It would also manage the public awareness campaign that would build awareness of the new act and ensure its success.

I have been describing the first of two remedies that this bill would create to help combat spam and related online threats. It would provide tools to government regulatory agencies. The second remedy involves the power of each of us as citizens, consumers and businesses to pursue remedies against spammers.

The bill before us would provide a private right of action that would allow consumers and businesses to take civil action against anyone who violates the act. This remedy has been very effective in the United States and it is one example of how we have taken best practices from around the world and incorporated them into this bill.

Under the private right of action provisions, Internet service providers would be able to take action against spammers who use their networks without the threat of subsequent legal action from the spammers. Spammers should be aware that this bill would provide significant penalties for those who send or benefit from spam. The CRTC will be going after them, the Competition Bureau will be going after them, and the Privacy Commissioner will be going after them. Individual consumers and businesses who have been affected will be going after them and network users and providers will be going after them.

The proposed legislation will not eliminate spam altogether, but very soon there will be no place left in Canada for spammers to hide. That is how we will reduce spam. That is how we will reduce the cost that spam inflicts on individuals, businesses and the economy in general. That is how we will uphold the integrity of the online marketplace and, by the same token, promote the adaptability and flexibility of the Canadian economy.

Anti-spam legislation has been long overdue in our country. It has been four years since the release of the report on the task force on spam. One of the report's recommendations was strong anti-spam legislation.

One of the unforeseen benefits of the delay in bringing forward legislation is that we have been able to design the bill based on best practices in other countries. However, over the years in which we have looked at other countries' experience, several parliamentarians have been outspoken in championing the cause of anti-spam legislation.

There have been private members' bills introduced both in the House of Commons and in the other place. The champions have come from various political parties. No party in this Parliament has a monopoly on the issue of anti-spam and for that reason, I am confident that we will be able to secure swift passage of this bill.

There are two individuals in particular whom I want to acknowledge as performing outstanding service in bringing forward measures to combat spam and related online threats. Both of them have enjoyed very distinguished careers in the other place. One is Senator Donald Oliver, whose proposed bills in the other place helped to set the tone for the creation of the task force on spam. The other is Senator Goldstein, who introduced Bill S-220, an act respecting commercial and electronic messages, in February. This was the third such bill that the senator introduced in the other place. He has been a champion of anti-spam legislation for several years. I want to thank the senator for his co-operation and goodwill and I want to assure him that we will continue to promote the bill as a high priority in our legislative agenda.

Senator Goldstein is set to retire this month. I believe I speak for all members of the House when I thank him for his years of conscientious service to Canada and wish him many happy years of retirement.

It is with the spirit of crusaders, such as Senator Goldstein and Senator Oliver in mind, that I ask all members to join me in supporting quick passage of the bill.

[Josée Verner, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

moved 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 second time and referred to a committee.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Minister of Industry]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to be with you this afternoon and to come to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology to discuss the 2009-10 main estimates.

As you noted, I have my senior officials here with me. To my left is Richard Dicerni, the deputy minister. To my right is Paul Boothe, the senior associate deputy minister, and behind me we have Kevin Lindsey, the chief financial officer, and Ron Parker, the senior assistant deputy minister for the industry sector.

At our meeting in February, I began my address by outlining the rapid deterioration of the global economy. We don't yet know how long the recession will last, but we do know that one day there will a recovery.

The challenge for the industry portfolio is to help ensure that we weather the current economic storm and set policies and programs in place to prepare Canada to be more competitive than ever whenever we return to economic good times.

As we discussed in February, Canada faces the challenges with sure footing on some very solid foundations. We've got the strongest banking sector in the world, we have paid down a significant amount of federal debt in years gone by, our fiscal structure remains sound, we have dramatically reduced taxes in the last four budgets, the private sector enjoys one of the most innovative tax credit systems in the world, and we have set the conditions to make Canada an attractive place to invest.

We've had a long-term strategy in place since 2006. Advantage Canada, as it's known, was designed during a period of economic expansion, to be sure, but it has proven to be a good strategy for the downturn as well. When the Minister of Finance introduced Canada's economic action plan this past February, we built upon these advantages.

They include a fiscal advantage. Let me say that in sharp contrast to many other OECD countries, Canada had been reducing debt and carefully managing spending before the recession hit. This gives us room to put in place measures to support the economy without putting our long-term fiscal position at risk.

We have a tax advantage. Budget 2009 proposes over $20 billion in new tax relief over 2008-09. Since 2006 we have increased total relief for individuals, families, and businesses to about $220 billion over five fiscal years.

We have an infrastructure advantage. Even before the downturn, we had been investing more in infrastructure than at any other time in the past half century. The economic action plan accelerates and expands these investments with almost $12 billion in new infrastructure stimulus funding over the next two years. These investments will put shovels in the ground today. They will put paycheques in worker's pockets today and put food on the family table. They will also build infrastructure that will improve our competitiveness and quality of life for decades to come.

There is the entrepreneurial advantage. We have taken significant steps to cut red tape. In the January budget, we took further measures by proposing to establish a Canadian securities regulator and to work with the provinces to amend the agreement on internal trade.

Finally, there is the knowledge advantage. Our goal there was to create the best educated, most skilled, and most flexible workforce in the world.

Mr. Chairman, the economic action plan launches the Canada skills and transition strategy to help Canadians weather the economic storm. We have also made significant investments in our S and T strategy, which you heard about in question period today. I will seek to elaborate on those in just a few minutes.

The Advantage Canada long-term strategy is taking hold. It is proving its worth during the recession, and we will stick to the strategy simply because it is working. It will help us get through the downturn and prepare for a more competitive economy down the road.

Mr. Chairman, when I met with this committee in February, I talked about S and T, manufacturing, and small business development. I'm pleased to have this opportunity to update the committee on these files and to talk about some of the other issues that arise from the 2009-10 main estimates.

S and T is an integral part of our strategy to build Canada's knowledge advantage. We will build a competitive advantage for Canada based on excellence in S and T. Investing in S and T is crucial for developing highly skilled people and improving the long-term competitiveness of Canadian firms.

In the previous three budgets, the Government of Canada provided over $2 billion in new funding for S and T. In Canada's economic action plan of this year, we are investing more than $5.1 billion in new funding towards science and technology initiatives. This represents one of the single largest federal investments in S and T today.

Let me remind the committee of just a few of those measures. In March we announced a $2 billion investment in the new knowledge infrastructure program. This will support infrastructure enhancement at secondary institutions, colleges, and universities across the country. The presidents of the colleges and universities have told us that this was their top priority. These investments create jobs in the short term, but they also provide the infrastructure that universities and colleges require for years to come.

We are investing $750 million in the Canada Foundation for Innovation in support for equipment and facilities, and another $250 million over two years to undertake an accelerated investment program to address deferred maintenance at federal laboratories.

The economic action plan also commits $110 million over three years to the Canadian Space Agency to support research and development in terrestrial prototypes for space robotic vehicles. Canada is and should remain a global leader in this technology, Mr. Chairman.

The Canadarm became a source of national pride--we know that--and Dextre advanced Canada's reputation as a robotics leader. We developed the technology to service satellites while they're still in orbit. With the investment in the Canadian Space Agency, we will protect Canada's heritage and leadership in robotics and move on to the next phases of the technology. We want to remain at the forefront of space robotics with projects such as the Mars Lander and the lunar rover. These technologies have many applications closer to home as well. The country that is the leader in building space robotic vehicles will also be the country at the forefront of such technologies as electric cars and robotics used in the mining industry.

Canada's economic action plan also provides $200 million over two years to the National Research Council industrial research assistance program, or IRAP, as it's known. Members of this committee are well aware that IRAP has been a very popular program for the NRC. The budget provides $170 million to double IRAP's contribution funding and $30 million to help companies hire over 1,000 new post-secondary graduates in business and science. Once again, Mr. Chairman, here is a program that will provide 1,000 new jobs in the short term. These jobs will help businesses develop competitiveness and skills that will help them in the years to come, as well.

The budget provides $87.5 million over three years to temporarily expand the Canada graduate scholarships program. An additional 2,000 master's students and 500 doctoral students will be able to advance their studies, deepen their skills, and better prepare to capitalize on the opportunities ahead.

Mr. Chairman, our S and T investments covered in these estimates also include $50 million for the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, Ontario. This institute will support the construction and establishment of a new, world-class facility. The investments also provide $5 million to help establish the Ivey Centre for Health Innovation and Leadership at the University of Western Ontario. And they supply $3.5 million over two years to the Networks of Centres of Excellence so they can offer an additional 600 graduate internships through the industrial research and development internship program.

Our S and T investments also include up to $85 million over two years to maintain or upgrade key, existing Arctic research facilities. These investments will ensure that a strong research infrastructure network is in place to support Canada's new high Arctic research station.

In all these examples, Mr. Chairman, we're making investments in a way that stimulates the local economy now and provides the foundation for competitiveness for many years to come.

Mr. Chairman, Canada's entrepreneurial advantage includes framework laws that give both businesses and consumers confidence in the rules of the marketplace. As a result of Canada's economic action plan, we've taken significant measures to streamline and modernize the Competition Act and the Investment Canada Act.

Canada's competition and investment policies serve the country well. They yield a tremendous economic gain, but they have not changed substantially since the 1980s. We needed to bring our framework laws in line with the demands of the modern knowledge-based global economy.

This committee is well aware that in July 2007 we asked Mr. Red Wilson to chair the competition policy review panel to examine the Competition Act and the Investment Canada Act. The panel submitted its final report in June 2008, and we moved swiftly on the panel's recommendations by incorporating them into the Budget Implementation Act, which received royal assent in March. Reforms to the Competition Act protect Canadian consumers more effectively from anti-competitive behaviour and deceptive market practices such as misleading advertising, mass marketing fraud, and price fixing.

The Commissioner of Competition now has recourse to administrative monetary penalties for abuse of dominance. This will provide greater deterrence for anti-competitive behaviour. We have substantially increased fines and jail terms for price-fixing cartels. Businesses will have more certainty under the new rules governing merger review.

Mr. Chairman, these amendments strike an important balance. On the one hand, we ensure that the law will not discourage legitimate business activity, because legitimate businesses have nothing to fear from these changes. In fact, those considering mergers and acquisitions will find the new rules more straightforward.

At the same time, we provide better protection for consumers and companies engaged in honest business practices. Now other elements of the Budget Implementation Act have amended the Investment Canada Act. Further reviews of proposed investments will be applied only to the largest and most important perspective—investments. By raising the threshold for review gradually, we are making it easier for foreign investors to create jobs in Canada by investing here.

I would like to emphasize the importance of our national security amendments. Before now, Canada was the only major industrialized country that did not have a mechanism for reviewing foreign investments on the basis of national security. The national security review mechanism that we now have in place is consistent with our international obligations and is not disguised protectionism. Before leaving the topic of marketplace framework law, let me give the committee a sneak peak at what we will discuss in the coming weeks under Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act.

Members of this committee are well aware of the tremendous growth in online commerce. In 2007 StatsCan reported that the Internet accounted for $62.7 billion in sales in Canada, and this year e-commerce is projected to exceed $8.75 trillion worldwide. But along with the growth of the Internet has come the growth of online threats, including spam, spyware, malware, trojans, and virsuses. Spam now makes up over 80% of global e-mail. It is a major inconvenience and a drain on bandwith in its own right, but spam is also a conduit for other malicious online threats. With Bill C-27, we will take major steps to combat spam and other online threats. We will use the regulatory authorities of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the Competition Bureau, and the Privacy Commissioner. We will also give businesses and consumers their own recourse to the courts to fight spamers.

We worked hard to get this bill right. The government has closely studied the regulatory and legal frameworks in other countries, and Bill C-27 brings together many of its best practices. As for small business, the government recognizes the particular challenges small businesses face and has taken measures to foster an environment conducive to growth.

Access to credit is a major concern. Budget 2009 increased the Business Development Bank of Canada's borrowing capacity, and this improves financing available to creditworthy businesses. The government is also improving the Canada small business financing program by significantly increasing the maximum eligible loan amount. Government-funded business services such as BizPal and the Canada Business Network provide essential information for small business owners to help them start and grow their businesses while at the same time reducing the paperwork required to meet government obligations.

We're investing in Canada's youth by helping the country's young entrepreneurs through funding for the Canadian Youth Business Foundation. Measures have also been taken to reduce taxation. We have accelerated the reduction of the small business tax credit, which is now 11%. The GST has been reduced. The lifetime capital gains exemption has been increased, and there are generous tax credits that promote research and innovation. These are some of the steps taken to help small businesses in this difficult economy

Our government is also taking steps to ensure that Canada emerges from this economic crisis with a more modern and greener infrastructure. Budget 2009 accelerates and expands the recent federal investment in infrastructure, with almost $12 billion in new infrastructure stimulus over the next two years. We are talking about shovel-ready projects. These are projects that can start as soon as the upcoming construction season begins, including the development of roads, bridges, clean energy, and broadband Internet access across the country.

We've also provided $1 billion over two years for a community adjustment fund. Additional economic stimulus will mitigate the short-term impacts of the economic downturn by creating employment opportunitites and will address the transitional and adjustment challenges in restructuring industries or communities. CAP assistance in Ontario will be provided on a priority basis to communities severely affected by the economic downturn, including those that are reliant on resource-based industries such as forestry, mining, and those that depend on the manufacturing industry.

We're also investing in Ontario's communities. Recreational Infrastructure Canada will provide $500 million over the next two years to build and renovate hockey arenas, swimming pools, and other rec centres. In addition, Canada's economic action plan committed $225 million over the next three years to extend broadband access to Canadians who currently have no Internet access or who have only very limited access, particularly those living in rural and remote areas of our country. It's an important initiative that will lay the groundwork for the future economic and social success of all Canadians.

In today's economy, broadband is a vital part of the modern communications infrastructure and an important tool in the knowledge economy. Broadband brings with it important economic and social benefits, such as access to telehealth services, improved business opportunities, and distance learning. Broadband will give Canadian homes and businesses an unprecedented ability to access information, services, and opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach. Canadians in connected areas know that a good website is an important business tool. Parents and educators know how the Internet can help children study and learn more about the world. The broadband program will provide these same services to more Canadians regardless of where they live. We hope it will be a dramatic improvement over the services currently offered to Canadians with limited access to this important resource.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, I know the committee would want me to say a few words about the situation facing Canada's automotive sector. One way to support the sector is to help make credit more available. As the committee will know, the economic action plan introduced the new Canadian secured credit facility to purchase asset-backed securities backed by loans and leases on vehicles and equipment. This facility will provide up to $12 billion to support the auto and manufacturing industries through the financing of vehicles and equipment for consumers and businesses. In addition to increasing the amount of credit available, we're taking steps to enhance consumer confidence. We expanded the accounts receivable insurance program by $700 million, bringing the government's total exposure to $1.25 billion. This is proportionate to what is available to U.S. suppliers through the auto supplier support program.

We also created the Canadian warranty commitment program to help auto consumers by backstopping warranties on new vehicles purchased from General Motors Canada or Chrysler Canada while the companies work through their restructuring plans. This will help Canadians feel more confident about their purchases. It will help maintain sales volumes. And of course we are coordinating our efforts with the U.S. government, because as we know in this highly integrated industry, we all need to work together.

All this is in addition to the short-term financing we have provided in partnership with the Government of Ontario to help the companies' Canadian operations while they restructure. Last week we certified Chrysler Canada's restructuring plan and together with the Government of Ontario we provided funding support to Chrysler Canada and Chrysler LLC to further those efforts and maintain a 20% production share in the North American market. All told, our two governments have jointly loaned $3.775 billion to Chrysler, which is proportionate to the U.S. $12.08 billion authorized by the U.S. government.

Mr. Chairman, I'm convinced the committee will want to discuss many other aspects of the industry portfolio. For example, we have established regional development organizations for southern and eastern Ontario and increased funding for the Community Adjustment Fund.

Last month we announced projects funded through the marquee tourism events program, a $100-million initiative over two years that is a key part of Canada's economic action plan. So the industry portfolio is, as you know, Chair, very broad in its reach, and I focused on just a few of the initiatives that I wanted to bring to the committee's attention. The recurring theme, if I may say so, in all these investments is that we are taking action now to provide stimulus to the economy in tough economic times. We are doing it in a way that sticks to our long-term strategy. In this way, Chair, we will create a more competitive Canadian economy for the future.

Thank you, and I would welcome the committee's questions.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

moved for leave to introduce 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.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)