Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 1st, 2014

[Manon Bombardier]

The bill would provide additional safeguards to what currently exists under the unsolicited telecommunications rules, as my colleague explained earlier, with regard to the requirement to register, to provide identification, and to maintain copies of scripts and recordings.

If the CRTC was to receive complaints about robocalls, we would, as we currently do under the unsolicited telecommunications rules, look at the complaint, validate the complaint in light of the rules that exist, and if there are alleged violations, we would open an investigation. Up until now, as I said earlier, we have levied nearly $4 million in penalties, and $1.6 million of that $4 million is actually related to automatic dialing, calls that were made—

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Let me go to a specific case.

Let's say next federal election in Winnipeg North I find out that at least 3,000 calls, or it appears a large number of calls, were made in Winnipeg North and I'm upset with the content of that. Do I contact CRTC to complain, or do I contact Elections Canada to complain?

[Manon Bombardier]

You would contact the CRTC.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I contact CRTC and then CRTC says that they will look into the matter.

What happens if this is Poutine 2015 who had some sort of a dial that had nothing to do with registering with CRTC. What would you do? Three days later, a week later, what would happen?

[Manon Bombardier]

We would assess the complaint. If it's not related to our responsibilities under the bill, we would contact Elections Canada and make sure they're aware of those alleged violations so they can look at their own responsibilities and take their own enforcement actions.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Right. So the manner in which you can actually help is with those that are actually official companies, making sure that the scripts are correct. Those that are prepared to follow the letter of the law, those are the ones that you're actually able to track.

What is the substantial difference, in terms of cost, of keeping them for one year versus three years? To me you have a computer data bank of information, and whether it's one year or three years in terms of retaining that information, is there any real cost to keeping it longer than one year?

[Christianne Laizner]

Mr. Chairman, I'm not quite sure I understand what the reference is to what is being retained. Is it the registration notice, or the script of a call, or a transcript of a recording?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Both.

[Christianne Laizner]

The registration notices are required to be filed with the CRTC and then the obligation under the legislation is that where scripts have to be maintained or recordings of messages sent through robocalls, they have to be retained by the calling service provider or by the group that made them for a period of one year after the election.

That would enable the CRTC, if a complaint is filed, to request those scripts or transcripts of messages. Then they come to us and we can conduct our investigation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Lamoureux.

Thank you to our witnesses on that round.

We'll now go to Mr. Richards for four minutes.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

I appreciate your being here today. I'm going to follow some similar questions to Mr. Lamoureux's.

I'd like to actually ask you to take a step back. In terms of your current role in administering investigations and penalties that surround the automatic dialing announcing devices, or ADADs, when you get a complaint, perhaps you could walk us through the process that you follow to investigate that complaint. We're talking obviously about outside of an election period, but I would assume there's going to be a similar type of process set up for complaints during an election.

Perhaps you could walk us through it. When you get a complaint, what happens in terms of investigation and proceedings from there? Could you do it in a fairly short form, please.

[Manon Bombardier]

Yes, okay. No problem.

The complaints under the do-not-call list or the unsolicited telecommunications rules are made to the CRTC, the current operator of the DNCL. We look at the complaint and make sure that all of the information has been provided, what we call validation of the complaint. Once the complaint has been validated, we look at that from an enforcement perspective. We look at the rules and whether there are possible alleged violations to those rules. If there are alleged violations, then we look at other priorities we have on the day and where it fits in terms of our priorities. If it is a very egregious situation, we will look at it right away. If it's less egregious, we would look at the most egregious files in a more timely manner.

Once we open an investigation, we start collecting the evidence. There are tools in our legislation that allow us to do that. Depending on the seriousness of the violation, the compliance history, and a number of factors, we determine the best enforcement measure. It could be a citation; it could be a notice of violation that could or could not include an administrative monetary penalty.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Currently, outside of the election period and outside of the provisions of this bill that we are being asked to pass, there is no requirement for people who are making these types of calls to provide a script ahead of time to the CRTC or to provide identification to the CRTC. What is in the bill is obviously stronger than what you have currently for the other calls, outside of an election period, yet you've still been able to lay charges or notices of violation when you found instances after investigation.

[Christianne Laizner]

These are new obligations that don't exist under the current regime of the national do-not-call list.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Yet, outside of an election period, without those kinds of obligations for people, you've still been able to track them down.

[Christianne Laizner]

Yes.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

What I'm indicating is that it will probably make your job easier to have that information.

Also, I want to ask whether you feel, with the scripts being provided ahead of time and identification provided ahead of time, that there is a good chance that in many cases people who are violating the rules may not be doing so intentionally or even knowingly, and that providing the script to the CRTC ahead of time might actually enable an opportunity for some of these kinds of calls that voters might find reasons to complain about.... Maybe we could eliminate some of those things from happening in the first place by virtue of the script's having been provided, so that you would be able to deal with the person and try to alleviate any potential problem.

Second, if there are complaints—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You have about half a second, but I'm sure there was a good “second” in there.

May we have a quick response to Mr. Richards.

[Christianne Laizner]

Yes. Just to clarify, the obligations under Bill C-23 are for the calling service provider or the group in question to retain the script or the transcript of the messages. When the CRTC conducts investigations, we can request those as part of our investigation, but they don't actually provide the script to us in advance.

They do have obligations to make sure that when they enter into these agreements, both parties are aware of the identities and name and address and all that important information that was not a requirement before.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

Mr. Scott, we go back to you for four minutes, please.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thanks so much for indulging me in the last exercise of robo-questioning, as we could call it.

I want to return to what I indicated is my fifth question, which is the whole question of calls to raise funds. Clearly these are covered as voter contact calling, but we also have a new provision in the bill, proposed subsection 376(3) of the Canada Elections Act. This is the exclusion. It says:

The commercial value of services provided to a registered party for the purpose of soliciting — by mail, telephone or other electronic means — monetary contributions is not an election expense... as long as the soliciting is directed only towards individuals who have made at least one monetary contribution of $20 or more—

—and it goes on.

First of all, very quickly could you confirm that this kind of calling would indeed be caught, as long as it's done during the campaign period? They would have to be registered, would they not?

[Christianne Laizner]

Yes, it's covered by the definition of voter contact services. There are five different kinds of situations covered by those voter contact calls. One of the situations is fundraising calls.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Good. That's my understanding.

My concern is that the minister has said in the House when concerns have been raised, don't worry; the CRTC will deal with this. My concern is that while the CRTC will deal with it within the framework of the new division that you're in charge of, does that mean you're going to be determining whether or not people had given $20 or more in the past and that the purpose of the call is only for fundraising? Will you be doing that?

[Christianne Laizner]

The requirement under the legislation is for registration notices to be filed with us when voter contact services take place, and those services would cover fundraising. But the question, under the legislation, of exemptions of certain fundraising services, as contained in proposed section 376, is the purview of the commissioner.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Exactly, so thank you. There is not much you can do about the actual substance of those calls.

The next thing requires just a yes or no answer, because I don't want to go into the details of the provisions. Is there a gap where there is no specific provision for political parties as groups to have to account for live calls done through internal services? For automated dialing, yes, and third parties are covered for live calls, but there is no specific provision that talks about internal services of parties or groups for live calls. I don't find an expressed section and I'm wondering if I've missed it.