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passed the federal anti-spam law, the CAN-SPAM Act, which trumps the state law, and in 2004 Utah's anti-spam law was repealed, but not before the Utah courts were basically clogged with anti-spam lawsuits.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?