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.