Commissioner, it's a pleasure to have you here before this committee. I can say with some certainty that your role as former competition commissioner was one that saw a number of changes certainly in my time. I'd like to think that the changes we saw in Bill C-10 were the result of your good work and efforts over the past few years. Congratulations to you. I just realized that 10 years of fighting for this and debates back and forth was all done in one fell swoop without a single debate on it in the House of Commons. I was quite amazed at that, even though there are a lot of things in there that I agree with.
Commissioner, you have suggested something that requires a more fulsome explanation. With this bill, we are giving Canadians the impression that by looking after our own mess in our own backyard we are going to suddenly end spamming in Canada. In 2005 the task force recognized that the amount of spamming in Canada is very limited and the effect on Canadians is rather limited. Much of it does come from international sources. Your second recommendation is music to my ears and very much follows with the observation of the task force. I will read it into the record:
The actions that we take within Canada to reduce the amount of spam will only have a limited effect on the amount of spam arriving in Canadians' email boxes unless these actions are complemented and reinforced by strong, effective international cooperative actions against spammers.
Based on that, sir, not only from the bilateral perspective, but you've suggested that you would be working with the CRTC, the FTC, as well as with the FCC. Who, in your view, would be the lead in coordinating the effort of ensuring that spammers who went to other jurisdictions, not just between Canada and the United States, but...for instance, as I was discussing with my colleague, Mr. Rota, earlier, what if they all wound up in São Tomé?
What reasonable objectives can be achieved in the short term? You've talked about problems of agreements and collaboration and corroboration. How realistic is it that if we provide this legislation, we would stop the spamming in Canada? Also, how likely is it that we would be successful in stopping jurisdictions that have no enforcement responsibilities or any type of agreement in order to put an end to this once and for all?