Industry Committee on Sept. 28th, 2009

[Paul Vaillancourt]

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. If I understood correctly, there were two questions.

The first concerns mass emailing. I am an entrepreneur and I have a clientele. I do financial planning with about 500 families. If a client does me the honour of referring a potential client, I send an email to that potential client. And so, if you were my client and if you referred your brother to me, I would send an email to your brother. I wouldn't send 50,000 emails to all of the Bouchards in Quebec, just one. That is the exception I hope to obtain. I'm not talking about sending mass emails, but I simply want the opportunity of being able to respond to the invitation of a client who wishes to introduce a third party to me, someone who does not know me yet.

To respond to your second point, in our commercial area, we have clients who make one or several investments with us. If, for instance, a person made an investment in 2006 and has not made any others since, that person continues to be my client. And so we are simply asking that the 18-month period begin when that person for instance removes his or her investment with us and is no longer our client. However, as long as he is with us, he remains our client. Consequently, the 18-month period would not apply in that case but only when the business relationship has ended.

I hope I have answered your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Vaillancourt.

Mr. Lake, you have the floor.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I have a question for Monsieur Morency.

Looking at my notes, I think you mentioned that you should be allowed to request consent. I want to clarify what that means. I'm particularly interested in the definition of who you would be allowed to request consent from, with the change you propose here. Would you have to know this person? Is there a definition you would attach to that?

[Bernard Brun]

We discussed that matter a little earlier. It concerns the possibility of obtaining consent by email, through electronic means. We would like to see the bill amended to make that possible.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

So in this case you're not even talking about a referral.

[Bernard Brun]

Exactly. We're saying we should be allowed to get consent through electronic communication, because that's the way the consumer wants to get the communication.

Referral for us is something totally different. When we get a reference from a third party, we want to be able to contact that person.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

So the pharmaceutical companies we all receive many e-mails from should be allowed to send out e-mails to anyone in this room, or a big list of people, saying they want to contact us to tell us all about their great product. Is that okay with the changes you'd make?

[Bernard Brun]

What we're talking about is really a one-time shot. It's really to get your consent through electronic means to offer you service. But you could put it into a law that if we don't get an answer within a certain time we don't have any kind of consent, so we should get out.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

So you can only send it once to each address?

[Bernard Brun]

Yes. That would be our position.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Joanne, you talked quite a bit about referrals. There was obviously a sort of theme today in terms of the discussion, but I'm wondering if you could define “referral”. How well does a person have to be known to be a referral?

[Joanne De Laurentiis]

As my colleague Paul Vaillancourt pointed out, it will be in the course of your relationship with customers. They may say that they really like the job you're doing for them and they think so-and-so would benefit, so why don't we give them a call? Usually it's that, so we're talking about a very directed e-mail.

We're not talking about mass e-mail. I would just like to make that point. We've come here with some of our concerns, but generally we're very supportive of this legislation, so we could make an amendment that says that if it is a directed e-mail to an individual and that individual doesn't respond, it's the end of the contact, as opposed to the mass e-mail approach, which is a concern we all share.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Would you say that the person has to be known to the person who's referring?

[Joanne De Laurentiis]

Well, not necessarily. Maybe known to someone.... If that person is known to your client, they won't be known to you until you make contact.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Right, but known to the client, so if a client of yours gave you a list of 14 million e-mail addresses, all of which belonged to individuals, and said that he really thought you should give these 14 million people a call, would that be allowed under the change you're talking about making? It sounds like it would.

[Joanne De Laurentiis]

I think we could probably find language that would prevent that, because that clearly would not be in the spirit of a directed referral, absolutely not.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Okay. I guess the question I would have is where the line gets drawn. Maybe you could define your concept of mass.... I have to say that I actually have some sympathy for this. Having worked in a sales environment myself in the past, I have some sympathy for some of the points you're bringing up, but I also think that if we loosen up the bill it winds up letting everybody through and not actually stopping the kind of thing we're trying to stop.

[Joanne De Laurentiis]

We would be happy to file some recommendations for language changes, but I think we could narrow it so that we're talking about a very specific, narrow, directed e-mail. When we talk about mass e-mail, if I've been referred, that e-mail is not coming to me with really clear information about who that person is and about the fact that if I'm not interested I am able to ask them to take me off their list. I think we can target that communication in a way that allows us to use technology the way it's meant to be used.

I mean, we're all very excited about this technology, and it seems to us that this legislation just overreaches to the point where it would close off that opportunity. That's what we're looking for: the balance. We would be very interested in working with you on the specific language.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

In terms of identifying exactly where these suggestions would be going, though, if you're talking about specifically directed e-mails, are you talking about one to one, or could someone send out an e-mail to four people who have all been referred at the same time?

[Joanne De Laurentiis]

Generally, they'd be one to one. It's an e-mail to that individual. So even if I am talking to four people, I would have to be addressing the individuals.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Now, technology, of course, exists that would allow someone to send out 10,000 e-mails that all come one to one with names attached, just through a simple merge, just like you would do with mail. I would imagine that each of your clients probably uses mail merges to send letters by mail that look like they're one to one. There would be technology to do the same thing by e-mail, I would think, which you would use.

[Joanne De Laurentiis]

Probably.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Probably, so you can kind of see where I'm going with this. Again, you could send to 10,000 or 10 million people one to one if you had their names and their e-mail addresses provided to you, and a lot of organizations could provide those lists.

[Joanne De Laurentiis]

I'd like to point out one other thing that I think is unique, certainly in the investment funds business, and it is that individuals like Paul are highly regulated as to what they can send out from a sales perspective. There is a fairly robust set of rules in the Mutual Fund Dealers Association as well as the investment industry association, and those are all part of the Canadian securities set of rules.

I think we could perhaps find language that would clearly point out that those who are subject to another set of rules.... In a sense, we have double jeopardy here. We have a very highly regulated group of people for whom the sending out of messages says that this is how you do it, and then on the other hand we have this, the prospect of a closed door, in doing something that we think would be quite legitimately beneficial to the business. So it's about finding that balance.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Lake.

Thank you, Madame De Laurentiis.

If you have specific wording to suggest to the committee, please send it to the clerk and I'll ensure that it gets distributed to all members of the committee. Thank you very much for that offer of help.

Mr. Masse.