Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of you for coming out this afternoon.
As for my questions, I'm going to start off with Mr. Fraser, Mr. Alexander-Cook, and Ms. Thomson.
In the brief that you submitted to the clerk and the chair of the committee, you raised some of the most important and pressing issues and concerns of your members regarding Bill C-27. You also provide different approaches to address these concerns. Regarding your first recommendation that rather than ban all electronic communications and rely on exceptions and regulations, as the current drafting of the bill is written, we should amend it, I quote, by “targeting only that conduct that results in abusive communications”, this recommendation was also brought forward by Barry Sookman, who was representing the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, as well as many other associations that have submitted briefs to our committee. He recommended that Canada look at the Australian model, which is considered to be the best model as far as this type of legislation goes.
Have your members had the chance to review and compare legislation that exists in Australia concerning anti-spam? Other countries that are mentioned are New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore. How do they compare, and what are the big differences between them, and what can you suggest that we do differently?