Mr. Vincent, I beg to differ, first of all, with respect to Mr. Fewer's comments. I don't think there's any evidence whatsoever that you could point to that would suggest that business would not be harmed by the increased costs that would accompany being forced to revert back to using letter mail, if that's in fact what the result is.
To me, this really has the potential of throwing out the proverbial baby with the proverbial bathwater. Think of small businesses, so often cited as the major engine in our economy; we do not want them faced with very difficult competition where a large business may be able to afford to market where they can't.
The technology we have with electronic messaging or other aspects of our electronic life is something that I know Mr. Fewer takes seriously, but it should be seen as a very positive thing, and we should be very careful not to be doing harm when we are trying to do good. I think a lot of members here have been very sensitive to that in their questions.
If I may, I'd like to link back to a comment that Mr. Fraser made about the difference between unsolicited and unwanted e-mail. It's a challenge, it's fair to say, given what various stakeholders have been saying here, for the committee to be able to fashion a bill that does not, in a sense, throw out the baby with the bathwater.
By way of one example, if the bill doesn't get refashioned in such a way as to define bad conduct as that which is targeted, as opposed to all conduct with some exceptions, one possibility that I know we have discussed internally here has been to look at the implied consent, and instead of saying in the regulations that we'll define what else implied consent might be, let implied consent stand on its own. It's a strong concept. There really has to be implied consent.
Use regulations if necessary to say, for example, the existence of one or more of the following does not by itself establish implied consent, if you are concerned about that sort of thing. But implied consent can live on its own. I think the business community and the business culture will work out, along with the courts, what that really means.