Bonjour. My name is Paul Vaillancourt.
The proposed clause 6 prohibits one-to-one e-mails of specifically directed marketing communications, which are not by their nature intrusive in the lives of recipients and do not create economic harm. My clients are my best sources of new business. A financial adviser like me regularly sends e-mails as a follow-up to a referral from an existing client to a friend or a family member who is looking for a financial adviser. In fact, such referrals are crucial to my business.
E-mails are an efficient means of contacting potential new customers based on referrals without being a nuisance to the recipient. In years past, we used the postal service to follow up on referrals. E-mail has replaced the old technology of writing letters, but it is essentially the same thing. In addition to being less expensive, less intrusive, and more environmentally friendly, it is an accepted, indeed an expected, form of introduction. Individuals are able to access the information at their convenience and have complete control to respond or not.
Clause 6 should be limited to those who target individuals or entities through mass e-mails, where there is no reasonable identifiable relationship between the recipient and the sender. Where the recipient has been referred to the sender, there should be a specific exemption allowing the sender to contact the referred individual or entity. Regulations pursuant to this legislation could be developed to prevent abuse of this exemption and to ensure there was indeed a referral.
Subsection 10(4) of Bill C-27 defines “existing business relationship”. That definition may be sufficient for relationships based only on contract dates or specific sales operations, but it is ill-suited to a consultant service relationship where the consultant has a fiduciary responsibility to contact and inform his client. This type of relationship should be viewed differently.
In many cases, our relationship with the client is linked to an investment made by the client that is followed by none of the operations targeted in subsection 10(4). Consequently, we recommend that in the case of persons who have a fiduciary relationship with the client, the 18-month period targeting subsequent communications begin when the professional relationship or the consultancy relationship ends.
Canadians are world leaders in the use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, clubs, and associations. The proposed legislation does not contemplate the popularity and widespread use of these social networking groups or the fact that these groups already effectively govern the boundaries of the communications. The definition of “existing non-business relationship” in subclause 10(6) should be expanded to include members of established electronic social networks to better reflect this emerging reality.