To assist the committee, we tried to provide you with an overview of e-commerce retail sales in Canada and the kinds of investments retailers are making in this space, specifically on the web, in social media, and in mobile technology.
I'm not going to go through every page, but hopefully, when you have a moment, the information included will give you a very good sense of what the sector is doing.
On page 8 of the presentation--in French, page 9--you can see a graph that shows the growth of e-commerce sales from 2001 to 2007, which was just above $6.5 billion. Obviously the market has grown substantially since then, with somewhat of a slowdown at the beginning of the recession. We're starting to see this sector make substantial investments in IT, in web technology, as well as in social media.
I'd like to also draw your attention to page 12 of the presentation, which shows you a graph.
It is an estimated value of domestic e-commerce orders for products by Canadians.
You will see that we are projecting...or that in fact Stats Canada, eMarketer, and several other firms are suggesting that e-commerce sales made by Canadians in Canada will increase by 9.5% in 2011, up to 13.6% in 2015--a substantial increase.
Slide 14 talks about projections with regard to shopping online by Canadians. It states that by 2015, 86% of Canadians will shop online, of whom 80% will buy online.
The average amount spent by online shoppers will increase by 7% in five years. The annual average will go from $1,460 to $1,928 between 2010 and 2015.
I realize there is not much time, Mr. Chairman, so let me draw your attention to page 15. It shows the key recommendations from the Retail Council of Canada. I'd be pleased to address them in more detail during question period.
Specifically, we're talking about electronic commerce protection proposed regulations. We believe they are wise, but they will ultimately, we believe, serve the public negatively, as well as the sector.
We are quite concerned with regard to the Copyright Act in Bill C-11 as it affects the technology side, specifically the web.
We also are very concerned about sales by foreign retailers into Canada via website, and the fact that in many cases those retailers are not respecting the Textile Labelling Act bilingual requirements and dealer identity.
We also believe it would be important to eliminate unnecessary import tariffs on finished goods to ensure that Canadian retailers continue to be competitive, in both the bricks-and-mortar environment and online.
Finally, we'd like to draw your attention to the last few pages of our presentation, which look at the task force on payments in Canada and our concerns in relation to mobile payment and the costs associated with accepting payment in a mobile world.
If the task force recommendations are not supported by this committee and the government, we believe our retailers across the country will see fees increase substantially in their online environment to accept the payment of debit and credit cards.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.