Sure. As you said, we've undertaken both with Minister Bernier as small business minister and, prior to that, Minister Rob Moore when he was minister of small businesses, the red tape reduction action plan, a bold name for a very important initiative for small businesses to ensure they are not overly burdened.
This legislation provides changes because we need to recognize companies need to have access to and to use personal information to conduct legitimate businesses.
Up until now there has been a lack of clarity, which is part of the reason small business organizations were brought into the process of drafting this legislation, hearing their concerns about how we can move forward.
You can imagine the massive shift that is happening. We see it with retail stores and the way in which we're advancing their businesses, especially if you're a small business.
If you're going to reorient your business and shift much of your sales regime to online sales, you need to make sure not only do you have the best, most efficient, and most up-to-date systems of engaging with consumers, but you're doing it in a safe and responsible way. As I said, if you have one data breach in a small firm, and that word gets around, and it goes viral electronically, your business is shuttered. It's toxic.
Therefore firms have to do their due diligence. We as a government have to be part of that, not just in imposing more and more obligations onto firms of what you must and must not do, which would cause small or medium-sized enterprises that are aspiring to be bigger and to engage in bigger markets, including markets overseas.... With the passage of the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement and the coming of the Canada-Europe free trade agreement, as small and medium-sized enterprises aspire to be global in their reach, they need to make sure their systems are fully secure and safe and protecting individuals. Not only in the practical application of law like this in terms of regulation, but also reputationally, we need to make sure Canadian firms are seen globally as operating within a regime that is world-leading in the protection of the privacy rights of individual consumers.
That's what we aspire to do. We think we do this in a very clear and straightforward way that reduces red tape—I know red tape is a bit of a catch phrase—in that sense by making the rules clear for small businesses that wish to further engage in the opportunities of doing commerce online.