Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre, or PIAC, is a national, non-profit organization and registered charity that provides legal and research services on behalf of consumer interests, and in particular, vulnerable consumer interests, concerning the provision of important public services.
PIAC has been active on the spam file since before the anti-spam task force was constituted in 2004. We testified before this committee in relation to then Bill C-27 in 2009 in support of the legislation. We supported the legislation as passed in 2010.
Our message today is simple. Canadians benefit from some of the world’s strongest protections against spam. Canada’s anti-spam legislation generally keeps business from sending spam unless the recipient has provided express prior consent and can easily unsubscribe. This is the great Canadian innovation. Trust consumers and citizens to control their privacy in the marketplace not marketers.
Has CASL been working for consumers? Currently, the CRTC is receiving about 5,000 complaints a week about email marketers not respecting CASL. One report from spring 2015 found outgoing spam volumes from Canada dropped 37% and overall email volume, spam and legitimate email, received by Canadians also dropped about 30% in the immediate period after CASL came into full force on July 1, 2014.
Since then Canadians have enjoyed the control of their email and other electronic communications by giving their consent to email, texts, and other electronic messages only to those companies with which they deal and by being able to unsubscribe from any email list that they wish.
Companies can still reach Canadians via email. There is no commercial email ban. Consumers buying products and services or who reach out to the company in question can expect two years of emails before the existing business relationship is deemed stale and the emails must stop. While consumers have a valid contract with a company, emails are allowed during the contract and for two years after that contract ends, unless of course the consumer unsubscribes on the handy link on each of these emails.
If a company does not follow these simple rules that put consumers in control, consumers can report the spam by completing a complaint form at fightspam.ca. As mentioned, up to 5,000 consumers a week file complaints.
Spam still wastes consumers’ time and reduces their confidence in electronic commerce, as it continues to deliver not only irrelevant, unrequested marketing but also deceptive and fraudulent messages and malware. What is different now is that the CRTC, Competition Bureau, and Privacy Commissioner of Canada can pursue companies for doing all these things.
Alysia.