We therefore find it disingenuous that representatives of companies and marketers are here today to say the CASL is somehow bad for consumers and commerce. Instead, we believe CASL is bringing some control to consumers in their electronic interactions with marketers and that consumers in control are more confident and better consumers. That should help commerce.
Instead, marketers are here to defend stale lists and lazy marketing. CASL sets reasonable limits on the contact that marketers can have with consumers without first asking consumers for permission to continue to market to them. That's all it does. It does not sabotage legitimate commercial relationships between consumers and companies.
Were CASL to be repealed or the consent requirements flipped to require consumers to opt out of marketing as before, then CASL would truly be useless. We would return to the days before the anti-spam task force and consumers' feelings of helplessness in the face of ever-increasing spam volumes. CASL now is working fine. We suggest you leave CASL alone.
If one thing has not been done right since CASL was introduced, it has been insufficient information gathering. Since CASL does not require spam volume to be reported by ISPs, although they may report it to the CRTC, Competition Bureau, or Privacy Commissioner, nor by the spam reporting centre, and CASL does not require that any of this information be made public or provided to Parliament directly, we are here today largely in the dark regarding evidence of the effect of CASL on spam and other electronic messaging. This committee could recommend a more robust and public spam reporting mechanism that would allow all parties and academic researchers to evaluate the effect of CASL upon objective evidence. That at present is sorely lacking.
PIAC thanks the committee, and we welcome any questions you might have.