Evidence of meeting #76 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was casl.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Counsel, Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada, As an Individual
I can speak on behalf of multiple companies, and I would add that certainly spam is hugely problematic for businesses too. They bear the cost. What we are trying to accomplish here is to reduce the cost of compliance, with the aim of the legislative scheme being that it should be focused on bad actors.
Yes, the public bears the cost—I get that—all of us do, but businesses also bear significant costs.
12:50 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Then the customers of the business pay the cost. It's all passed on. At the end of the day, we are the recipients of all this, paying for all this in one form or another. The sad thing about it is that you are paying for it without even being asked.
I guess that's the balance we are all trying to strike in this. With regard to the PRA, I was really surprised that.... I'm hoping the minister has the courage to go through with it and take a look at implementation, and see if we do have these problems. Right now, how many frivolous lawsuits have been acted upon? None, because...what the minister may have said, but we don't know what was even in store. It has just been based upon speculation.
12:50 p.m.
Partner, Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, As an Individual
The challenge with the PRA in CASL is in no small part because of the complexity of the law and the innumerable situations in which compliance is next to impossible, and because it's combined with statutory damages. If you are a class action lawyer, you make an economic decision, by commencing a suit, about whether there is likely to be a return on your investment in time. Statutory damages give that.
If you fix the legislation while enabling businesses and potentially others to enforce the law through a private right of action, you won't have the same chorus of opposition, because the legislation will be balanced. What we have now is unbalanced legislation with a very strong penalty in the PRA.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you.
I want to go back to innovation, where my colleague Ms. Ng left off, and give you, Mr. Kardash and Mr. Fekete, an opportunity to respond. I'm very clear on what Mr. Geist's position is. You wanted to interject, but my time ran out. I'm happy that I got the time back.
I now want to focus on what the specific actions for us would be if we wanted to make amendments or changes to the legislation. What should we do? What recommendations should we make to stop those innovation inhibitors?
12:50 p.m.
Counsel, Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada, As an Individual
I'll start with a basic proposition. What we are hearing from clients every day is that, anytime you have uncertainty, you have risk, and that poses a problem. It doesn't completely stop innovation—that would be an overstatement—but it introduces a level of risk in which, in our view, in the vast majority of circumstances, excluding the bad actors, you have to remove the uncertainty. Again, there is so much common ground here, and I think that's something we should really seize upon.
Part of the uncertainty is due to the fact that it's a very complex regime. We do this every day, and it takes us a lot of time to work through with clients to get very innovative types of new products and service offerings through into the digital sphere, which inevitably involves sending, or permitting to be sent, tens if not hundreds of millions of messages on a monthly basis.
None of this is illegitimate; all of this should be done in a consent regime. No one is even disputing that. What we are talking about is having clarity and removing unnecessary prescription. Then, all of a sudden, with the appropriate narrowing of the scope to keep the legitimate stuff outside the scope, focusing on the bad actors. They would be able to get the two remaining in the country, and hopefully prevent others from even thinking about coming to Canada. They wouldn't. That would be the approach.
I can't overstate the suggestion I made to the committee in my opening remarks. We deal with these every day. I urged the committee, and I urged by implication, to go through use cases, because these examples of how to fix it explode at you in their glory. Go through use cases.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Can any of the witnesses submit any use cases to the clerk so we can use them?
12:55 p.m.
Counsel, Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada, As an Individual
I can't speak for others, but IAB Canada is going to submit a more detailed brief. With respect, three pages is not sufficient for us to provide the range of types of use cases and other suggestions. We will present use cases so the committee can see how there is unnecessarily expansive scope. We'll get rid of that, and then, with the narrowing of the scope, there will be a lowering of temperature in terms of opposition to the legislation thereafter.
12:55 p.m.
Partner, Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, As an Individual
I agree with what Mr. Kardash just said, but I would like to provide an example of why the computer program provisions are too broad. If you're a start-up company and you're deciding whether to start up in Silicon Valley or in Waterloo, you look at the laws and at how they apply. Computer program installations and updates are a core part of your business. If you set up in Canada, your worldwide operations are subject to these prescriptive rules that have no parallel anywhere else. We're creating an incentive for people to set up in the U.S. I think we have to look at harmonization to the extent that is appropriate to ensure a level playing field. We want to encourage the Canadian technology sector and not have laws that interfere with it.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
That will bring us to the end of our session today. I thank all the witnesses for a very spirited day of questions, answers, and presentations. We'll be sure to take all of this into consideration.
Committee members, we have witnesses coming in on Thursday as well as next Monday. So we have the next two sessions of witnesses.
The meeting is adjourned.