Industry Committee on Oct. 19th, 2017

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

We're sitting too close together. Our minds are getting closer together, too. That's a scary thing for both of us.

The Chamber of Commerce referral systems.... I'm still operating under referral systems where I am working on innovation projects. I see something really cool going on in southern Ontario, in Ingersoll specifically. I let the Conservative member know I am in his riding, and I see some cool business activity that I think another business could benefit from, and I ask them to contact each other.

Mr. Schiestel, how close am I to breaking a law there?

[Andrew Schiestel]

You probably would break the law, based on my understanding, if you don't have consent, because you would be incorporated as different corporations. You also run into that instance a lot in the private sector if it's a manufacturer and they have a dealer network. Probably the opinion of the courts is that if consent is given to a manufacturer, the dealer itself can't actually send commercial electronic messages to that person.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

That goes back to the education piece that, in my role as a salesman, in my head I'm thinking I'm doing something right, whereas in fact I could be putting my company or their companies in jeopardy by trying to help them out.

[Wally Hill]

That's it exactly.

[David Elder]

Moreover, I think there's a real problem with records. You need to have records to be able to prove that you fit within the various exceptions and exemptions. Those are quite onerous. To tell a sales force for a business that when they're reaching out to these businesses this is what they have to do, that every time they meet someone they have to scan their business card and put it into their CRM and if they met them they provide an annotation to that effect. It's really unwieldy and it's very difficult, which is why I think a lot of businesses have said there's too much risk there; they might make a mistake, and they don't want to incur the fine.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

In our previous study we looked at knowledge transfer and the point you're making is knowledge transfer is inhibited and innovation is also inhibited. But he did give me some cool gum packs with a tear-off business card that I could give. I could do that but I couldn't do it electronically. Sometimes we're working at cross-purposes in our innovation agenda. I think you've highlighted some of those things that we'll be considering. I really appreciate all your testimony.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

I want to thank everybody for coming in today and sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thankfully, we still have a lot more witnesses, and we don't have to make any decisions today, which is a good thing, but we are going to look forward to the coming weeks with more witnesses.

The meeting is adjourned.