Industry Committee on Oct. 26th, 2017

[William Michael Osborne]

I'm not. That's not the kind of evidence I would be tracking. It's not really what I do.

What I can say is this. As a consumer, I get many things that I don't want. I get a lot of flyers in the mail and I don't want them, except that sometimes there's one I do want, and I don't know which one I'm going to want. I get a lot of emails from businesses. Most of the time I don't really want to hear about the specials that Air Canada has for flights to wherever until I'm actually thinking of travelling. Then all of a sudden I have to come up here and I see that there's a seat sale on, and suddenly I want that.

I can only offer my own personal view about this, and, as I said before, I don't think it's about what Canadians want; I think it's about what's right for our economy.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Well, your expenses coming here should have been covered by the committee. We have a budget for that, so let's make sure it happens.

[William Michael Osborne]

Don't worry.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Le Roux?

[Philippe Le Roux]

To answer your question, I would say that Canadians increasingly want to receive emails, but they have two conditions. First, they want to decide for themselves who can send them an email. Second, they want the email's content to be relevant.

I was saying earlier that Canada had excellent email marketing results. So, the legislation has been positive for businesses. Those of them that do good email marketing make more money today than they did before the legislation came into force. Businesses that do bad email marketing—in other words, those that take advantage of the inexpensiveness of sending their messages to everyone without worrying about whether they are relevant or whether the individual has asked or agreed to receive them—are struggling and will perform very poorly.

What the legislation does is encourage businesses to improve. One of the things the task force on spam did was analyze what the best email marketing practices were. The legislation kind of forces businesses to apply those best practices and encourages them to develop good marketing skills, which will in turn help them get results.

I support what Mr. Osborne just said. He said that he was receiving a lot of emails, but there were many that he never asked to receive and that did not concern him. He said that he was receiving emails from Air Canada, but that most of them were of no interest to him. That is something all Canadian consumers are experiencing. The legislation pushes companies to make an effort to ensure to send the right information to the right people.

Extremely affordable technologies exist today that help automate that process. We are trending toward that. Europe has gone in that direction because that is the current trend.

Mr. Osborne was talking earlier about the system that enables recipients to have their name removed from a distribution list. Under that system, businesses can send an email to anyone, as long as people have the option to unsubscribe. That is the system implemented by the United States through the CAN-SPAM Act. The U.S. is currently generating the most spam in the world, even more than Russia and North Korea. It's also a country where email marketing is becoming less and less effective.

When it is well done, email marketing is a goose that lays golden eggs for businesses. Seeing Canada moving backward, while the rest of the world is moving forward, is like deciding to kill the goose. That would detract from Canada's ability to compete.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

It's a good point, though, which needs to be raised, because even the old, traditional print marketing material that you receive has changed too. If you're a business now using non-recyclable material and using ink that is not properly managed and disposed of.... In fact, some businesses pride themselves on their environmental practices, from the ink to the paper, in their customer communication. I'm worried that if we retreat on some components of CASL, we'll get more garbage. In the past, it was not necessarily about the effectiveness of a piece and its rate of return but it was about the volume to get the return, and so garbage, poor quality, loss of privacy, exposure to viruses, and other things escalate, because the senders are almost bottom-trolling, as on the ocean floor, trying to grab anything they possibly can rather than using actual skills of the art.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Sorry, you're way over. Thank you very much. Perhaps you can come back to that.

Mr. Baylis, you have seven minutes.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I'd like to finish up with you, Mr. Schaper, on what we were talking about with the charities. One of the questions my colleague asked was whether it is a presumption that's hurting charities. You did mention that charities are spending money to try to adhere to it. Is that correct?

[Bill Schaper]

They're spending money. They're putting human resources into it.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

They're taking their financial capital and their human capital to adhere to that—

[Bill Schaper]

Yes.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

—and this was not the intention, so whether or not we call that hurting, it's certainly diverting. People don't want to give money to a charity just so they adhere to a law.

[Bill Schaper]

Yes, we believe it was not the intent for this to be happening. We know that donors are always concerned that charities make the most efficient use of the dollars they—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

You gave an example about the do-not-call list, which is just a straightforward exemption. It doesn't have this ambiguity. Is that something you're looking for?

[Bill Schaper]

Yes, as I said, it's in our brief that if we can get a clear exemption from the consent requirements.... Charities are following the other requirements of CASL, the unsubscribe and those things, and that's something—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

You'd like a clear exemption from what part? Do you mean the electronic messaging?

[Bill Schaper]

Yes, well, it's the requirement for opt-in to be able to send out those messages.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

If I understand it right now, assuming that the CASL-type rules applied to the do-not-call list, you could theoretically call someone and say, “I'm just calling from Charity A and I want you to give me money”, no problem. But if you pick up the phone and call them and say, “I'm calling from Charity A. We're having an event for which I'm selling tickets to raise money”, then you'd have a problem? Is this the difference?

[Bill Schaper]

That's where some of the grey area is. The FAQs that the CRTC has put out say that if you're sending a message to sell tickets, you may or may not....

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

That lack of clarity from the CRTC, which Mr. Le Roux also touched on, is a problem.

[Bill Schaper]

Yes.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

For a charity, then, can you repeat again what you're looking for exactly?

[Bill Schaper]

Yes. It would be for us, and again it's very similar to what Australia has done in their law. They have the opt-in provisions, but they exempt charities from the opt-in provisions.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

The Australians exempt the opt-in?

[Bill Schaper]

Yes.