Industry Committee on Oct. 31st, 2017

[Christopher Padfield]

I'd have to defer to the CRTC. Again, we're the portal directing them to the spam reporting centre, but it's really the CRTC that has been monitoring on that.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

So if we really want to see the rate of adoption, we should be talking to the CRTC, asking them what they have seen as a result in terms of spam.

How about the small businesses?

[Christopher Padfield]

On the small business side, again I would have to defer to the folks at the CRTC for their view of the overall compliance rates. We look to the enforcement agencies to do their assessments around the enforcement levels.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay. So your department is purely focusing on educating. How do you measure your success?

[Christopher Padfield]

As a department overall, there are two parts. As you saw earlier from my colleagues on the policy side, they are actually responsible for drafting the law and making any amendments and regulatory changes irrespective of the regulatory framework that the CRTC has. On our side, we're really focused on awareness-raising and helping to make sure that consumers and small businesses are—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

How do you measure your success?

[Christopher Padfield]

It's roughly based on performance in terms of the hits on our web page, for the most part.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Mr. Eglinski, you have five minutes.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you.

I was listening to some of your answers to some of the questions that came in earlier, and I'm concerned. I think you said that since you have been in operation, you've had something like 1.2 million people on your...?

[Christopher Padfield]

It's 1.6 million.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Okay: 1.6 million. That's from 2014 to now, so roughly three years.

[Mélanie Raymond]

It's since the website was launched in August 2011. That's where you get the 1.6 million.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

From 2011 to today.

[Mélanie Raymond]

Right. But in the first months, we had 4,000 people per month

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I want to focus on two groups. I know that you're dealing with business, but you're also dealing with consumer affairs and the public. In one of your paragraphs here you say that you “also reach out to vulnerable populations that are the target of fraud and scams, including malicious spam”, and you mention seniors. There are two areas that I think are very crucial. Seniors are a larger demographic group than youth under 18, but I'm also concerned with youth under 18. I'm concerned with both areas. Are any of the other organizations you work hand in hand with doing an education program, as you are currently doing with “fightspam”?

[Christopher Padfield]

Yes. The Competition Bureau runs its anti-fraud month in March every year. It does a broad campaign of awareness around fraud. It's worth—

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Since CASL came out, is anybody focusing on the vulnerable groups? Have you got any special programs out there dealing with seniors—what they should be looking for, what they should be watching for, how they contact your agency, or anything like that? Have you got anything going for the youth? I mean, kids are now using phones at a pretty young age. I don't think there's a kid in high school across Canada today, probably from the age of about 13 on, who don't have a phone with them. Are we doing anything as a government, through your organizations, to educate these young people?

I look at my grandchildren. My daughter bought a phone for my 11-year-old granddaughter, and I don't think she really spent a heck of a lot of time telling her a lot about it. She passes her phone over to the four-year-old, and he gets on there faster than I can. He's going through everything on this phone.

Are we doing anything as an agency—they're consumers, one way or the other—to protect them? Are we looking at any special programs to protect young people who are getting on the phone systems?

As a senior, I do understand a little bit, but there are many people a little bit older than me, some the same age as I am, who don't understand at all, and they're very vulnerable.

[Christopher Padfield]

If you look at the GetCyberSafe campaign that Public Safety operates, it has various thematics that it goes through, and the anti-fraud month also has various thematics. I know that some marketing materials were targeted toward seniors. There's a fun infographic where the fellow is trying to defraud the lady and it says “grandson”; it's actually crossed out to say “grand larceny”. So there are some targeted marketing pieces through that, those two pieces around the broader issues around fraud and cybersecurity.

When you're talking about your grandchildren using their devices, that's more of a cybersecurity issue than it is a specific issue around CASL. I know that the GetCyberSafe campaign does have a youth element to it.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

So you're focusing on seniors, but no one is really focusing on youth.

[Christopher Padfield]

No, GetCyberSafe does have a youth element to it.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Are we looking at any programs through the school systems in Canada?

[Christopher Padfield]

That's a provincial jurisdiction, for the most part.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

So no one has thought of talking to them.

[Christopher Padfield]

We broadly make our materials available for everybody to use whenever they want to.