Evidence of meeting #80 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.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Christopher Padfield  Director General, Small Business Branch, Small Business, Tourism and Marketplace Services, Department of Industry
Mélanie Raymond  Director, Office of Consumers Affairs, Department of Industry
Josephine Palumbo  Deputy Commissioner, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau Canada, Department of Industry
Morgan Currie  Associate Deputy Commissioner, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau Canada, Department of Industry

12:50 p.m.

Liberal

Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON

Perfect. Thank you very much.

You mentioned in your testimony as well that you work with the other two organizations involved in CASL. Is that relationship good? Maybe a better question is how might it be improved going forward in the future?

12:50 p.m.

Deputy Commissioner, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau Canada, Department of Industry

Josephine Palumbo

I think the relationship is very positive. We work well with the other two agencies, the CRTC and the OPC. We know that the SRC, for example, has been a very useful tool for us in terms of a source of information for our own investigations. That's hosted by the CRTC. They have had, I believe, 40 million records and one million complaints since 2014, so that's an interesting source of information for us. We use it. We rely on it.

There are some anomalies or observations that we've recognized with respect to the SRC. The majority of the records that appear in the SRC actually fall outside of the mandate of the bureau. We also find that many of these records relate to mass-marketing fraud. Again, that's a very narrow area. Also, a lot of the records in the SRC that are not mass-marketing fraud deal with health-related products. The result of all of this is that we find that within the bureau's mandate, only 97% to 99% originate from outside of Canada and are, therefore, again beyond our jurisdiction.

The SRC has been useful to a certain extent. We have provided some guidance to the SRC and to the CRTC in terms of how the SRC can organize its information a little bit better for the benefit of the bureau's analysis.

In terms of information-sharing, we have the MOU—

12:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

I'm going to have to stop you there. We could go on for hours.

Mr. Bernier, you have three minutes left.

12:50 p.m.

Conservative

Maxime Bernier Conservative Beauce, QC

I have one question. I will share my time with Jim.

You said that you received a big sum of money from Amazon. They were not respecting the legislation. What are you doing when you receive an amount like that? Do you keep that for your own investigation?

12:50 p.m.

Deputy Commissioner, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau Canada, Department of Industry

Josephine Palumbo

No, not at all. The million-dollar administrative monetary penalty is payable to the Receiver General for Canada and goes into the consolidated revenue fund. It doesn't go to the bureau. The costs that are levied against a company will also not go to the bureau. They will go to the Receiver General for Canada and the consolidated revenue fund for broader distribution.

12:50 p.m.

Conservative

Maxime Bernier Conservative Beauce, QC

Perfect. Thank you.

Jim.

12:50 p.m.

Conservative

Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB

I noticed that you talked about spoofed websites and the technical support scams. The other one is the one you've been talking about quite a bit.

12:50 p.m.

Deputy Commissioner, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau Canada, Department of Industry

Josephine Palumbo

Drip pricing?

12:50 p.m.

Conservative

Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB

Yes, the drip pricing.

A spoofed website to me is a strictly criminal action. Have you had any dealings with this, and have you referred anybody through the courts regarding spoofed websites?

Can you finish off by talking about technical support scams?

12:50 p.m.

Deputy Commissioner, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau Canada, Department of Industry

Josephine Palumbo

I'll start off and then I'll pass it over to my colleague.

We currently have 41 ongoing digital economy investigations. Again, given the nature of the work we do as an independent law enforcement agency, I cannot share the details of those, but we currently have digital economy cases that have criminal components to them.

12:50 p.m.

Conservative

Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB

Well, kick butt, then, on that.

12:50 p.m.

Associate Deputy Commissioner, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau Canada, Department of Industry

Morgan Currie

Yes, absolutely. There are some challenges with those aspects of the law as well, because the criminal spammers are going to great lengths to hide their identity. We've seen several spoofed websites. My colleague mentioned RBC. We've seen, with the Bank of Montreal. “BMO.net” up in the locator information, with all the sites of the different banks and advertisements. It looks like a real website.

What is amazing, and a little frightening to us, is that a lot of this originates from countries that are outside of our jurisdiction, although we are victimized by it. This is why our international co-operation is so important. When we can actually make a connection and lay hands on somebody in Canada, that is extremely vigorously pursued by our organization. The technical support scams, unlike ransomware where your computer is actually affected by malware, that's where you get a pop-up that says your computer is infected but it isn't.

12:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Thank you.

Very quickly, Mr. Jowhari, you have three minutes.

12:55 p.m.

Liberal

Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON

Thank you.

I have two questions. If I get a chance to ask both of them, that would be great.

One of them has to do with the information-sharing effectiveness among the three departments, and the other one has to do with the PRA scope overlap with CASL and CB.

Let me start with the information-sharing. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner gave testimony that the current rules and regulations do not allow for effective information-sharing among the OPC, the CRTC, and the Competition Bureau with respect to those provisions outside of CASL.

Do you concur with that? If you do, where do you think the shortcomings are, and where can we make specific improvements?

12:55 p.m.

Deputy Commissioner, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau Canada, Department of Industry

Josephine Palumbo

Let me start by saying again, greater co-operation is always welcomed, but we also have to work within our statutory mandate. Under section 29 we have a statutory obligation to maintain confidential certain information and we cannot divulge that unless we are within those two requirements.

Obviously, the MOU, I think, clarifies the roles and responsibilities and allows for some information-sharing between agencies, and we have shared information. Further development can certainly be helpful, but it has to be done within the confines of our statutory limitations.

12:55 p.m.

Liberal

Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON

Do you recommend that we change that or make a recommendation so it allows for freer information-sharing?

12:55 p.m.

Deputy Commissioner, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau Canada, Department of Industry

Josephine Palumbo

I think that could help.

12:55 p.m.

Liberal

Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON

That could help. Great.

With 30 seconds left, let me go to the PRA scope. There has been some discussion that the Competition Bureau already has a process that holds small businesses or individuals accountable. We talked about the $1 million and $10 million under CASL. Do we need to amend CASL and PRA in any way to say that these are the areas that are being dealt with by CB, and these are the areas that are with CASL, so if we limit or narrow CASL's PRA, then it becomes more complementary rather than an overlap?

12:55 p.m.

Deputy Commissioner, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau Canada, Department of Industry

Josephine Palumbo

The three agencies, though, have three different responsibilities. They do overlap, but we each have our different mandates and I think those are clearly delineated within the MOU. So it could be a bit of a challenge, I think, to try to amalgamate the two. We have a statutory duty to look at false and misleading representations with respect to sender, subject matter, and locator. That's our statutory mandate. The CRTC and the OPC have other statutory mandates.

Morgan, I don't know if you would like to add anything.

12:55 p.m.

Associate Deputy Commissioner, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau Canada, Department of Industry

Morgan Currie

I don't think so.

We haven't taken a position on private right of action, perhaps because we're a mature law enforcement agency. We've had it for a long time, and have not intervened ourselves.

12:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Thank you.

Very quickly, we did it....

Mr. Masse.

12:55 p.m.

NDP

Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON

I'm good. Thank you.

12:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

You're good?

12:55 p.m.

NDP

Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON

Thank you, yes.

12:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Oh, good. I could use up that time.