Industry Committee on Oct. 31st, 2017

[Christopher Padfield]

It's a general information piece for folks to become aware that CASL exists. Again, it's fairly unique for a brand new piece of stand-alone legislation to come into place, so it was really about making people aware that this brand new piece of legislation is in place. It has only been in force for a few years now, so it's more just general awareness-raising.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Okay.

I just pulled up that Twitter account, and you have 298 followers. I'd be curious to know who some of those followers are. Hopefully, you'll be able to grow some of that, because I think you have some important messages out there to share, and probably a demographic that uses Twitter more predominantly could learn a lot from that.

[Christopher Padfield]

If you have an opportunity to talk to your constituents about looking at the Facebook page “Your Money Matters”, there's a lot of great information that comes out from multiple sources that try to share there. We're really an amalgamator of some of those many agencies we talked about today.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Yes. Well, you watch; now all Edmonton Riverbend will be following you on Twitter, so there you go.

I want to get to the meat of what I do want to ask. Currently, as CASL exists—it would be nice to hear from both of you on this—do you think the current legislation goes far enough to protect the consumer, and in your opinion, would the private right of action add to the effectiveness of protecting the consumer?

[Christopher Padfield]

Again, in our department we don't provide oversight for the law itself. I think if you go back through the various witnesses you have seen, I think you heard quite the balance between some of the consumer agencies who were quite clear that they thought CASL was having an impact. But again, you heard from the business side that they might benefit from some clarity and specificity in terms of making it easier to engage in electronic commerce.

Beyond that, I can't really speak to the private right of action. That's really for my colleagues to speak to.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Ms. Raymond, do you have any comments?

[Mélanie Raymond]

I don't really have anything to add. I agree with Chris, that you have heard from—

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

You guys have obviously paid attention to the conversations we've had here.

[Mélanie Raymond]

Yes.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Thanks for doing that. Is there anything out of some of those presentations that you think would be important for us to consider adding to our report, going forward?

[Christopher Padfield]

Perhaps I could add to that one. It's important to remember that the law covers more than just electronic messages. It also covers the installation of computer programs. I know that a lot of other organizations, like the auto manufacturers and some of the technology companies, where you're looking at some of that.... I think you saw some of that touched on by Michael Fekete with regard to computer installation. If you have the opportunity to hear from some of those folks from some of those sectors around the programming installation issue, you might find some interesting information from some of those stakeholders around what that means.

That's the whole other part. Because it's named CASL—and “spam” is in the name—a lot of the focus goes into the electronic messaging, but the computer programming installation aspect is another area that I think might be worth hearing a few witnesses on.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Okay.

Jim wanted some time.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Do I have time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

You have literally 30 seconds. That's it.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Okay.

This brochure, is it new?

[Christopher Padfield]

Is it new?

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

It's not new. Okay. Where does it go? You said you have given out 3,500. What do you intend to do with it? It has good information, but who do you send it to?

[Christopher Padfield]

We've given it to a number of organizations. Sometimes we get requests for them. It's available electronically on our web page, too, so you can access it there.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

If we want to get some of these to hand out at our offices, can we contact your office and you'll send them to us?

[Christopher Padfield]

Yes. The clerk will get hold of us and we'll get them to you.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Excellent.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Chair, on that point, there is a complete disconnect from departmental provision of services like this to offices like ours. That's just a notation. Jim has brought up an excellent point. We have the conduits to all these communities for stuff, and it's left to our staff to try to find what's available, which is ludicrous for even industry, let alone everything else.

It was just a good point that Jim had brought up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We'll move Mr. Sheehan for five minutes.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thanks.

Thank you very much for your testimony and the importance of your work. In your presentation, you mentioned that between 2014 and 2016 seniors lost $28 million due to fraud and schemes dealing with phishing and identity theft. I think that's one of the raisons d’être this legislation was put in place.

We've heard testimony on the importance of that piece in particular, and of communicating with the seniors group you have identified. How exactly do you communicate with or target senior groups for marketing, as you alluded to in your testimony?