Industry Committee on Oct. 31st, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Good morning everybody. Welcome to meeting 80 of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology as we continue our review of the anti-spam law.

Today for the first hour we have, from the Department of Industry, Christopher Padfield, director general, small business branch, small business, tourism and marketplace services, and Mélanie Raymond, director, office of consumers affairs.

Thank you very much for joining us today. You have up to 10 minutes.

[Christopher Padfield, Director General, Small Business Branch, Small Business, Tourism and Marketplace Services, Department of Industry]

Great. Thanks very much.

First, Mr. Chair, thank you for inviting us to appear before the committee. As you said, my name is Chris Padfield, and I am the director general for the small business branch within the small business, tourism, and marketplace services sector at Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. I am joined here today by Mélanie Raymond, who works in my branch as the director for the office of consumer affairs.

You have heard from my colleagues Mark Schaan and those at the CRTC and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, and will hear during the next hour from the Competition Bureau, about their responsibilities for the policy, oversight, and enforcement of CASL. The office of consumer affairs works with all of them to build awareness about the legislation among Canadian small businesses and consumers.

Together, we help inform consumers to make safer electronic transactions and engage with confidence online. Being better informed, for both consumers and businesses, means being in better control of their activities online and minimizing their risks of unsuspected problems.

As you may know, one of the vehicles to raise consumer and business awareness is the website “fightspam.gc.ca”. From the beginning, fightspam.gc.ca has aimed to provide information to consumers, businesses, and organizations on how to protect themselves from threats, as well as provide tips for contacting clients electronically. In a dedicated section on the site, individuals can educate themselves about spam and the risks associated with it. They will find information on how to protect their computers and devices from malware, ransomware, and viruses when downloading software or accessing free Wi-Fi Internet networks.

Consumers can also learn the steps to take to recognize spam and how to contact the Spam Reporting Centre to report it. They are also alerted of recent spam warnings and notices from the CRTC, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, and the Competition Bureau.

The website uses a variety of means—including a mobile protection toolbox, a quiz, FAQs, and infographics—to convey CASL-related information. Canadian consumers thus learn to make more informed decisions about what type of e-marketing they wish to receive and what they allow to be installed on their electronic devices.

There is also a dedicated section on fightspam.gc.ca for businesses and organizations to protect their information and understand their responsibilities to comply with CASL. Through a video, webinar, quiz, and infographics, businesses learn the importance of getting consent, providing information, and offering the option to unsubscribe when sending commercial electronic messages. Businesses and organizations can also find tips on how to protect their information and how to report spam. They are also alerted to recent enforcement actions taken by the agencies responsible for enforcing CASL. This information is complemented by links to the three enforcement agencies' websites and other resources, such as a glossary and information bullets.

Finally, fightspam.gc.ca is the gateway for reporting suspicious emails and activities to the spam reporting centre for the attention of the three agencies responsible for enforcing the legislation. With more than 1.5 million visitors since its launch in August 2011, fightspam.gc.ca can be deemed as having been an effective means of reaching out to Canadians.

In the first two and a half years, the site received almost 4,000 visitors monthly, until January 2014. At that point, consumers and businesses started consulting fightspam.gc.ca in ever-growing numbers to understand what CASL meant for them. The first five months of 2014 saw close to 120,000 visitors, or the same number of visitors as in the last 27 months or since the site's launch. Not surprisingly, Canadians became really interested in finding out more about the law closer to its implementation. In the following two months, including July when the law came into effect, some 415,000 visitors consulted the site.

Since then, fightspam.gc.ca has been an important source of trusted information for about 25,000 Canadians every month, individuals and businesses alike. So far this year, close to 270,000 visitors have already consulted the site, which is consistent with the previous two years. This tells us that the tool remains pertinent and useful.

Thanks to the law and more sophisticated protection technologies, such as virus detection software and spam filters, consumers receive less spam today. And as the number of visitors to the fightspam.gc.ca website suggests, Canadians are seeking information and taking action.

We are encouraged and motivated by these numbers. We continue our awareness efforts and media monitoring to get insight on how awareness efforts impact the dissemination of CASL-related information, all with the goal to improve our activities and broaden our reach.

To maximize our impact, our communications approach is, and has always been, positioned within the greater efforts of informing Canadians about the benefits and opportunities of the electronic marketplace. Activities related to spam and CASL are an important part of our broader efforts. These efforts aim for consumers to have the information and tools they need to safely and confidently participate in the online marketplace, which also benefits Canadian businesses and the economy. They include raising consumer awareness around cybersecurity and fraud, which includes ID theft prevention. This awareness messaging is complementary and amplifies the messaging for CASL.

We leverage our other communication channels, in particular “Your Money Matters”, the social media channels for the Government of Canada's money and finances theme. We have regular Facebook and Twitter posts specific to CASL, explaining how to protect electronic devices from malicious software, how to give or refuse consent to receive marketing emails, and how to report spam.

We also have weekly posts about cybersecurity or fraud focusing on fraud protection, privacy protection, and scam alerts such as phishing scams. Since our Twitter channel went live in January of this year, we have shared more than 350 English and French tweets from partners—the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, the Competition Bureau, and Public Safety Canada—on CASL and issues related to cybersecurity awareness. We also actively support and promote every year Public Safety's cybersecurity month in October, and the Competition Bureau's fraud prevention month in March.

We also reach out to vulnerable populations, such as seniors, who are the target of fraud and scams, including malicious software. For example, between 2014 and 2016, Canadian seniors were victims of fraud, including phishing and identity theft, that translated into almost $28 million in losses. To be effective, though, we must use the right communication channels. Police departments around the country, for example, regularly ask us for hard copies of our informational leaflet on ID theft so that they can hand out important safety information, particularly to seniors who may not be online.

While enforcement agencies will continue to lead on compliance and enforcement, we continue to work to make sure that Canadians feel empowered and safe online.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

Before we move on, I was remiss in my duties. We have a new analyst with us, permanently now I think, or at least for the next little while. Everybody, please welcome Sarah.

[Voices]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Now we can actually get some work done.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We'll move now to Ms. Ng for seven minutes.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Welcome, and thank you both, Mr. Padfield and Ms. Raymond, for attending today and for sharing your perspective with us.

I have a couple of questions about the efficacy of CASL, and particularly around consumer protection. You talked about the website and some of the tools to help people understand something about CASL and how they might be protected. How is it working? Are you doing any outreach other than what you've talked about, which is the website and some of the sharing with local law enforcement? Does more work need to be done from a consumer protection standpoint, from your point of view, to help people understand and then help protect themselves?

[Christopher Padfield]

It's really interesting when you look at CASL and the framework we have with the three enforcement agencies. You met with my colleague Mark Schaan, who has the policy responsibility. Awareness-raising around cybersecurity, with CASL being a key part of being cyber-aware, is not just for one entity to be doing. Each of the enforcement agencies plays an important role in raising awareness around how they're enforcing the law when it comes to small business and what they're doing to protect consumers.

At the same time, we're providing kind of a broad, centralized point for it. When this first came out, it was a brand new piece of stand-alone legislation. The thought was to bring the office of consumer affairs in to help raise awareness of the overall piece of legislation as we go forward.

Of course, being aware of CASL isn't the first and foremost way for consumers to protect themselves. If you look on our web page and our Your Money Matters page, we try to raise a lot of awareness about basic cybersecurity—I think right now it's cybersecurity month—just making sure that consumers are aware of protecting their passwords, protecting themselves when they're online.

We have a blend of things, not just that if you think you're being spammed to make sure you're reporting it to the spam reporting centre, but also how to take proactive activities to prevent yourself from getting spammed in the first place, to highlight for yourself when you think you might be subject to a phishing attack or some other thing. It's broad. As I was saying, it's not just around us, it's also around consumer organizations reaching out to Canadians, around police forces reaching out to Canadians. Our colleagues at Public Safety have the “Get Cyber Safe” Facebook page. It's really about broadly raising awareness.

We brought copies of some of those pamphlets. They were saying that the police were really interested in them. If you want to show them to your constituents too, we'd be happy to leave them at the end.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

What is your department's role in making sure there is that coordination? I agree that it isn't just specific to CASL; it is a general overall awareness. What role do you have? Is there an opportunity for more proactivity, particularly if a number of seniors who are subject to getting spam and being defrauded and that sort of thing? What more can you do?

[Christopher Padfield]

That's where we look for partnerships with our colleagues in the Competition Bureau, and others. March is anti-fraud month, and we try to leverage the activities that they're doing to raise that awareness and spread it out as best we can. Again, it's a multi-channel effort, because you never know how a senior is going to get into learning about what you're doing, or about the law, or what have you. We try to leverage as many platforms as we have.

We keep our fightspam.gc.ca website, but also we have our Facebook page for Your Money Matters, and we bring up thematics regularly on that page. We also try to leverage other activities that our colleagues are taking on where they're trying to take a more focused, targeted effort on, for example, fraud prevention month or cybersecurity month.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Do you think there are parts that are lacking that should be augmented?

[Christopher Padfield]

I think it's just raising general awareness about cybersecurity and being cyber-aware as a broad issue. I'm not sure there are particular issues for us to raise more, but I think as much as we can constantly...whether it's in schools at the young ages, making children cyber-aware, there is an ongoing need for us to make sure that everybody is being cyber-safe at every age.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

But is that what you guys do in the department in terms of that collaboration? Can you give me a practical example? When you say you're partnering, how do you reach out to those partners? Are they organizations that then work in different jurisdictions into the communities? Just give me a sense of how that partnership or collaboration takes place.

[Christopher Padfield]

Within the enforcement agencies around the CASL organization—you met with our policy colleagues—we have a broad communications working group at the director level that shares planning for how we're going to reach out in the communications. Some of those organizations are going to have a deeper reach than we will into some of the communities they'll be reaching out to, and that's why we're partnering with them as best we can.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Right.

We heard from other witnesses about the need to do some greater definition around consumer electronic messages. Can you give us your perspective on whether a greater definition or description of a CEM would have an impact at all or be helpful in your organization?

[Christopher Padfield]

Clarity is always helpful when it comes to communications. If I reflect back on some of the commentary you heard from some of the witnesses so far, I think you heard a balancing between the potential consumer impacts that CASL has had so far in terms of minimizing spam and some of the activities that the digital technologies have had. Also, I think you heard from some of the industry advocates around moving from less complexity to more simplicity, perhaps less prescriptive to more principles-based, and an opportunity for increasing clarity.

Again, I'm not the policy shop. When it comes to the communications pieces, it's always a challenge for us as part of our role in this because we can't give enforcement advice and we're very careful about that in our role. We have to be really careful. If a Canadian business or a consumer came to us asking if this was against CASL, we would defer them to the appropriate enforcement agency to make that determination. It's very challenging for us to be making any kinds of determinations, because we don't want to cause any confusion. The folks who make the interpretations and enforcement of the law are the actual enforcement agencies. We're really just here to help raise awareness of the whole piece.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you.

We're going to move to Monsieur Bernier.

You have seven minutes.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Padfield, thank you for your presentation.

You said that consumers today are more aware of the issue. They have access to software so that they don't receive spam.

The effort to fight spam is said to be going well in Canada. Why do you think that is? Does it have to do with the fact that CASL exists or the fact that new anti-spam technologies mean that Canadians are receiving less spam? Is this success due to the legislation or the development of anti-spam technologies?

[Christopher Padfield]

It's hard to say. I think it can be attributed to both. The reason the act includes a three-year statutory review requirement is precisely the rapidly changing nature of technology and the digital economy. Two elements have to be assessed: the legislation and the technology. I can't say whether one has a greater impact than the other, but I think that the two together make a difference.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

You are, according to your title, the director general of the small business branch at Industry Canada. Did you evaluate the impact of that legislation on small businesses concerning the cost to be in compliance with the legislation? Do you have any study about that?

[Christopher Padfield]

That would be the folks who are doing the policy shop. I think Mark Schaan and the other group that presented earlier provided you with some materials that they've done in terms of the analysis. We have not done a specific small business analysis. Of course, all of that would have been done originally in the regulatory impact assessment that would have accompanied the regulatory framework that was advanced.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Okay.

Some witnesses told us that we must clarify the spam definition in the legislation. They told us that the goal of the legislation is very wide, very open, and it could be a little more narrow. What do you think about that? Do you think it would be a good idea to have a definition that would be stricter, with less...with a definition of spam, in commercial use, that would be more friendly for entrepreneurs to be able to do their marketing?

[Christopher Padfield]

I think I'd leave the policy details to my colleagues in the policy space. You've heard that balance between the witnesses, I think, talking to both sides and the effectiveness to date about the minimizing of some of the spam. I think if you look back to what your witnesses had indicated, there was a desire from a number of the industry sectors for greater clarity in some spaces. But I'd leave it to my policy colleagues to provide you some details on how that would impact that.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Merci.

We just received the information about the legislation, and you have tried to inform Canadians about that legislation and what to do against spam. Do you think these marketing tools are very useful? Is that on your website? What are you doing with that?