Evidence of meeting #83 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

Steven Harroun  Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Neil Barratt  Director, Electronic Commerce Enforcement, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Kelly-Anne Smith  Senior Legal Counsel, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Francis Lord  Committee Researcher

11:50 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Thank you very much.

I'll add, however, that if you are going to do a submission, preferably it's no later than next week.

11:50 a.m.

Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

Steven Harroun

I was just going to ask you about that. All I wrote down was “Date?”

11:50 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Do we have a date?

November 9th, 2017 / 11:50 a.m.

Francis Lord Committee Researcher

Next Thursday.

11:50 a.m.

Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

Steven Harroun

One week should be fine.

11:50 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Okay. Excellent.

Mr. Bernier, go ahead for five minutes.

11:50 a.m.

Conservative

Maxime Bernier Conservative Beauce, QC

I will share my time with my colleague.

I really appreciate your answer about the compliance and all the penalties. I thought in the beginning that we would have to change the legislation, but I think the discretion we have right now is helping both you and the small business owner.

Speaking about complaints, can you help me to understand how it works in your organization? You receive a complaint. You have compliance people who are going to look at it. After that, you have the enforcement. In terms of the process, from a complaint to an action from the enforcement team, what would be the delay, and what would be the timing? Please just give me some details about that in order to help me understand your organization a little better.

11:50 a.m.

Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

Steven Harroun

I'll start.

It's a really good point. I've raised it before. We get approximately 4,000 complaints from Canadians into our spam reporting centre every week, so you can extrapolate that to 15,000 to 20,000 a month.

As a general practice, it's our intelligence folks, if you will, who look at those complaints. They identify trends. Are there patterns, are there particular organizations, or are there particular types of activities going on? We do regular case selection meetings, where we have our intelligence folks, if you will, talk to our enforcement folks and say that they have seen these areas as an issue in the past few weeks, months, or whatever. That helps to inform our investigations, going forward. That's how we pick cases to move on.

As I said, with 4,000 complaints a week, obviously with a small team we're not investigating every complaint. What we are doing is looking at the various pieces of the puzzle in our spam reporting centre, and we also use other sources of information provided by our friends at Public Safety, the RCMP, and others. I believe you had representatives from Spamhaus here earlier this week. We look at all these pieces of data. It's not just the complaint from Joe or Jane Canadian; it's also the other pieces that help inform the decision-making when we move on to an enforcement activity.

11:55 a.m.

Director, Electronic Commerce Enforcement, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

Neil Barratt

The only thing I'd add is that we have over a million complaints that have been submitted by email. They are not validated. We don't know that every one of those is an actual CASL violation. We look at trends; we look at the scope. Obviously, if we're getting a thousand complaints about a particular organization, that's going to pop up faster than one or two emails.

11:55 a.m.

Conservative

Maxime Bernier Conservative Beauce, QC

Thank you very much.

Jim, do you want to...?

11:55 a.m.

Conservative

Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB

Yes, really quickly, for two minutes.

We heard evidence.... I believe one of the presenters, Certimail, said that only 5% to 15% of companies are compliant. Have you done research to look at the overall picture of compliance in Canada? Do these figures match your thoughts, or was it just a scare tactic?

11:55 a.m.

Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

Steven Harroun

I would have to defer to the department on that. I know that the last time we appeared, certainly Mr. Schaan and his folks provided some details.

I would suggest that it's a very low number. I would not agree with that.

But have we conducted research at the CRTC? No, we have not.

11:55 a.m.

Conservative

Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB

If you do have that data, I'd like it if you would send it. I think it would be very worthwhile for us to see whether the evidence given was right or not.

11:55 a.m.

Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

Steven Harroun

I don't think I have anything. The department might.

11:55 a.m.

Conservative

Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB

Okay.

I think I'm done, Chair. I'll pass my time over.

11:55 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Excellent. Thank you very much. That's very collegial of you.

11:55 a.m.

Conservative

Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB

It's my tie.

11:55 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

It is. We're members of the bow tie club.

Mr. Sheehan....

Oh, wait: you don't have a bow tie on. You can't talk.

11:55 a.m.

Voices

Oh, oh!

11:55 a.m.

Liberal

Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON

I'll try to keep it bow-tie-related.

My line of questions recently has been about social media, because we've heard conflicting testimony. Does it apply? Does it not? We certainly did hear from the bureau that it does. In terms of the CRTC, just as an example, Facebook reached two billion users per month this past summer, but within their platforms they also have other things. Facebook messenger is reaching well over a billion users now. These platforms are moving exceedingly quickly. You know all the other ones, such as Snapchat and Instagram; I won't mention them all.

How does this CASL legislation apply, and the potential penalties or infractions, to social media?

11:55 a.m.

Senior Legal Counsel, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

Kelly-Anne Smith

With the way in which the definitions in the act are worded—i.e., for “commercial electronic message” and “electronic address”—there are features of social media where CASL does capture them. Using Facebook as an example, there's a feature where you can send a direct message to somebody. That would certainly, as an example, be captured by CASL. You cannot send a commercial electronic message to another person unless you have consent or you fall under one of the exemptions, such as family or personal relationships.

11:55 a.m.

Liberal

Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON

So it does.

11:55 a.m.

Senior Legal Counsel, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

Kelly-Anne Smith

It does, yes.

11:55 a.m.

Liberal

Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON

Then I have a quick follow-up question for clarification. Have you received any complaints and have you actioned any kind of disciplinary follow-up?

11:55 a.m.

Senior Legal Counsel, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

Kelly-Anne Smith

With respect to social media, yes, we have received complaints about social media.

With respect to actioning those complaints, I will defer to my colleague Neil to answer that.