Evidence of meeting #35 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
That's why a lot of people, including me, don't want to pick up when they don't know who's calling. I have voicemail for that.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
[Inaudible] of mobile calls are fraudulent.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Right.
With fraudulent calls, do you see a difference between people who have cell phones—the vast majority—and those who still have landlines, or do fraudsters strike the same way everywhere?
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
No, not really.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Is there a difference?
No, there's no significant difference.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
How can we distinguish welcome calls from unwelcome ones? Many people think it would be simpler if they had the option of blocking all unwelcome calls.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
If Alain can answer that, I'm going to give him a promotion.
Director, Telecommunications Enforcement, Compliance and Enforcement Sector, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Okay, here's my answer.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Sorry, if he can do that.... Let me rephrase it.
Director, Telecommunications Enforcement, Compliance and Enforcement Sector, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Too late.
That's a very good question. I obviously can't disclose certain information that we obtained in the Bell Canada case, but I can tell you that telephone service providers obviously monitor their networks and can detect anomalies. For example, if 12,000 calls a minute are made to area code 514, something abnormal's probably happening. That's a major indicator.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
But, as is the case in an election, everyone can call that number or at least try. Everyone's making thousands of calls simultaneously.
Director, Telecommunications Enforcement, Compliance and Enforcement Sector, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
I'm talking about a single number, from any country, that would generate 12,000 calls on the network.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
If there were thousands of people with the same number voting, it would be a problem too.
Director, Telecommunications Enforcement, Compliance and Enforcement Sector, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
The Telecommunications Act does not give telephone service providers the right to introduce these mechanisms themselves. They have to ask permission from the CRTC, as Bell did.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound
Thank you very much.
Ms. Lapointe has the floor now, for five minutes.
Liberal
Viviane LaPointe Liberal Sudbury, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Scott, earlier you talked about the first intervention being prevention and education. I'd like to know what kind of work the CRTC does with its partners to raise awareness about fraud calls.
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Sure, and I'll ask Steven to elaborate. He runs this group.
The obvious things are communications with the public and working in partnerships with various players. I'll quickly outline them.
One, we have an intelligence-gathering group that examines everything that goes through the fraud reporting centre and all the information we gather to identify emerging campaigns. One of the members mentioned earlier how the day after the government announces a program, you get fraudulent calls in relation to that program.
During tax season, we work closely with Canada Revenue Agency to remind people that the Government of Canada doesn't threaten you by text message or over the phone with jail sentences or what have you.
In an ongoing education campaign, we speak at universities, fraud conferences, at commercial conferences where telemarketers gather, and so on.
Steven, rather than my bouncing around here, do you want to give, perhaps, a better response?
Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
No problem.
I think what's important is that we do engage various levels, including Joe and Jane Canadian. We try to get that message out through some of our government partners, but we also talk to industry associations. I speak a lot at various conferences, as Ian said, but we also work with our colleagues at the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, and when we see information, we share it with each other and help support campaigns.
October—I was going to say it's next week—is anti-fraud month, so we'll be participating with the CRA and the Competition Bureau and others who will be putting out messages on a regular basis. We have an amazing communications team at the CRTC, which gets messages out via our website, our social media channels, etc.
We try to be as active as we can in the space.
Liberal
Viviane LaPointe Liberal Sudbury, ON
I appreciate that. I'm thinking specifically about seniors. Those are the calls I get most in my constituency, from seniors who may not be on computers or have smart phones.
How are you able to share or disseminate information to the vulnerable population of seniors?
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
I'm not sure we have an easy answer for that or a simple method to reach them. I can use my own example. Perhaps you're in a similar circumstance. My sister and I give our elderly mother a lot of advice about what to answer and what not to answer, and we ask her to check with us on things. If you will, you educate those to educate others.
You're right. For those who are perhaps new Canadians with less familiarity with French and English and for some elderly populations, we need to go through intermediaries. We reach out as broadly as we can, but I won't pretend that we can reach everyone.
Liberal
Viviane LaPointe Liberal Sudbury, ON
Are there particular types of calls that Canadians tend to fall victim to more than others? Do we know that?
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
I'll say—and Alain may want to add—that I think it's a bit facile to say this, and I apologize for that, but it's the cleverest ones. Particularly if we're talking about fraud, they're very opportunistic. When the government introduced an income support program in the midst of COVID, it took them a matter of hours to put out messages saying, “This is where your name is on the list” and “Call this number or text here in order to get your rebate” or whatever.
Immediately after the Rogers outage, they were sending out “Rogers owes you money. Text here or call here to get your refund.” They're very quick. Some of them are very sophisticated. Even within government we have it. I've had employees who have received emails from me, apparently, and they've been clever enough to know I don't usually ask people to go out and buy thousands of dollars of iTunes cards. We do get questions, as do municipalities, about needing to wire money to cover a contract or whatever.
There are large-scale ones and small-scale ones, but they're clever, and they are very quick to take advantage of public announcements and so on. I think those ones are probably the most effective.
Alain, do we keep specific statistics that you're aware of, as far as you know?
Director, Telecommunications Enforcement, Compliance and Enforcement Sector, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
We have some. As Steven mentioned, we have an intelligence shop, the role of which is to gather all the information, so I wouldn't be surprised if we had some. I don't have those statistics with me at the moment, but definitely I have no worries that—
Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
I will undertake to have our staff look at it, and if we can provide a better response, we will send it to the committee clerk if that's okay.
Liberal
Viviane LaPointe Liberal Sudbury, ON
I appreciate that.
I just want to touch upon MP Masse's point about how the number of individuals who actually report scams is quite low. I would be interested in knowing what you think is the reason for that. Also, would an increase in reporting help the CRTC and its partners address those challenges that we currently face with fraud calls?