Industry Committee on Sept. 29th, 2022

[Ian Scott]

No, to be clear, we don't have that information. You would have to ask law enforcement agencies or perhaps the justice department. That isn't our role. We're not doing that. Where we suspect, for example, criminal fraud, we share that information and provide it to law enforcement agencies so that they can pursue it. As to how many of those investigations bear fruit or how many convictions there are, you'd have to raise that with the RCMP or other law enforcement bodies.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Okay. I want to get your advice. What can we, as parliamentarians, do in terms of amending laws, making them tougher, broader and more up to date to fight this phenomenon? All the good things I'm hearing about and the progress I'm hearing about are not changing the direction of these criminal activities happening. Where should we spend more energy or more resources? Is it on law enforcement?

[Ian Scott]

That's a fair question. I'm going to ask my colleagues to add.

I'll give you two things. I'm a good bureaucrat, and I'd never say no to more money, and I'm sure Steven and Alain would like to have—

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

If money could solve this problem, then....

[Ian Scott]

—more colleagues, so if you'd like to send some more money to the CRTC, we will use it properly. I can assure you of that. But simply adding more people doesn't solve the problem. First we can focus on education and compliance. We try to get people to abide by the rules. We educate them. As I said, when we get information about fraudulent activities, when we discover those kinds of actions, we pass that on to law enforcement.

One thing I would say that definitely would assist us would be having more flexibility or an enhanced ability to share information with other players, other government departments and agencies, and perhaps international partners. We're very restricted in information-sharing.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Could you name a few? I think I'm out of time.

[Ian Scott]

Could I ask for indulgence, perhaps, since we have a bit more time, Chairman, just to give one or two examples?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

It's Thursday afternoon, go ahead.

[Ian Scott]

Mr. Harroun, what do you want—more money? Yes, forget that one.

[Steven Harroun]

It's always more money.

I think our challenge is that we share a lot of aggregate information with law enforcement partners—municipal, provincial and federal. For us to say, okay, here's a campaign with very specific details, we are unable to do that on any of those levels. I'm not sure what piece of legislation it is, but sharing that information to very specifically go after this person or this thing is something we're unable to do right now under our legislation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much.

We'll now—

[Alain Garneau, Director, Telecommunications Enforcement, Compliance and Enforcement Sector, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission]

Pardon me for interrupting, Mr. Chair.

I would just add a few points on what Ian mentioned.

On how much we spend on this, the only thing I can say for sure is that when we set up the DNCL, the do not call list, we also created the do not call list operator. The role of the operator is to, of course, receive and compile complaints and to share the complaints with us, but also to collect the portion of the fee that the CRTC needs to execute its mandate. If I have to put an amount on it—it's in the DNCL report—it's $3.3 million. Is it enough? That's another question.

[Ian Scott]

That's the cost of running that particular program.

[Alain Garneau]

I echo Ian's and Steven's comments—it's a global problem. We need collaboration. We need co-operation. We don't have the tools in our hands to sit at the same table as the RCMP or the other law enforcement agencies. You must understand that the regime is a civil regime actually. We're not police officers. I don't have guns. Steven doesn't have guns.

Sometimes the modus operandi is a mix of extortion and.... At some point it becomes very difficult for us to sit at the same table and openly share information with law enforcement agencies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much.

I now turn the floor over to Mr. Lemire for six minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Chair, I'll obviously be the last one to criticize you for allowing time.

I'm going to repeat the same joke I made the last time we studied this issue. We Quebec francophones have an advantage: when we get a call in English, we know it's probably fraud.

In its 2020 report, the committee said it hoped there could be greater cooperation among government agencies, including the CRTC, the RCMP, the Competition Bureau and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. The committee had heard lengthy testimony and many solutions. It was also determined that consumer intervention was needed to detect fraud.

On November 30, 2021, the CRTC issued a news release announcing a new technology called STIR/SHAKEN, which was intended for telecommunications service providers and enables them to detect calls made from phony numbers.

From what I understand, only one company, Bell Canada, responded to your announcement. What about other telecommunications service providers. Are they making an effort too? Where are they?

Can you cite any examples of initiatives designed to combat efforts to defraud the clients of those businesses?

[Ian Scott]

This involves all the major providers and many smaller businesses.

Mr. Garneau, would you like to answer the question?

[Alain Garneau]

With pleasure.

The Bell case, which is recent, was mentioned. I think it's a very good example of a business that takes matters into its own hands. Rogers recently made a real breakthrough too. It adopted an artificial intelligence-based technology that uses algorithms to provide call recipients with caller IDs or at least to let them decide whether calls seems legitimate.

You have to understand that the purpose of the STIR/SHAKEN technology isn't to block calls but rather to provide people receiving them with the information they need to decide whether they want to pick up once the calls have been validated at level A, B or C. Without going into the details, the role of the service provider through which the call is made will essentially be to authenticate the call by certifying that it comes from one of its clients, that it knows the individual and that it is indeed Ian Scott, for example. The service providers of individuals who receive calls will confirm that they may answer it and that it is indeed Ian Scott who's calling, not someone in Europe who's trying to defraud them.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

We observed during our 2020 study that small service providers found it hard to implement these solutions, which—correct me if I'm wrong—work well on smart phones but less so on home landlines.

The elderly are the most vulnerable. They have a landline at home and probably receive most of these calls. Are there any solutions out there to address these residential call cases?

[Alain Garneau]

Allow me go back a little in time to provide you with some details.

Our first step was to address calls made using VOIP technology, the Internet protocol. The reason for that is simple: TDM networks, which use time division multiplexing, are still in widespread use in Canada. Requiring providers to migrate to VOIP technology is one thing, but you have to understand that costs are associated with that. So you have to proceed gradually. That'll be the next step.

The United States has adopted or mandated out-of-band authentication, which makes it possible to certify calls even if they're carried on a TDM network. That's the approach we adopted in Canada. You have to understand that the Canadian market is smaller than the American one. You also have to consider the access to technological solutions that vendors provide.

For smaller service providers, the CRTC recently requested that the Canadian Secure Token Governance Authority increase their coverage so those providers could have easier access to those tokens too. So we're doing something for the small players.

The resellers among them can participate through their service provider, which will be able to validate their calls.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

So I understand you're satisfied with the efforts the industry has made.

Are you also satisfied with the way government agencies are cooperating at this stage? Can steps be taken to reinforce this agreement even further, or is that a problem?

[Ian Scott]

Generally speaking, everyone's cooperating.

As Mr. Garneau said, however, sharing information is a problem because the act lays down limits in that regard.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Then let's hope that it can be done and that it can be promoted further.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Lemire.

Mr. Masse, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

Maybe my first intervention could be to ask our analysts to look at the 15 recommendations that were in the previous report and whether they were acted upon, and to put those in as part of a package to ourselves. There are 15 in total.

I will go to Mr. Scott.

Recommendation 5 was about legislation for information sharing between you and the RCMP.

Was there ever any reaching out by a government department or minister or any bridging to deal with that? That was based on your testimony from last session where we were looking at sharing that information because it is, as you noted, a big issue and jurisdiction is still there.