Mr. Speaker, I do not think adding the word Internet to this particular provision in a number of places complicates matters very much.
At the OECD the government, along with the secretary general who is a Canadian, is aggressively pursuing the very question of Internet commerce and how we deal with the abuse of it and how we deal with fraud on the Internet. We are still in the relatively early stages in dealing with the protection of the interests of Internet users in this regard. We are still not sure that secrecy and confidentiality can be fully observed but we are moving in that direction.
To suppose that there is less pressure upon the users of the Internet, the kind of pressure that we have seen forced particularly on older people to send large amounts of money to telemarketers is open to debate. It is not clear to me that the pressure is any less pressing, that we should not respond by adding the Internet in the context of telemarketing. We are talking about a fairly new type of commerce, a new type of interaction, a new type of communication and a new type of media. To walk away from the problems that are already on the Internet and the problems that we can easily foresee seems not to be wise.
I congratulate the member for Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière for adding the provision relating to the Internet and for drawing attention to the implications of the potential for fraud or coercive activity, for misleading representations which persuade people to engage in commerce on the Internet.
With regard to the government's commitment at the OECD level, it was odd that it would not also provide some sort of commitment locally. What does it say about its commitment at the international level that there is no provision within a piece of national legislation which is presently before the House, that the government has left it out altogether.
It is important to draw attention to this question to consider the Internet and the abuse of the Internet in not a very different way than the abuse of telephone marketing. It would be useful if we ensured that our competition policy was up to date to the extent that it was dealing with the way in which commerce is being carried on in the country today. More commerce will be dealt with over the Internet, so we had better get organized to do something about it and not wait until we find out whether or not it is more or less coercive, whether or not it is worse, or whether or not it tricks more people because we know the potential is there.
I urge that we support this provision and not in the words of the member for the Reform Party see it as something terribly complicated. It does not look very complicated to me.