Mr. Speaker, as the New Democratic Party spokesperson for consumer affairs I am pleased to speak to Bill C-393 which was proposed by the member for Sarnia—Lambton.
In the last parliament the NDP caucus supported the member's earlier effort to ban negative option billing through Bill C-216, a private member's bill that was seeking to do the same thing at the federal level as had already been done by the NDP government of British Columbia which amended its consumer legislation to ban negative option billing in that province.
The current bill proposes to amend not the Broadcasting Act, but rather the Competition Act to ensure that negative option billing or negative option selling and marketing is prohibited in all sectors under federal jurisdiction, including telephone services, cable television services, financial services and so on.
Banning negative option billing is a way of telling the providers of those federally regulated services that, where their customers are concerned, yes means yes and no means no. There is no implied consent in silence. If they want to charge customers for a new service, they have to be asked first. Ask them nicely and make the sale by convincing them that they need it or want it. The service has to be sold, not forced down people's throats, who are then charged for it. The rules cannot be changed in the middle of the game without their permission. It is just not fair from the consumer's perspective. That is a principle with which I agree.
There are some members who are concerned that this bill will defeat the licence that was recently approved by the CRTC for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. This approval was the creation of the network, APTN, and it requires the cable companies to carry this channel on their basic package. I am assured by members, and in particular the sponsor of this bill, that Bill C-393 will not impact on the CRTC's order to include APTN on cable companies' basic services.
It was a most significant and sad day in the last parliament to see the earlier version of this private member's bill, which achieved the extraordinary step of being approved by the House of Commons, effectively killed by the unaccountable, unelected Senate which made a somewhat pointless amendment and sent the bill back to the House where it died on the order paper when the election was called in April of 1997 for June.
I was a member of the House at that time and I well remember the public outrage in the winter of 1995 when the cable companies introduced new specialty channels and restructured their cable package lineups. Let us face it. Winter is cold in Canada sometimes, except in Saskatchewan where I come from, and people like TV.
The cable companies removed some channels from their basic cable lineups and were expecting their customers to pay extra for them unless they read the fine print and cancelled the services, all this with the approval of the CRTC.
New channels were also introduced into what was a much more hostile environment than the channel originators probably deserved simply because people were so appalled at the negative option billing.
I heard a lot of negative comments about that in my constituency office. No wonder the bill enjoyed support on both sides of the House. Since senators do not have constituency offices, or even constituents to whom they are accountable, it is also no wonder they did not respond to the outrage but responded instead to their friends, the giant cable companies.
In the town of Lumsden, after receiving numerous phone calls from very angry cable subscribers, I personally met with Image Cable Systems and persuaded it to hold public meetings with its customers in Lumsden. Subscribers who attended the meeting said overwhelmingly that they did not support the proposed changes to the cable lineup and Image Cable Systems retracted its initial billing.
What made the customers most angry was simply the fact that they were never asked in the first place what they wanted. I am pleased to see the measure before us in parliament and pleased that the member has seen fit to include other federally regulated industries in its scope. I agree with him that we are also seeing the phone companies and some banks testing the waters with these kinds of marketing schemes. It needs to stop now.
Let us remember that most federally regulated industries are granted certain privileges to conduct business in a protected way for they provide essential services to the economy and the people of Canada.
In return for this privilege, which often means they are guaranteed certain levels of profit as well, they have a higher duty to conduct their business in an ethical way. Because the bill proposes to change the Competition Act, we should have disposed of any concerns that the legislation somehow intrudes into the jurisdiction of the provinces. It is very clear that the federal government is responsible for competition policy and federally regulated industries.
Perhaps it is time for parliament to take some time and undertake a more comprehensive review of competition policy and the Competition Act. Private member's Bill C-384 sponsored by the member for Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge, which proposes another change to the Competition Act, ought to be before committee for study in the next few months.
I have had longstanding criticisms of the ability of the Competition Act to deal with pricing in the retail gasoline market, for example. With the changing nature of the international economy, the simultaneous trends of increased mergers and acquisitions, and the growing number of small businesses in our economy we need a much more active competition policy to ensure that the marketplace works well for consumers and for small business owners.
I have raised the concerns of independent gas retailers in Saskatchewan with the Competition Bureau, concerns that affect consumers in my province in particular. The number of independent gas retailers has declined dramatically. I would argue, not coincidentally, that we now have the highest gas prices of any jurisdiction in Canada even though our tax regime is identical to those of British Columbia, Manitoba and Ontario. I understand the Competition Bureau is investigating for the criminal investigations branch.
Also this week the leader of the New Democratic Party, my leader, the member for Halifax, raised very grave concerns about the impact of Sobey's assuming control of 75% of the food wholesale market on the east coast. The takeover of Oshawa Group by Sobey's controlled Empire Ltd. would mean that small family restaurants and corner stores will become price takers from one food wholesaler. That hurts them and it will hurt consumers dramatically. It is a competition issue and it is a consumer issue. It is time we made a comprehensive re-examination of the whole policy area.
I want the government to stand up and fight for ordinary Canadians by establishing a comprehensive consumers protection act. We are the only country that does not have one to protect consumers. Instead we have an act that protects giant multinationals and huge corporations from the people and guarantees them huge profits. That is unacceptable in this day and age.
We do not have one-tenth the amount of competition legislation the United States has. I am not saying that more is better but what we have now is not, as I am told every day, working for anybody but the large corporations and the very wealthy families.
In summary, I support the principle of the member's bill. I hope it receives wide support from the House once again and is not stalled in the unelected, unaccountable, unacceptable Senate of Canada.