Madam Speaker, I am pleased to enter the debate today with respect to this very important bill.
Electronic commerce is a whole new and uncharted area. We had not dealt with this in our country until the last year or two. It is six, seven or eight years old. In the grand history of things it is in its infancy.
I have engaged in electronic commerce. I was intrigued with an ad I saw in a magazine on an airplane. It offered a clock. The clock never has to be set and it always has the precise time to the nearest one one-thousandth of a second.
Having a little fetish for time and the measurement of time, which has been an interest of mine all my life since I am a mathematician with a physics major, I was intrigued with this. I wrote down the website location and I ordered this clock radio. It is quite intriguing because literally I do not have to set it. I plug it in and in a few minutes it pulls the time from the air, sets itself and keeps perfect time after that. It is an intriguing device.
Something really interesting happened. The website of course is American. How would I know when I gave my credit card number on the Internet that it was properly scrambled and secure so that nobody else could pick up the information and use it for inappropriate purposes? I was quite worried about that. A message even came up on my screen saying that when ordering I should be aware of the fact that it may not be totally secure. That worried me. It really worried me a lot, but I did it anyway because I can resist anything except temptation and I was so tempted to have this little clock radio.
There is something else too. It was advertised at $69 on sale for $59. I thought that was a really great deal. Well, was I in for a surprise. By the time my bill appeared on my credit card, the American money had been converted, and GST and shipping and handling had been added. On top of all that, when I went to pick it up, there was a bill from Canada Customs. There is no customs duty on this, but I was charged a $5 fee to say that there was no customs duty. In the end the whole bill came to about $130 for my $60 clock, so thanks a lot, Canadian government.
I really love that rate of taxation. It is nice to hear the Minister of Finance say that he is cutting taxes at every turn, because I sure got nailed on this one. I still enjoy my clock radio and every time I look at it I am reminded that we must work hard to replace the Liberals.
I mention that because it is so easy and is a wonderful way of doing commerce. It basically opens up every store in the world to Canadian citizens or to any citizens for that matter. It also opens up the world as customers for Canadian companies, provided that our country has a tax regime that would encourage business people to stay here and operate in this country.
We have heard throughout the debate today especially from members of the Bloc about this whole jurisdictional question. It is very important for us to remember that governments, whether they be the federal government, provincial governments or even municipal governments, are there to serve the people.
I have no problem with the people here who represent many of the 43 or 44 ridings in Quebec, the separatist Bloc. I have no problem with them saying that it is provincial jurisdiction and that they already have a law in Quebec that covers it. That is what they have been saying and I presume it is correct. I have not had any dealings on the electronic Internet with Quebec firms. However, they have this in place and that is great. If another province has rules and regulations that deal with the protection of their consumers and citizens, that is fine. It is within their mandate.
However, what do we do when we have interprovincial and international transport of goods? It happened in my case when I ordered this from one of the American states, which is where it originated.
When we get on the computer and click a website it is almost transparent as to where that is. I got an e-mail not long ago from a guy who said his name was Epp. He wanted to know about me. He asked where I was from and wanted to know my family history. I answered him back and asked him to tell me, when he responded back, where he was because there was no indication on his e-mail address. I asked if he was also an Albertan or from one of the other Canadian provinces. It turned out that he is from California. Here I was corresponding with a person in California and I did not even know it.
I think it is high time that we have proper legislation in place to ensure that the scumbags in our society, who would take advantage of this kind of a system, are regulated and controlled and will face penalties in the event that they try to rip us off as citizens.
There is absolutely no problem in my mind with the federal government doing what it can with respect to the regulation of electronic trade based on what is happening into and out of Canadian homes and businesses.
We need to be careful. We need to make sure that we set this up in such a way that it is economical and efficient, but we must ensure that there are penalties in place for those who would abuse the system.
I look forward to the day when we have a federal government and a provincial government, whether it is Quebec or any other province, coming up with rules and regulations and working together. This is what we should be doing. We should be co-operating among and between the provinces and the federal government.
I am sure my Bloc colleagues would agree that the federal government would probably have a proper role to play in regulating electronic commerce internationally that has to do with work between nations.
Let us not hamstring our government officials in terms of what they can or should not do when it comes to things which make common sense and which are cost effective. On the other hand, I cannot sit down without mentioning the fact that we do want government to be efficient, to make wise and careful use of the taxpayers' money and to not enter into areas where it should not be.
The amendments put forward by the Bloc members have some validity from their point of view. I have tried hard to understand where other people are coming from, but I think in this particular instance I can only advise that on this group of amendments we should, as a body of parliamentarians, reject the amendments, let Quebec do what it wants in terms of the provincial sphere and let the other provinces do what they want to in their provincial spheres. The federal government should work not only from its part internationally but also in terms of trying to bring co-operation among the provinces.
I think that would be a great and unifying goal and would hopefully help to keep the country together.