Mr. Speaker, about a year ago an elderly woman in her seventies came into my office accompanied by two other women of about the same age. I will call her Mabel, if you will, Mr. Speaker. She is about five feet high, I would say in her late seventies and she is a widow.
She came in carrying two plastic bags full of envelopes. Her friends were carrying plastic bags full of envelopes as well. They spilled all this down on the desk in my office which created a huge heap of really beautiful flashy envelopes. They were all contest envelopes. There were all kinds of contests involved: scratch and win contests; contests whereby if one purchases a book one has a chance at a million dollar lottery or cruises around the world.
The problem was, as the two other ladies explained, that Mabel had been participating in these contests for some years. In fact she was spending about $4,000 a month participating in these various fundraising efforts, all for various kinds of prizes.
I said to her that it was a lot of money for someone on her own and I asked her why she was doing this. She said, “Since my husband died I am trying to do things for my grandchildren because we never had a lot of money and there is always just a chance, just a very bare chance, that I might win and I will have such a wonderful thing to give to my grandchildren”.
The problem was that her two other friends who lived, shall we say, in a very modest high rise, were of course scandalized, but they could never persuade Mabel that these were actual scams and that she was being taken advantage of. They had hoped by coming to me, because I have the title of member of parliament, that I could somehow persuade Mabel not to continue doing this. I did try my best.
I have to tell the House that Mabel did say that she would no longer do this and she listened to me. About six months later the same friends came in and explained that Mabel was still doing it and they were really in despair.
This is the meanest kind of activity that I can imagine where people deliberately take advantage of people who are vulnerable and perhaps no longer have the ability to make the kinds of decisions that the rest of us would make, and they are also essentially poor.
Bill C-229 introduced by the member for Kitchener Centre addresses directly I think a cruel problem that everyone in society who knows of senior citizens who are vulnerable would want to see fixed.
Last year the government passed an excellent bill amending the Competition Act that was targeted on telemarketing and raised very appropriately the fines and penalties for people who carry out fraudulent or false fundraising and take advantage of people like this. But the competition bill had a big flaw.
When I sorted through the pile of envelopes soliciting money from Mabel asking her to participate in these contests for these great prizes, half of them came from the United States. There is nothing in the Competition Act that enables us to stop this type of thing flowing across the border and taking advantage of senior citizens like Mabel.
I do not know all the implications of this legislation and how it would be enforced with Canada Post or indeed whether it is possible to enact legislation that prevents Canada Post from passing on this type of literature, this type of mail solicitation.
But, Mr. Speaker, if it is at all possible, then I think the industry committee should consider this issue very thoroughly and make a recommendation so that we can solve this problem once and for all and stop these people in the United States and elsewhere in Canada from taking advantage of some of the most vulnerable people in Canadian society.