Mr. Speaker, I thank my Bloc Québécois colleague for his preliminary comments. I congratulate him for being here so that we may all work together in this House. That is precisely the objective the government has pursued for the past 18 months. We are trying to maintain a constructive agenda as parliamentarians and as a government. I hope that the vote held on Monday will be in favour of the government so that we may continue to work as colleagues in the House. That remains to be seen.
With respect to the amendment of the Senate that effectively caps to a total of $1,500, for example, for individual offences, far be it from the House to question the wisdom of the Senate with respect to that amendment.
I would probably say that it has more to do with, and perhaps everything to do with, the flexibility that the system will require. Sometimes the best way to start with a major system like a do not call registry is simply to start. Once the system is up and running, we will be in a position to review it, hopefully within a year of its operation, and as the member rightly points out, with mandatory three year reviews built into the act.
I think the balance that has been struck in the registry, which also gives the CRTC the right to hire a third party to create it, will tell us fairly quickly, particularly if it is a private sector third party, how well the fining provisions are actually working. We need to slowly ramp up the system across the country. It will be new. There would be some onus on average citizens who do not want to receive such calls to register themselves on the list. I like the fact that even those exempt parties would be required to maintain a list.
I think that what we are really getting to here, and what my colleague rightly points out, is that there is pretty well unanimous support in the House for some type of system to really deal with the commercial telemarketing problem that we have in the country.
That reminds me, of course, of the famous scene from the comedy Seinfeld , in which Mr. Seinfeld receives a phone call in the middle of his dinner from an unwanted commercial telemarketer. He picks up the phone and says, “I'm sorry, I can't speak to you now but if you give me your number at home, I will call you at dinner hour”. The point is that Canadians are quite intolerant of the system now. I think this actually strikes the right balance. I welcome the Senate amendments.