Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to see the hon. member mention the value of this legislation in countering fraudulent marketing. However, I remind him that additional legislation, and amendments to the Criminal Code, will be required, since we are dealing with a very organized industry. There may be cases of fraudulent marketing which do not, strictly speaking, involve bad faith, but which do not respect the law. So, this is included in the bill.
As for the whole telemarketing industry, the basic principle is mentioned in the legislation. This means that a person whose name is on the do not call list will not receive any unwanted call, unless the call is made by one of the sectors for which amendments were deemed appropriate. In the examples mentioned by the hon. member, which are more of a commercial nature, such exclusions would not be possible, except to allow a reasonable exchange between the parties, after a transaction.
I want to point out that if a telemarketing company is pleased, as the member indicated, it is because we are providing an advantage to the whole industry by ensuring that these companies will only call people who want to receive their calls. Until now, a very significant percentage of calls were fruitless and time consuming, because people would hang up or say, after a minute, that they were not interested at all. So, the costs to these companies will be reduced, since these consumers will be excluded.
On a different note, we would like the do not call list to be managed by someone outside the Canadian marketing industry, to ensure the greatest possible transparency. In conclusion, we will see how this process is managed in the coming years, until the act is reviewed, in three years, as provided in the bill, which should be passed today.