Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in support of Bill C-37, an act to amend the Telecommunications Act.
Consumers will no doubt welcome a bill designed to give them an easy, effective way to curtail intrusive telemarketing. Many may turn to the do not call list as a means to preserve their privacy.
But what about the impact of this bill on the telemarketing industry? What about its impact on the call centres that provide jobs for Canadians? If this bill is such good news for consumers, does it spell bad news for the industry?
Canada has become one of the key locations for call centres. Canada's established reputation in the call centre industry is due to its highly skilled, multilingual personnel. Other advantages include excellent telecommunications infrastructure, competitive labour costs and overall lower business costs.
Many companies have located their call centres in Canada to take advantage of these opportunities. According to a 2004 customer contact centre study, there are more than 6,000 call centres in Canada employing 360,000 call centre workers. Between 2002 and 2003, an estimated 128 customer contact centre deals or expansions were made in Canada, creating 40,000 new jobs.
Are these jobs at risk if the CRTC implements a national do not call list? To find an answer to that question, I think it is important that the House understand the changing nature of the call centre industry. I would like to review the difference between outbound and inbound telemarketing.
Some call centres make so-called cold calls to potential customers, customers with whom no previous relationship exists. As I am sure my colleagues who have ever received a call from such a telemarketer will appreciate, these salespeople go through many no responses before they get a yes. That is the nature of cold call marketing. They must make many calls where the answer is negative before they find someone on the other end of the line to answer that they are interested in the product or service being offered.
The chances of getting a yes improve significantly if these outbound sales people are working on a list that does not include the people who explicitly state that they do not want to be called. This is an effective way to reduce the number of unsuccessful calls and thereby increase the efficiency and productivity of the people in the outbound sector of the telemarketing industry.
In fact, the Canadian Marketing Association itself sees the creation of a national do not call list as a preferable form of regulation to the alternatives.
For example, under the current regulation, individual telemarketing companies must maintain their own do not call lists. This current system makes no one happy. Telemarketers are not happy because maintaining such a list is an administrative expense. Consumers are not happy because even if they register on one company's list, they are still going to be pestered by scores of other telemarketing companies.
The creation of a national do not call list will present a more cost effective and efficient way of regulating the industry. Consumers will opt into it. Telemarketers will pay to subscribe to it, thus supporting its maintenance.
There are also significant changes taking place in the call centre industry, which make the do not call list approach well timed. A transition to inbound calling is underway. Call centres for this new kind of telemarketing are called customer relationship management contract centres. These call centres make up the vast majority of the industry today. This fast growing sector consists of customer order and catalogue sales, assistance for online sales and service centres for handling inbound calls.
The bill before us would have no impact on inbound calls.
Perhaps it is useful to consider what has happened to the industry in the United States, where a national do not call registry has been in effect for more than a year.
In the United States, the percentage of outbound calls from call centres as a total of their business has been decreasing for several years, since 1998, in fact, five years before the passage of do not call legislation. The percentage of inbound calls has been increasing.
A similar trend has occurred in Canada, with 90% of Canadian contact centres having an inbound focus while only 10% are focused on outbound calls. The nature of the call centres in Canada has already changed.
I believe we will see this trend continue once the CRTC puts in place a national do not call list. The call centres will be more focused on giving the people at the other end of the telephone line better service for something they already have rather than making cold calls to try to persuade them to buy something new. I believe this is a much more stable business case on which to create jobs.
We want a regulatory environment where consumers have more control over who contacts them. We want a regulatory environment where a telemarketer that implements a well developed business plan will be able to succeed. That is the balance that is struck in the bill.
I encourage the House to support this legislation.