Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to begin the referral stage debate on Bill C-37, an act to amend the Telecommunications Act. This bill would augment the powers of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, CRTC, to establish a more effective regime to protect consumers against unsolicited telemarketing in Canada.
The essential issue before us is the creation of a national do not call list for telemarketers. I am sure a number of us have received such calls, probably over the last weekend.
I want to assure hon. members that we are proposing a proven model for regulating telemarketing through this bill. It is similar to the model already in place in the United States of America. In the event that some colleagues want to say that this infringes too much on business being able to work, it in fact exists in another jurisdiction.
It is a model that seeks to balance the wishes of Canadian consumers for privacy and protection from unwanted calls, sometimes in the middle of the night, while at the same time recognizing the need for legitimate telemarketing companies to conduct their business in a regulatory framework that enables them to compete.
Let me assure the House that consumers would support this bill and 79% of respondents in a recent Environics survey indicated that they would support the creation of a national do not call list. The industry would support a national list as well as a more efficient and cost effective way to manage the lists of those who will not be receptive to their pitches.
Let me explain to the House the current legislative and regulatory framework governing unsolicited telemarketing. Section 41 of the Telecommunications Act gives the CRTC broad authority to prohibit or regulate the use by any person or telecommunication facility for unsolicited telemarketing. The section gives the commission authority to prevent undue inconvenience or nuisance given due regard to freedom of expression.
In 1994 the CRTC implemented rules that defined a call as unsolicited when explicit consent had not been obtained from the called party prior to the call. Solicitation was defined as “selling or promoting a product or service or soliciting money or moneys whether directly or on behalf of another party”. However, the CRTC restrictions do not apply to unsolicited calls that do not solicit. This includes for example, call for emergency purposes; account collections; and market and survey research.
Finally, under the 1994 rules, telemarketers are required to maintain individual do not call lists. In other words, ABC telemarketers may be notified that we do not wish for them to call, but DEF telemarketers do not know about it and they keep on calling the next weekend after the previous ones were informed not call.
These rules are now in place but in the past 10 years since they were implemented by the CRTC, they have been found to be ineffective and generally for three reasons. First, the rules have resulted in some confusion among consumers. For one thing, few consumers know that they have the right to register on a do not call list or how to go about it. Some 14% of Environics respondents reported that they had tried to make a complaint regarding an unsolicited call, but even for those consumers who wish to take advantage of these lists, the task is simply daunting.
Consumers who do not wish to receive calls need to manage their registration on the do not call lists of hundreds of companies and telemarketing agencies, the problem that I just described a while ago. These registrations are in place for three years after which the consumer must register again.
As if that is not confusing enough, some of these calls are made by way of a fax. We have had this experience. My son was describing the situation in his own home whereby a company attempts to market something or other, and of course he does not know what it is, by way of sending him a fax. That fax usually arrives in the middle of the night, but my son does not have a fax machine, so the phone rings.
However, as for the fax message that would come out on which it says how to deregister, if I can call it that, so he does not get called again, of course he does not get that because he does not have a fax machine on which to get it. The message keeps coming in and coming in. The family has a seven month old baby. The family is awakened often in the middle of the night. It is absolutely horrible to have to deal with this kind of thing.
My son has tried with the telephone company and with all kinds of people to get hold of these culprits who are doing this, but of course he cannot find out who they are. There are essentially only two ways of doing it. One is to buy a fax machine so that he could receive the first fax and then phone them back to tell them not to do it again. Alternatively, he could subscribe to the telephone company messaging service by which he could get hold of the telephone number. This is assuming that he could ever get back to that phone number because of course some of these phones can only dial out. He would not be able to dial back in even if he did that.
This is just an example of how sometimes consumers are prisoners of these kinds of things that are inflicted upon them.
That is why we need to improve the do not call database in the way that the government has recommended to us. That is why the Canadian Marketing Association is advocating a national do not call list. That does not mean that all telemarketing is wrong or fraudulent or anything like that, but there are some people who practice that trade whose ethics have some elasticity of a kind that I have just described.
The current regime, as I have said, is not very effective because it is difficult to enforce. When customers receive further calls from firms for which they registered on the individual do not call list it is hard for them to prove that they were registered on the specific company's list. I have had that problem. In most cases in my own house, the calls are always faxed messages. There is a phone number at the bottom of the fax. One can phone back, but like most people, after we phone to register with them that they should not do it again, if that is what we want to do, we usually throw out the piece of paper. Then when they start it again a month later, it is rather hard to prove that it was the same company.
In any case, if people have received some of this solicitation they know that the letterhead seems to change quite often anyway. I am not sure that a person would ever recognize whether it is the same people making contact or a different group of individuals altogether.
The telecom carriers such as Bell or Telus have the responsibility for enforcing the do not call registrations, but again, these companies are trying to compete for the business of telemarketers. It puts them in a rather difficult situation.
In any case, I am not sure that for the actions I described a moment ago, at least the ones I and other members of my family have personally lived, that we could ever do anything with the phone company about them, because there is no log of a call that has already been made, at least not that I know of.
The telecom carriers are reluctant to pursue action against the company. From the perspective of the consumer, it is difficult to determine with which telecom carrier to lodge a complaint. In short, then, as for enforcement, perhaps non-existent is a strong word, but it is very complicated at best.
The time has come for a more effective approach to regulating unsolicited telemarketing, an approach that will benefit both consumers and the telemarketing industry and one that will be easier to enforce. That is why I am supporting this bill.