Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak today on this bill to amend the Telecommunications Act. Let us first recall the purpose of this bill. We all know what telemarketing is. What it means, in concrete terms, is that our phones ring on Friday night, or Saturday morning, or during the week, with offers to sell us the best product in the world. Often we are not very interested because we already have all the services we need.
For example, if we have just renewed our insurance policies, someone calls us to propose insurance services on a Friday night, while we are entertaining or busy with the family. If there were a way to avoid being interrupted by such calls, many people would jump at the chance. A poll by Environics, in fact, reports that 79% of Canadians say they would support a Canadian do not call list, and 66% indicated that they would subscribe to such a service. In other words, two out of three people would like to be removed from the list so they were no longer bothered by such calls.
In the United States, both legislation and practice have been developing and show interesting results on what they also refer to as a do not call list. For example, it is reported that the first year this law was in effect, 62 million Americans put themselves on the list, and there were 428,000 charges laid against offending companies. Thus, there is a way to create a means to take care of this problem.
We have already seen such things in other sectors where it was easier, such as the distribution of advertising flyers every week in the Ad-Bag. If we do not want them, they are not left at our door, and the address is corrected.
In telecommunications, we are not yet at that level. Now we even have automated telemarketing. A machine calls you up, talks to you, bothers you for several minutes. You have to answer that machine's calls. Personally, I am not very interested in getting calls from machines. Moreover, when the calls are about subjects we have no interest in, we absolutely need a way to correct the situation.
However, in the bill that was introduced and in favour of which the Bloc Québécois will vote, there are still elements that are quite imprecise. For example, the bill does not specify any exclusion provision about the list of calls that would not be allowed and those that would.
We would like not-for-profit charitable organizations to be excluded from this list. We have seen this during the most recent international events. I think that it may be appropriate not to take away this tool from organizations that are really charitable, that seek to collect funds for international aid or aid in our communities to fight poverty. However, this must be well regulated to ensure that people will not do indirectly what they could no longer do directly.
We should thus ensure that organizations that are exempted have all the necessary authorizations and permits and that they are indeed charitable organizations. There are also political parties. For the quality of democratic life, it would be important that they be exempted from this list. The same goes for business contacts, that is, we call someone, we have already established a contact and they call us back. This must be specified as much as possible so that we have an operational law that will have the desired effects.
The bill would allow the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission to administer databases for the purpose of its power under section 41, namely the power to:
--prohibit or regulate the use by any person of the telecommunications facilities of a Canadian carrier for the provision of unsolicited telecommunications to the extent that the Commission considers it necessary to prevent undue inconvenience or nuisance, giving due regard to freedom of expression.
I think we will also have to ensure something else. There are many call centres located outside Canada, and even outside North America. We sometimes receive calls from all parts of the world and we must get in touch with them. We will have to ensure that the provisions dealing with this issue in our legislation are sound and strict.
Indeed, if we were to prohibit Quebec or Canadian companies from doing this, but they could still do it indirectly, through branches in the United States or elsewhere in the world, we would not gain anything. We would only, once again, help the moving of our jobs out of the country.
We must ensure that there is adequate protection to deal with these issues, and that the procedures to prosecute these companies are very clear, so that we do not become entangled in legal battles.
The CRTC is known for the studies it does and the permits and licenses it issues. These sometimes take a lot of time. We should make sure that, when it implements this bill, the CRTC shifts into high gear, and that it has the resources to execute its mandate. It should also follow up the implementation of this bill, and make sure this follow-up is different from the one on complaints about licenses and permits so as to avoid getting mired in a multitude of complaints.
During the first year, in the United States, 428,000 complaints were filed against non complying companies. In Canada, if we had only 42,000 or 40,000, we should be able to handle them if we are to provide adequate service. If somebody is on the do not call list and still gets calls, and if he files a complaint and the situation is not corrected, this service will be counterproductive.
We must make sure this system is foolproof, operational and efficient and that penalties are tough enough to completely dissuade companies from engaging in this kind of activity when they know it is prohibited. If a company sells high value products worth $100, $200, $500 and the fine for an illegal call is $3 or $5, it will soon figure out that, with the high price of its products, it is worth taking a chance and act illegally.
So, there must be a sufficiently detailed consideration in committee. The principle of the bill is acceptable to us and we agree to support it. However, the Bloc Québécois hopes that the work in committee will allow a sufficient number of amendments to be made so as to have a real impact and ensure legislation that will truly meet the industry's current and future needs.
We see how fast the telecommunications sector is changing. Often, the regulations are outdated with regard to existing telecommunications. The legislation we pass in third reading must be as current as possible with regard to known future telecommunications. We must ensure that there will not be any problems in this regard.
The bill before us is a welcome one. It corresponds to the kind of action the public mandated us to take when it elected a minority government, in other words to correct things that were inadequate in the past. Often, in such cases, lobbying by companies was much stronger than by the public. In contrast, the fact that there is a minority government means that lobbying of the government by individuals carries more weight. This must be brought to the fore.
We have here a concrete example of a positive result. We hope we will see similar results in the government's next budget. Here again, it must contain elements presented by the opposition parties and which the government will have adopted as its own. A number correspond to commitments it made during the election campaign. Often, the day after an election, a majority government forgets the commitments it made. A minority government, however, is obligated to keep its promises, otherwise it goes back before the electorate and could pay the price.
The government still has to prove itself through its actions. In the field of telecommunications, specifically telemarketing, this is a step in the right direction. We hope that consideration in committee will ensure that the real objectives of the government and this House are reached and that the relevant amendments will be made. The Bloc Québécois will collaborate to ensure that this goal is reached.