Mr. Speaker, as I see it, there are two problems that this legislation is trying to address.
The first is obviously the problem of spam as a vehicle to perpetrate online fraud, whether that be phishing or identity theft, spyware, spoofing, counterfeiting, malware, botnets and the like.
The other part of the problem that this bill is attempting to address is the fact that even if spam were not a vehicle for online fraud, even if spam were not a delivery mechanism for all these malicious types of computer programs, even if spam were not doing anything malicious in terms of what it is delivering to people's computer inboxes, it has a second major problem that is often overlooked, which is that it chews up a huge amount of bandwidth, of storage space on corporate and other computer systems. It is reported that up to 85% of all email traffic in the world is spam, and that costs a huge amount to Canadian businesses in terms of bandwidth usage, in terms of storage space, and that is often overlooked.
Much of the spam cannot be blocked by firewalls or routers or other forms of technology. The proof is that when we go into our Hotmail account or Yahoo! Mail account or Gmail account, there will be a folder for spam, because spam cannot even be blocked from entering into their systems and their networks. This has a huge hidden cost for the Internet, both for consumers and for Canadian businesses.
I wonder if the member would comment on that.