Debates of Nov. 30th, 2009

Electronic Commerce Protection Act

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl for an excellent overview of the bill and more explicitly some of the insights. It is easy to come here and talk about all the nice things the bill does, but the member raised a number of issues that the bill does not address. That is extremely important. I want to take this opportunity to thank her for thinking about the rest of us who have other responsibilities.

She raised a specific issue with regard to disclosures required for the CRTC. The hope was that they would be exempted from access to information legislation, but that provision could not be put into the bill. It does raise the point that when there are unintended consequences, a mechanism is needed.

Would the member undertake to ask the committee if it would consider writing a letter to the Minister of Justice who is responsible for the Access to Information Act to consider such an amendment to the act and failing that, to write a letter to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics bringing the matter to the attention of the committee so that the committee may consider such an amendment?

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, when we spoke of this in committee the response from officials was that there was sufficient coverage under the protections of the Privacy Act. They felt this was sufficient to cover the concerns we were raising. The Canadian Bankers Association raised the issue and thought that some of the provisions under the Telecommunications Act would have given better protection. I thank my hon. colleague for his suggestion and will certainly take that under advisement as to how we could best move forward to ensure that those provisions are in place.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, this bill is somewhat complex and it would prohibit a fair amount of activity. Its purpose as set out in clause 3 is to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating commercial conduct that discourages the use of electronic means to carry out certain activities that impose additional costs on businesses and consumers.

After prohibiting the sending of electronic messages unless there has been consent, expressed or implied, and prohibiting all sorts of activities, an exclusion is made for an electronic message that is sent by means of a facsimile to a telephone account.

I do not know if the hon. member is familiar with people re-sending advertising by facsimile to another individual's fax machine using the individual's paper, ink, toner and supplies. To send an electronic message all the sender does is press a button and that message can be sent to 1,000, 2,000 or 3,000 people. That would seem to cause an additional burden on people who do not necessarily want to get 500 ads for a $250 trip to Florida or wherever, and other impossible ideas that are being put forward. I see them all the time and I am sure the hon. member and others have seen them as well.

I wonder if the member could comment on that and why that might not be prohibited in this legislation as well.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the member for St. John's East raised a very interesting question. This legislation would apply to electronic commerce. It is an anti-spam bill. Many jurisdictions around the world have anti-spam legislation. Canada is strengthening its legislation and that is why we are supporting this bill.

With respect to the member's question about whether facsimiles would fall under this bill, I would assume it would depend on whether it was sent by a fax port contained on a computer, if it is electronic commerce from the Internet itself. As to whether or not it falls under the jurisdiction of this bill would depend on whether or not it was sent from a fax port on a computer or from a telephone to another telephone.

Bill C-27 was designed to capture those types of spam activities the hon. member mentioned, but it depends on where it comes from as to whether or not it would be captured.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to raise another matter. This is a new one on me which happened this past week and it is called spoofing. Someone can actually encroach on a system and create emails representing someone else. In my case, it was representing me, and it was a direct letter to the premier of Ontario concerning a tax. I did not send the message. I had it investigated. There is now the ability for someone to send an email to someone else that looks as though it came from a third party.

I am wondering whether or not that situation came up in the hearings and consideration of this bill at committee.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, spoofing did not come up specifically when we were reviewing this bill. We talked a lot about phishing and spamming and all the new words that are associated with electronic commerce. As the bill progresses, I am sure we are going to have a ton more of these new terms.

It would depend on how the spoofing is actually done as to whether or not it would be captured under this bill, I would assume, only because of the mechanisms and means under the bill.

The hon. member has raised an incredibly important issue. This bill is going to need constant attention. That was one of the reasons we were concerned about the bill's narrowness and its philosophy. What are we going to do with all of the new issues that arise with respect to the Internet and some of the new illegitimate spamming activities?

The member asked a legitimate question. Spoofing would hopefully be captured in this legislation depending on how it is done and the extent of it.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member whether she is satisfied with the penalties that are listed in the bill. They seem to be fairly adequate but we have to take into account criminal organizations and other organizations that may not be deterred by penalties that are not high enough.

In her opinion, are the penalties at sufficient levels to prevent criminal organizations from getting involved in this activity?

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, that is an important question.

In assessing other jurisdictions, it seemed that Canada was strengthening the measures in this bill to ensure the penalties were sufficient enough and that it would deter spamming. We looked at other jurisdictions such as Australia and New Zealand that implemented similar types of legislation. They found that spamming decreased substantially as soon as the legislation was put in place. The combination will certainly be powerful to ensure that spamming is decreased.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-27 at third reading. We will be supporting this bill. Hopefully it will have a very brief but successful trip through the Senate and will become law in Canada in short order. I would hate to see it held up in the Senate and/or have an election in between and then have to start over again.

As numerous members have mentioned in the debate on this bill, Canada is pretty much the last major country to bring in legislation of this kind. Having an election every two years has put us in this situation. Legislation like this should have been brought in three or four years ago, maybe even longer than that.

I was involved in setting up the e-commerce legislation in Manitoba. The bill was tabled in the Manitoba legislature on June 5, 2000. At that time Manitoba was not the first province to introduce e-commerce legislation. It was modelled on the Uniform Law Conference legislation. There was a Uniform Electronic Commerce Act. Manitoba used that chassis to build its legislation.

There may have been two or three provinces to introduce legislation before Manitoba did, but certainly when Manitoba's legislation was passed, it was the most comprehensive of its kind in Canada. That was almost 10 years ago and most other provinces, if not all, now have that basic underlying legislation. For the member who just spoke, the spam bill is a complement to that type of legislation. When legislation was first introduced in 2001, I am not even certain we knew what spam was. I do not think it was an issue at that point. When it did become an issue, I am guessing in 2003 or thereabouts, that is when the federal government took note of the problem and started to look at bringing in legislation.

In the era of computers and the Internet, we are all familiar with how fast things move. In the last 100 years the Pony Express was replaced by the telegraph system. Those things took time. There was a period of maybe 10 to 30 years where that technology was predominant. Now we are in an environment where the lifespan of technology is a year or two. Had Parliament adopted this bill two or three years ago, at that time I do not think we had heard of Facebook, Twitter or some of the other new technologies out there.

This legislation always will be a work in progress. After we pass this bill, no doubt loopholes will develop over time. We will simply have to plug those loopholes with future amendments or create an entirely new piece of legislation to deal with the problem at hand. There is a lot to talk about with respect to this bill.

On April 24, the Minister of Industry introduced this Bill C-27, An Act to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities, and to amend the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Telecommunications Act, in the House of Commons.

We are amending four acts in this process. The bill is called the electronic commerce protection act. It passed second reading on May 8 of this year and was referred to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology on the same day.

In addition to creating this new bill, the bill amends the four existing acts that deal with telecommunications, regulations, competition and privacy. Among other changes, these amendments designate the CRTC as the main regulator of this act, although both the Commissioner of Competition and the Privacy Commissioner will also play enforcement roles related to their respective mandates.

The bill is the culmination of a process that began with the anti-spam action plan for Canada, launched by the Government of Canada in 2004, although I thought it started around 2003. It established a private sector task force, chaired by Industry Canada, to examine the issue of unsolicited commercial email or spam.

By the end of 2004, spam, which is in many ways the electronic equivalent of junk mail, had grown to encompass 80% of all global email traffic. As has been mentioned before, bandwidth is a big issue. It is less of an issue today than it was seven or eight years ago because of all the dark fibre builds that are built by various communities and so on. We have seen an astronomical increase in the amount of bandwidth due to the dark fibre builds, due to other bandwidth proposals that have been promoted and financed by Industry Canada, which was involved in some of them.

What this has spawned at the end of the day is more spam. Just the other day we talked about the child pornography legislation. We said that there was a timeframe and in roughly the last four or five years child pornography had exploded as a problem. If we take that back, we come down to the question of bandwidth.

Ten years ago all we could get on our computers was maybe 15 frames per second. Then it became 30 frames per second. I mentioned before that the Rolling Stones was the first band to put one of its songs on the Internet. It could be seen as choppy frames when watched. Now we have full colour movies being seen on the computer. This is as a result of that enormous increase in bandwidth that has occurred just in the last half a dozen years and with that, the improvements in the technology to be able to carry that bandwidth.

Clearly, it was the great development we all said it would be. We said that tremendous bandwidth was something we would use to facilitate our electronic health records so we could put MRI images and X-ray technologies onto a hospital system and simply send it to the next hospital. It could also be used for distance education.

In fact, that is happening, but the downside of this is we have the criminal elements taking advantage of the bandwidth for their purposes. Their purposes are to use things like spam and so on for their benefit, to take money from people and to involve themselves in criminal activities.

The task force on spam, which led to the action plan, held a round table of national stakeholders in December 2004 and it solicited feedback from other stakeholders and Canadians through announcements in the Canada Gazette and in a dedicated online forum set up for this purpose. The task force issued a report in May 2005, examining the spam situation in Canada and recommended, among other measures, that legislation specifically aimed at combatting spam be created. The bill is the result of that process.

The federal government issued a news release to accompany the bill, which thanked the task force, as well as two senators who were involved in developing their own bills. Both senators have introduced bills concerning spam in the Senate during the past few years. This bill is a more extensive and complex bill than previous proposals.

What we have seen happen over the last several years is that when one bill has not had success, then the subsequent bill has been an improvement over that bill.

It will also involve several agencies in the regulation of spam, including the Competition Bureau, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the CRTC. In addition to setting up a regulatory scheme to deal with spam in Canada, it gives these agencies the power to share information and evidence within our international counterparts in order to deal with spam coming from outside the country. We are literally dealing with an international problem.

The government indicates in its backgrounder on the proposed legislation that the bill is intended to deter the most dangerous and damaging form of spam from occurring in Canada and to drive the spammers outside of Canada. Unfortunately, when we end up driving them outside of Canada, we just drive them somewhere else. That is why we have to work on a worldwide basis to deal with this issue.

The bill can be seen, as I mentioned before, as a complement to the e-commerce legislation that has been gradually developing in each of the Canadian provinces and territories over the last years. That e-commerce legislation set the foundation for e-commerce in the country. By the way, it was at a time when people were not yet buying things online. We were looking at ways to promote e-commerce and people were saying they were very reluctant using their credit card information on the computer to buy the product.

As part of Manitoba'S bill 31, we put in some consumer legislation which, at the time, was only in effect in three states in the United States. This consumer legislation made it a requirement for credit card companies to reimburse the customers, if they purchased something online and did not get the product. It was designed for peace of mind, to get people to accept the fact that if they used their credit card to purchase something on the computer, they need not worry. If they did not get the product, they would not be out the money. Credit card companies were held responsible and they were not happy. They came to the Manitoba government and to its committees to tell them that this was terrible, that they should not be held responsible for this.

However, we were interested in bigger fish, at that time, than the consumer part of the legislation. While that was important, the real reason we brought in the legislation in the first place was to enable the government to streamline the way businesses interacted with government and to facilitate the creation of the common business identifier. For those who know what that is, it was a means of having a common identifier for each business in dealing with governments at all levels.

Up until that time we had a common business identifier for the federal government and then we had a different business identifier for the province. If the business dealt with the province, it had one number. If it dealt with the federal government, it had another number. By streamlining this, we were able to save the province a lot of money at the end of the day by getting all the businesses transferred over to a single business identifier and that eventually led to them being able to pay their taxes and payroll deductions and so on through the Internet. Without that framework that all the provinces set up in those days, we could not have facilitated this seamlessness among the federal government, the provincial government and the business community. As a result of all of that, the business community, by and large, is filing its payroll deductions and T4s by e-file. Other dealings with the government are all being done that way.

There was at that time a major scandal in Ottawa regarding the databases. Ms. Stewart had a problem on her hands, the major Liberal boondoggle of the day. This was when we were doing this. There was some concern from the opposition about how far we were prepared to go, whether there would be problems with database sharing and so on. Whenever we try to do something, there is always a negative side of it that we have to look at, and it slows down what is a good idea.

In terms of the electronic commerce and the e-government initiatives, the common business identifier I just talked about was really low-hanging fruit for all governments to work with, because they controlled all the elements of it. So far that has been very successful. Once again, this is simply a companion bill to those original pieces of legislation.

The bill would expand the federal government's participation. The federal legislation related to e-commerce governs the basic privacy requirements for private sector organizations and electronic documents within federal jurisdictions and provinces and territories that have not yet set up their similar legislation. In a number of cases, the provinces opt to sign on to the federal legislation and therefore they avoid developing their own legislation.

As I said, Canada is the last of the G8 countries to introduce specific anti-spam legislation. Some existing Criminal Code provisions were identified by the task force as being of possible assistance in prosecuting spam cases. The task force worked with the Department of Justice and the technological crime branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police during 2004 and 2005 to identify the evidentiary requirements to bring a charge under the existing provisions, although when the task force report was published, these provisions had not been used for this purpose.

Other agencies, such as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Competition Bureau have received complaints from members of the public about spam as well, and there has been no over-arching framework for addressing such complaints.

The listening public may not be familiar with some of these terms. They would be familiar with identity theft. Phishing is certainly a popular word these days, although a lot of people do not know what it is. There are also spyware, viruses and botnets. The bill will also grant additional right of civil action to businesses and consumer targeted by perpetrators of such activities.

The definition of phishing is the impersonation of a trusted person or organization in order to steal a person's personal information, usually for the purposes of identity theft. The only other one that I would mention is botnet, because people do not necessarily know what that is. A botnet is the collection of zombie computers used to send spam or for another purpose. A zombie is a computer that runs malware so the computer can be remotely controlled by the creator, distributor or controller of the malware.

Once again I am short of time, but I am ready and very eager to take questions from my colleagues.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for reminding the members about some of the specific provisions in the bill. There are still some concerns. The member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl raised a couple of the issues that were there, particularly with regard to disagreements among some of the witnesses about whether or not their privacy protection would be adequately covered.

One of the examples that she used was where reporting requirements to the CRTC would, in fact, be protected from access under the Access to Information Act. No changes are proposed to the Access to Information Act at this point. It does raise a question about whether or not the process of legislation has taken consequential implications into account. I guess that would be one example. I do not know if the member has others.

I do have some concerns that we will be dealing in an area in which the velocity of information and the kinds of technological tools that have been developed so rapidly may always be one step ahead of the legislation in this place unless we get a better process in place.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely correct. That is why we have the committee process in the first place. It is so bankers and many others can come in and see that there is an exposure here. Somebody actually could file a freedom of information request and that banker information that they had given to the CRTC would then in fact be provided to the person who requested it.

I have said that, as the shortcomings of this bill and every bill that we have ever passed are noted, there will be vigilant politicians, many of them who are right here in this corner of the House today, who will be very willing and able to introduce amendments.

I have asked many questions about how this bill will deal with businesses. This is going to be a minefield and a problem for many small businesses. Certainly, businesses want to know that they can deal with their long-term clients and not have to get into trouble if they contact them. That is an issue. If a real estate agent sold a house to somebody three, four or five years ago, does the agent have the right to contact the owner?

I asked my friend from Burnaby that question because that is something to think about. Evidently, there has been an amendment put in by one of the parties to increase that period, but it still may not be long enough.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-27 is the spam bill. We are thankful that it is finally back in the House because the NDP industry critic, the member for Windsor West, indicated that he despaired that it was ever coming back here. We know how important it is.

Should the bill pass here in the House, which it seems likely to soon, get through the Senate and become law, what is then required? I know my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona asked another member earlier about the kind of advertising program that is necessary to ensure that the public are aware of this legislation and how it would affect them, but also how businesses would be aware of the legislation and the effect that it would have on their business and the way they did business.

I know he was just asking a question about how this would affect real estate agents, for instance, who go back to their former client list and try to use it again as they pursue business. I wonder if he can comment on that aspect of what is necessary concerning this legislation.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I know that in the case of the charity legislation, it too was one of those pieces of legislation that had to start over again with each election, and even though there are thousands of charities in the country, only a small percentage of them, after two or three times of getting the legislation through the House, even know that this legislation exists.

I am not sure exactly what the answer is here, but what I am saying is that the government has enough money to spend millions on feel-good advertising, basically just short of outright political advertising. Surely, it can put some money aside to advertise such an important bill as this to the public and to the businesses, and work out some creative ways of getting the information out there to the business community, so that it can start following the act correctly and not get itself into a situation where it is doing things it is not supposed to be doing because I do not think that most business people would want to do that.

That is where we get into the issue of real estate agents, insurance agents, and other people who have a business relationship with clients. How far back can they go to solicit the business? If an agent sold a house to someone five or ten years ago, does he or she have the right to send the owner a letter or contact the owner regarding a house sale? That was really my question there.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the speech of the member for Elmwood—Transcona, which gave us a lot of useful information on the legislation.

A lot of the activity that would be prohibited is currently legal, but on the other hand, a lot of the things that people complain about are actually illegal even now. If I get an email message purporting to be from the Bank of Commerce or the Royal Bank that there has been a error in my account and asking me to give my bank account number and PIN, that is obviously somebody committing a fraud. That is illegal now. I am assuming that this legislation is not going to change that and we do not need this legislation for that.

Then there is the person writing a letter saying he or she is the spouse of some former or deceased, corrupt government official in Africa and has $10 million to share with me. That is already illegal and maybe this bill can do nothing about that because it comes from Nigeria, the U.K. or some offshore account.

The first question is, would this bill stop anything coming internationally and are there mechanisms to co-operate with other governments to make that illegal here in Canada? The crime may not be committed here, for example, yet someone has access to email accounts or addresses within Canada. That was one question that I had concerns about.

Would this be something that would help that? I suppose if there were, he would have told us, but we know that when we had the do not call list, it turned into an opportunity for people to get access to all these numbers and as soon people signed up for the do not call list, they started getting calls.

Are there any fatal flaws like that in this bill that the member is aware of?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it has never ceased to amaze me that people will go to a boat show or some show, and willingly give out all their private information to join a free draw, when they should know that the boat seller is simply going to take the card and contact them about buying a boat, and that they are all going to be winners in the draw that happens afterward.

When things are going in their favour, they are very supportive, eager and happy, but if it gets into a situation that they are not happy about, then the argument about their privacy rights or other rights becomes an issue here.

It is a big minefield for businesses when they are dealing with this type of legislation. It really depends upon the people themselves as to whether or not they want to make complaints.

This bill has a provision for people to take action on their own. There is no provision for class action here, but if the CRTC does not take action, there is a provision for an individual right of action, which the member, as a lawyer, will know is probably a valuable addition to the bill.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

I declare the motion carried.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed)

The House resumed from October 9 consideration of the motion that Bill C-44, An Act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Canada Post Corporation Act

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to debate the government's attempt at privatizing Canada Post part two. Part one was Bill C-14, which was introduced about two years ago, and to refresh people's memories, it was not that long a bill. Neither is Bill C-44, the one now before us now. They are exactly the same bills. It is important to state, as my comments will show, that they are exactly the same bills with different numbers and dates on it. The sole purpose is to privatize part of Canada Post.

Interestingly, however, we hear government members stand and say that they do not agree with privatization. It is in their famed report, the strategic review that says that they do not agree with privatization. In this case, however, all they need is a little deregulation and they automatically get privatization because it is already there. Talk about a major flip-flop.

The government began its tenure in government supporting the fact that all mail delivered within Canada is the responsibility of Canada Post and any mail delivered anywhere is the responsibility of Canada Post. However, as I will show, the government flip-flopped and I am not sure where the Liberals are. I will mention them a couple of times but they are, as a Liberal colleague said, skating on this one and the skate is set to music in this case.

I wanted to mention the strategic plan early on because the Conservatives did a strategic review of the Canada Post Corporation. There may be some members of the government who are tempted to say that they are going for this because of the recommendation in here. We need to understand that the first bill, Bill C-14, was introduced before this report was done. Who is really surprised that a government hand-picked committee came up with a report that, get ready for the shock, endorsed the government's position? Wow, who would have thought that a group of people selected by the government would recommend a major change in the way Canada Post operates and it just happens to line up beautifully with where the government is? It is a wondrous world. I will come back to that report.

I want to begin with the Canada Post Corporation Act, one small part of this law. Part 1, Objects, section 5.(1)(b) reads as follows:

the need to conduct its operations on a self-sustaining financial basis while providing a standard of service that will meet the needs of the people of Canada and that is similar with respect to communities of the same size;

The operative language is “on a self-sustaining financial basis”. If we were not there, there might be some kind of argument that the government could make that it should make this change. If we were on a trend line that showed that in the near future Canadians would need to start either increasing the cost of postage or, worse yet, giving direct subsidies to keep it afloat.

What is the reality, one might ask, so we know the context. The reality right now is that Canada Post makes a small profit so it is currently meeting the mandate of a self-sustaining basis. It sounds like it is meeting its mandate. Why would we make this change? Will the change do any harm to the ability of Canada Post to meet its mandate of being self-sustaining financially?

Let us go back to the last review. We have the government and its current review which says that we ought to stop giving Canada Post the exclusive privilege of dealing with all mail.

What the last report in 1996 said about this very idea, the whole purpose of this bill that we are dealing with right now, about that singular idea that is the singular purpose of Bill C-44, is:

Removal of the exclusive privilege would be tantamount, in effect, to tossing Canada's postal system up into the air, allowing it to smash into a random assortment of pieces, and hoping that those pieces would somehow re-arrange themselves into a coherent whole that was better or at least as good as the current system.

What has changed since 1996? I know. The government, and the official opposition which used to be the government so they might not want to laugh too hard yet until we get to the bottom line. There will be time for them, so they should not get too upset.

In 1996, there was no mistake, the government of the day did support keeping Canada Post intact. Another review came up with that conclusion. Is that the only conclusion? No. This is so critical; there is lots of evidence. I wish I had much more than 20 minutes to get it all on the floor of the House of Commons about why we ought not do this and what the experts, the people with the experience, have had to say about this idea over the years. However, I will do my best to get the main pieces tabled.

What did Canada Post say at that time? It is a little quieter these days. It does not say as much, certainly not as much in support of the Canada Post that most Canadians want. At the time, Canada Post said:

For as long as it is the public policy of Canada to provide universal letter service at uniform rates, it will be necessary to maintain the limited exclusive privilege for letters.

This bill undoes that.

Now who else might have something to say about this? Well, cabinet ministers who are responsible for Canada Post often have things to say. What did the Conservative cabinet minister responsible for Canada Post say in a letter dated July 25, 2006? He said:

The activities of international remailers cost Canada Post millions of dollars each year and erodes the Corporation's ability to maintain a healthy national postal service and provide universal service to all Canadians.

That was a Conservative minister of the Conservative government on record, in writing.

I will introduce one more piece to the foundation of our position on this. The situation is that these private enterprises started encroaching into this business and then started getting into it in a big way. Canada Post told them to stop but they did not. it tried a negotiation process but that did not work. So, given the mandate that it has under law, it did what any Canadian or any Canadian corporation would do if somebody was wronging them, it took them to court. Canada Post won.

However, because these international remailers are so committed to the Canadian postal service, they appealed that decision. On May 8, 2007, the Ontario Court of Appeals brought down its ruling. Justice McFarland wrote on behalf of the three judge panel who had a unanimous decision. They said:

The purpose of the statutory privilege can only be to enable CP to fulfill its statutory mandate or realize its objects. It is meant to be self-sustaining financially while at the same time providing similar standards of service throughout our vast country. Profits are realized in densely populated areas which subsidize the services provided in the more sparsely populated areas.

Is it that hard to understand? We have a huge, beautiful country but it does present serious challenges in terms of presenting and providing the same level of service in downtown Toronto as in downtown Hamilton, Vancouver, Halifax, Yellowknife and, quite frankly, all the other far flung reaches of this country. It is expensive and has challenges in addition to money in terms of having the human resources.

We have this great formula in Canada right now whereby there is enough money being made to tell Canada Post to do it all but that we will regulate it, that it will be responsible to Parliament through a minister, that we will provide the law and regulations, but that its purpose is to provide this service at a world level and be self-sustaining.

Nobody likes an increase in the price of postage stamps or anything like that, but the fact is that currently Canada has one of the lowest cost postal services in the world. That would be one kind of a brag if we are talking about Austria, but to make that brag when we talk about Canada is pretty darn good and it has been pretty good.

There are always problems. I am sure that is not a person in this room who does not have one postal or letter story or another, so be it, but in a large corporation that size that is not surprising. The reality for most people is that the service is okay. It can always be better but it is not horribly broken and inefficient. It is quite the contrary. It is efficient enough to generate a little profit.

What is on the floor now would have the effect of taking that ability away. Why is the government doing it? It did not have that position before and now it has it right after the judge's decision.

This is what it looks like. It looks like a group of entrepreneurs, and there is nothing wrong with that, got into this business, struggled with Canada Post, lost the struggle, went to court, lost, appealed it, lost and then found friends in the Conservative government and said, “We cannot seem to get our argument past the courts with that darn monopoly that Canada Post has that lets it generate this modest profit, so what we would like is for you to change the law and then we will not be violating the law. We can keep on doing what we are doing and whatever happens to Canada Post, that is your problem”.

It is similar to a lot of the issues at the core of privatization. They cherry-pick the things that make the most money, privatize that and make bags of money, usually with non-union workers, but it is a free country but that is a little point to make, and leave the expensive parts, like delivering mail to Yellowknife or Iqaluit, to the government, which will be the first one to talk about how much it costs and how outrageously inefficient the system is.

We have a system that is not perfect but the financial structure allows us to maintain and expand our service to pay the workers a decent wage and benefits. It is not as good as what they deserve for the work they do but it is a decent wage and benefits. All that is done and Canadians do not need to give it a thought. It is taken care of because of the way it is structured.

In effect, by deregulating this particular section, by taking it out of the existing law, the government would make legal the privatization of Canada Post work that is prohibited under the current law. One little change and suddenly what is not allowed in the front door comes merrily bouncing through the back door. That is what is going on.

The government is going to stand and talk about jobs and this, that and the other thing, and the reality is the question is not whether there will be jobs. The question is whether those jobs are going to be outside Canada Post and therefore deny Canada Post the financial ability to provide the service and to be financially self-sustaining, as the law mandates and as it has been doing. That is the real rub.

If this thing were broken and nothing were working and Canada Post were running a massive deficit, one could make arguments for some kind of fix and correction. However, that is not the case.

The people who will be celebrating, should this bill pass, are the owners of the companies doing the re-mailing. That is why I mention the official opposition because I do not know where the Liberals are. They supported Bill C-14, which was the exact same bill, word for word. The current critic is listening to the member for Toronto Centre and skating up and getting ready to go. What I heard was that they put out some nonsense that they were going to support it at this hearing so they could get it to committee and then at committee, they would worry about the jobs that should be at Canada Post and about where the money was going to come from. It is all just a scam.

The fact of the matter is this is a straight-up question. My colleague from the Bloc spoke in the last go-round and made it very clear that there is no nuancing here; there are no maybes or ifs or any kind of dodging. It is very simple: we either support the right of Canada Post to maintain the exclusive privilege and therefore to have the ability to be financially viable, or we do not.

I say to the official opposition, if they join with us and the Bloc, we could kill this. We could save Canada Post. There are a lot of people who use Canada Post and who work for Canada Post and are beneficiaries of the services of Canada Post who do not want this to happen. They do not want it to happen for the very practical reason that it does not make sense. It only makes sense if we think about the owners of these corporations that are doing the re-mailing, the mailing outside Canada, mostly to the United States, right next door. That is where the money is. That is where the volume is. That is where the big bucks are. Of course they want this.

They are going to talk to us about the jobs. Move those jobs out of where they are now and put them in Canada Post and I will bet that every one of those employees will be making more money than he or she is today, and Canada Post would still turn a modest profit. There is a win-win-win situation.

However, the owners of the companies that are currently illegally doing this work would be so heartbroken to see this die. It is the best Christmas present they could ever get, and they would have received it because of the handiwork of the Conservatives and, until I hear differently, from the support of the Liberals, who will have changed their position from having supported Canada Post the way it was to supporting this nonsense.

We can stop all of that. Do Canada Post, Canadians and Canadian business a big favour by voting this bill down and out.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his expertise and passion in defending Canada Post and all it stands for.

As a Canadian who has been following our political scene over the years and having recently become involved in politics, what I see is a progressive loss of control of our way of life by government. I see what could be called the Milton Friedman philosophy of deregulation, privatization and government pulling out and allowing the corporate sector to take over. I see this as another step in that direction, often at the expense of jobs and of a system that works.

In my province of British Columbia, the government-owned railway, BC Rail, was sold. This railway company was generating a profit. We are in the process of losing public power, BC Hydro.

Does my colleague feel this is just another one of a number of steps toward privatizing our way of life to bring in more corporate control?

There are other examples, such as the Canadian Wheat Board, which is under attack by the Conservative government even though it is efficient and making money for farmers.

People in Canada Post receive a decent wage and provide us with a service.

Is this another step in an attack on our Canadian way of life?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had the experience of eight years of the Mike Harris government in Ontario, and privatization was the way to go. His government privatized anything it could lay its hands on. I will give one quick example because Ontarians need to know the history.

Highway 407 was sold after it was bought and built by the Ontario taxpayer and was making money. It was sold by the Mike Harris government and all of the profit from that sale went into election year revenues as one line of income in the budget. To this day, those of us who use the 407 are paying hugely higher tolls than the going rate around the world for a similar type of toll road.

One of the things that is most exasperating about this is that when the Conservatives sell off the country's crown jewels, not to pay the bills but to ensure that their rich friends become richer, we do not even get the fire sale dollar amount that we would normally get. One change in the law and all of that would suddenly stay with the private side, which gets to make all of the money and Canada gets nothing from it. Nothing.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his animated presentation because it is actually time that we became a little animated about what is happening.

We are even seeing it to some extent in regard to the CBC. The member may recall that there was a provision in the last budget, Bill C-51, whereby the borrowing authority of CBC was being increased and everybody thought that was a good thing. However, it was being increased simply because the government would not provide the resources necessary for CBC to continue to deliver services to Canadians. With that borrowing authority the government is actually cashing in the leasing revenues on buildings that it owns but does not use just to provide the cash flow that it needs. It is done just to survive. I characterize that as one of the next steps in the privatization of the CBC.

With regard to Canada Post and the re-mailer situation, I would like to ask the member if he could inform the House of a bit of the history. I ask because was told by someone, and I just want to just confirm it, how the re-mailer situation arose and what options may be available to address it either by remediation of a mistake that happened before, or by some sort of arrangement made on a one time basis to grandfather current provisions as opposed to trying to unravel what has been done.