Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-27, the electronic commerce protection act, on behalf of New Democrats. We will be supporting the bill, in principle, but we feel that it is important for it to go to committee for extensive review to ensure we get it right. I will be speaking a little later about some previous legislation where we did not get it right, and, in fact, the correction is buried in this bill.
I thank the member for Windsor West for the good work he has done on this file and look forward to more comments from him when it gets to committee.
I want to talk about some key elements of the bill, why it is needed, the cost of spam to business and citizens and some other details that are in the bill that are not directly related to electronic commerce protection.
When the government came forward with this bill it said that it was about protecting the privacy and personal security concerns associated with spam, counterfeit websites and spyware. It said that spam and related online threats were a real concern to all Internet users as they can lead to the theft of personal data, such as credit card information, which is identity theft; online fraud involving counterfeit websites, phishing; the collection of personal information through illicit access to computer systems, spyware; and false or misleading representations in the online marketplace.
The proposed legislation would also treat unsolicited text messages or cellphone spam as--