Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the member's comments and observations. I, too, would like to hear from some government members and to ask them questions for more clarity.
The question, what is commercial and what is not, is a very interesting question. If a broker asks a person to go for lunch, is it a personal question or is it a business question, because clearly the broker is trying to ask the potential customer out to discuss business?
The question also is: Who decides whether it is spam or not? In a lot of cases, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I see big problems here for small businesses and the opt-in approach. What is a business supposed to do, wait until the customers come in because the business person is fearful that he or she cannot contact his or her customers without a consent form being signed?
We have a potential here for huge costs unless we have a grandfather clause saying that if a business has 1,000 customers, it is allowed to contact those customers. The customer list would be grandfathered in as of the proclamation date of the bill. Otherwise, we will have huge costs for small businesses that need to contact each one of their customers as they come in to get them to sign permission forms so they can contact them in the routine business relationship that many of them have had with a company for many years.
What happens if one of those customers gets mad at the company for whatever reason? The previous member talked about buying a hard drive three years ago. What happens if a business sends the customer a message and he or she takes offence? Has the business done something wrong?
Those are a lot of interesting questions and I would ask the member to give us a fuller explanation on some of his concerns about this very important question.