Madam Speaker, notwithstanding the fact that the member spoke more about other legislation than this legislation, it sounds as though the NDP will be supporting this. I have a few comments after listening to what she had to say.
First, I will talk about one difference in the piece of legislation she was talking about versus this one. One of the things this bill has in it is a need to opt in. From a business standpoint, if a business wants to send a consumer emails advertising something, the consumer has to opt in to that. The company has to make sure that in the normal course of business it acquires a person as a customer or it advertises to the person who then indicates in some way that he or she actually wants to receive things from that company. That is different from what she was talking about being one of the problems of the do-not-call registry.
She also talked a bit about time. While it is clear that there is a need for this type of legislation, one of the advantages in having taken the time is that we have the opportunity to learn from best practices around the world that have been used in places like Australia, the U.S. and the U.K., and to implement those best practices into this legislation.
As well, we have the opportunity to set up a mechanism that allows us to work with jurisdictions around the world to ensure that we have enforcement that reaches beyond our borders, because of course, this is a cross-border issue. It is a global issue. This bill would allow the agencies charged with enforcement to work with similar agencies in other countries to ensure that we are able to tackle the issue of spammers sending spam to Canada from other countries, and also deal with our own issues of Canadian companies, organizations or individuals sending spam to other countries. We can now be made aware and then act according to the new rules that are in place.
I will wrap up with a question. Given that the NDP intends to support this bill and that there was some concern expressed about the time it has taken, and particularly given the fact that we are in another minority government context and do not know at which point Parliament might dissolve and we might be forced into another election and all legislation would die again, how dedicated would the NDP be to ensuring that this legislation gets through committee quickly, gets properly studied but becomes a priority for the committee, and then is brought back and passed through the House as quickly as possible?