Mr. Speaker, all Canadians know that the Internet is an extremely important public resource. It has acquired profound importance to Canadians not only as a news gathering tool and a communications tool but as a form of commerce. When we talk about spam, we are talking not just about an irritant, but about something that has a grave and critical potential to harm Canadians in many different ways.
Some of the overhead costs of electronic spam include bandwidth and developing and acquiring spam tools or taking over and acquiring a host or zombie. The transaction costs for each additional recipient once a method of spamming is constructed can be immense.
Could my hon. colleague elaborate on the critical importance of the Internet to Canadians and why this piece of legislation is important? In his opinion, how could it be improved?