Madam Speaker, I did appreciate the member's comments. I think he added a little more clarity to the issue than he did previously. I am reasonably happy with his explanation of how things would work.
The reality, though, is that the question was how this bill would have dealt with the issue of the Facebook case. The basis for adjudication under this bill is going to follow the route of the CRTC, going to the parties that are causing trouble and trying to deal with them and get an undertaking from them to cease and desist from what they are doing.
I agree that is the way we should proceed. As much as possible, we should get voluntary compliance before we go any further.
The second option is looking at the fines. The fines are $1 million for individuals and $10 million for organizations. There are a number of different options they could use to decide how much to fine them. If there a situation like Frank magazine, which used to incorporate each issue and say up front that it was going to publish whatever defamatory remark about people it wanted, then people could sue it, but each issue was incorporated. That is tantamount to this guy declaring bankruptcy. So that clearly did not work.
This bill does not offer any criminal options. There are no criminal offences under this bill. My suggestion is that, potentially, there may be instances, hopefully very few of them, where we may have to look at that option. That is why I asked why we were not hearing many government speakers on this whole issue, as to what happened in the other G7 countries that have had this legislation much longer.
Surely the government could have learned from the experience of the other countries. It could have tailored the legislation to take into account any deficiencies that these other countries found.
I also liked the member's idea about sharing information. This particular bill does allow for that, but he is talking about treaties, I believe, that would be signed individually, similar to the 90 double-taxation agreements we have with countries around the world.
By the way, the members should know that in the case of Panama, with which we are working on a free trade deal, Canada does not have a double-taxation agreement with Panama and yet France does. In six months, from February until now, France managed to get an agreement just by putting on pressure. However, that is a different issue and a different bill.
I would like to ask the member if he would give his comments about how he feels the government rollout of this bill should proceed, because I do see a potential for confusion with small business.
Could the member comment on this?