Industry committee  Absolutely. I was going to say I could pull out a list, but even just last year we travelled from P.E.I. to Victoria. We do this across the country.

Industry committee  I would say no. I definitely think UCENet as an enforcement network is very helpful, and Mark had mentioned the M3AAWG and malware analysis group, which also includes countries from around the world. There is certainly no one central point and that is why we, as the CRTC, branched out to get the policy folks in.

Industry committee  Absolutely, and I apologize if there was any confusion. Our memorandums of understanding with Australia, the U.S., and New Zealand are with the government departments responsible for spam legislation. The 12 enforcement agencies in the nine different countries are the enforcement side of the house, so more the RCMP or public safety kind of officials in the UCENet space.

Industry committee  Absolutely. I would suggest the MOUs are drafted in such a way that we can share. From a very simplistic perspective, we help them and they help us. We get calls, I won't say every week, but definitely every month. We are probably more in contact with our colleagues in the FCC and the FTC than other countries.

Industry committee  Just to clarify, we do have the ability to impose administrative monetary penalties, and we have on several occasions. Overall, we have a broad suite of tools. In each case it's dependent on the facts of that investigation and our assessment of what the best outcome is to produce compliance.

Industry committee  I'll build on what Mark has been saying. From an enforcement perspective, the opt-in regime is actually very helpful, because we are able to understand very clearly if someone has given their permission to receive information or emails, etc. That's a very helpful piece. On the international front, I stand by the fact that we are very active in the international sphere.

Industry committee  As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we were afforded by Parliament great information-sharing privileges with our international jurisdictions, which is fantastic. We've executed MOUs with various different countries. We are a member of UCENet, which we talked about. It is an international unsolicited communications network of enforcement agencies.

Industry committee  Absolutely, from an enforcement perspective.

Industry committee  From an enforcement perspective, the act is written as technology neutral, which is helpful. We are certainly seeing different types of spam. You're right. I think it's moving faster than we can keep up. I have a team of technical experts and forensic analysts who are constantly challenged by the next thing.

Industry committee  I'll have my colleague, Neil Barratt, describe our investigative enforcement process.

Industry committee  I'll start with the 5,000 complaints a week to our spam reporting centre. I would suggest that compliance is still an issue. Certainly compliance is key. I'm the chief compliance and enforcement officer. The compliance part of my title is critical to ensuring that businesses are aware of the rules, understand how they can comply with the rules, and understand what's necessary with respect to following the rules.

Industry committee  I'd like to think we have a great suite of tools. Certainly I know my colleagues at the Privacy Commissioner's office would say that having administrative monetary penalties is very useful. I know they're looking for it themselves. We have a broad range of tools to effectively ensure compliance now and, for enforcement purposes, in the future.

Industry committee  Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for inviting us to appear before your committee to share the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's, the CRTC's, experience with Canada's anti-spam legislation, CASL. With me today are my colleagues Kelly-Anne Smith, senior legal counsel, and Neil Barratt, the director of electronic commerce enforcement.

Information & Ethics committee  It's an interesting question. I'm not sure I have a view. The consent models under the CASL legislative framework work well. The opt-in regime works well under CASL, as does the implied consent. My colleague may have something to answer, but I really don't have a view.

Information & Ethics committee  I would echo my Competition Bureau colleague's remarks. As I indicated earlier, we have a lot of memorandums of understanding with enforcement agencies around the world. We use those relationships to execute warrants and to gather information for us. That's very useful for us and we've done the same for them.