Finance committee  Thank you. My name is Jim Patrick. I'm the senior vice-president of the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, and I'm very pleased to be here this afternoon on behalf of the CWTA and, more specifically, our partner foundation, the Mobile Giving Foundation of Canada.

Finance committee  I haven't heard of that being a problem. I think that would be up to the employer to settle with the employee. I think most organizations set rules for the use of technology by their employees, and I haven't heard of this being an issue.

Finance committee  You raise an interesting and very timely point. Yesterday the Federal Election Commission in Washington received a petition to allow techs to donate platforms to serve as vehicles for political donations. It's not established that way in Canada. We'd have to do some work with Ele

Finance committee  It's not something we've encountered. To protect against that, we have established a $30-a-month limit per donation or per phone number.

Finance committee  Okay.

Finance committee  No. The way it works is that a charity will sign a contract with the Mobile Giving Foundation to have access to the platform, and that charity will get an invoice from the Mobile Giving Foundation in exchange for that access. The amount of the donation is passed through from th

Finance committee  Exactly.

Finance committee  It's not a source of revenue for the wireless companies in any way.

Finance committee  The question of lost or stolen cellphones is one we're looking at. It's broader than just this particular application. In this case—and here I think I speak for the carriers—if there were evidence of fraud or misuse, the charge would be reversed.

Finance committee  We're not seeking any specific changes to the taxation framework. We have in interest in ensuring that any changes don't impact the efficiency or effectiveness of the program. If I could just use another 10 seconds, if we could encourage everyone with a federal cellphone to do

Finance committee  Yes, as an association we represent all of the incumbent wireless carriers, all of the new entrants, and all of the regionals—so, everybody.

Finance committee  Sure. The Mobile Giving Foundation was established in the United States a few years ago. They approached us, I'm going to say in 2009, and asked if we would consider being the Canadian host for this organization. They set it up at precisely the right time here, because literally

Finance committee  It's not to say it hasn't been done, but I haven't seen those demographics. I will check, and if we have them I'd be happy to file them with the committee. We do public polling every year, and this year we ran a survey, hired a company called the Quorus Consulting Group, that ra

Finance committee  Only 8% reported that text donation would replace their traditional means; 90% of mobile users said they'd do it again; and 83% said they'd recommend that someone else do it again. But only 8% said they saw it as replacing their traditional means of making donations.

Finance committee  There's a keyword associated with the charities. I'll give you an example. A hospital in Toronto wanted to use this platform to run a campaign. We went to the Toronto Raptors, who put the five-digit short code up on the screen, along with the keyword, which might have been “hos