Agriculture committee  Thank you, Ms. Brosseau. Well, I'm in a position to comment from a retail perspective, as opposed to a food bank perspective. Every one of the members I represent has partnerships with food banks, and every one of them I've spoken to has said that the food banks are not equipped

Agriculture committee  I agree very strongly. We do some of that work already with Health Canada. They're a wonderful partner with us in terms of producing materials. We're talking about social media and all this kind of stuff. We are enthusiastic partners about doing more of that.

Agriculture committee  If I may take that, Mr. Drouin, there's a role, obviously, for government to play, and there's a role for industry to play. Again, from a retail perspective, we have direct interface with the consumer, so we have a role to play in that as well. Your example is a really good one,

Agriculture committee  I do not have statistics on that, no.

Agriculture committee  Yes, exactly. Our members take accessibility very seriously, so they engage in a number of programs. There are breakfast programs, for example. There are backpack programs for kids to bring food to school. Through most of our members, you can order food online. There's home deliv

Agriculture committee  Absolutely, yes. I don't know that the members would speak of it in terms of specifically “food security”, but it doesn't make good business sense to not have product to sell to consumers, so they have a number of vendors and a number of suppliers. Again, it depends on seasonalit

Industry committee  I would like to personally thank Andrew for that. Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to talk about Canada's anti-spam legislation. I'll start by saying that members of the Retail Council are very supportive of anti-spam legislation that actua

Industry committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Baylis. I would give an answer similar to the one I would have given to your first question, and what I think is an excellent suggestion, which is to amend the provisions having to do with the administrative penalties and compliance and enforcemen

Industry committee  Yes. Thank you, Mr. Longfield. I'd like to think that the Retail Council and its members can offer a unique perspective on this, in that our members have the direct interface with the consumers. From what I'm hearing from the members, the consumers' knowledge of the actual legi

Industry committee  I'm hearing from a range of members. What I'm hearing from the larger members is that their legal counsel is being very risk-averse, and is advising them to interpret the law in a very strict way. They're avoiding marketing campaigns, and campaigns to recipients that are probably

Industry committee  All of them—grocers, hardware, and then large merchandisers. What I'm hearing from the smaller members, though, from the hardware stores in the rural areas that Mr. Eglinski mentioned, is how can we possibly have the clerks trained to document this stuff? Where do we even hire s

Industry committee  The answer to your question, Mr. Jowhari, is a resounding “yes”. If the committee were to make the five recommendations that the RCC has put forward, by default the enforcement, energies, and resources would target those areas where they should be targeting. In addition to that,

Industry committee  I don't have figures in terms of the compliance costs. It obviously depends on the size of the business and what they're involved in, and every business is different. What I am hearing from the independent members is that it is very onerous. A lot of these are family-owned, famil

Industry committee  Thank you for the question. Yes, there are many tools out there, and by its very nature, technology is constantly changing. With anything we put into legislation now, within a year or two there will be other tools there to assist. Our members are easy to find. They have stores i

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Masse, for the question. Our members' primary focus of concern is not as much around the botware and the malware and that sort of thing and those provisions; it's primarily around commercial electronic messaging. They're seeing a big flashing red light of the pos