Two years later, Canadians continue to receive spam messages
Despite the Conservative government passing anti-spam legislation two years ago, Canadians continue to be bombarded by unwanted messages.
On December 15, 2010, the Government of Canada passed the Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam bill (Bill C-28), yet this anti-spam legislation has yet to be enforced.
The bill targets actions such as messages sent through email, text, and other social networking accounts without consent; the use of false or misleading representations online in the promotion of products or services; address harvesting; the alteration of transmission data; and the installation of malware.
According to a spokesperson for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, one of the three government agencies responsible for the law’s enforcement—along with the Competition Bureau and The Office of the Privacy Commissioner—the law will be enforced once a Governor in Council order is received.
A Governor in Council order requires “a formal process that Industry Canada will be responsible for before the law can come into force,” the CRTC spokesperson explains.
“The initial purpose of the law was to protect Canadians from spam and electronic threats while ensuring that business can continue to compete in the global marketplace. This has not changed,” says the spokesperson, adding the CRTC expects the law to come into effect sometime in 2013.
In an emailed statement to Excalibur, Industry Canada spokesperson Derek Mellon also attributed the delay in the law’s enforcement to the wait for the Governor in Council order.
Generally, a draft version of the regulations, to be finalized by the Governor in Council, are prepublished in the Canada Gazette [the Government of Canada’s official newspaper] Part 1. A period of time is provided for public consultation.
“We received significant input on those regulations,” says Mellon.
Only after a second consultation can a date be set for the regulations to come into force.
For Osgoode Professor George Takach, also a partner at Canadian law firm McCarthy Tétrault, the reason for the delay in enforcement is much simpler—the legislation suffers from a “flawed structure.”
“The fact that it’s 2013 and we still don’t have [anti-spam legislation] is a black eye for Canada in the world of e-commerce,” Takach says.
Takach says Canada should have enacted a law along the lines of the US anti-spam legislation many years ago, which essentially focuses on prohibiting the spammers who send mass emails indiscriminately, clogging up inboxes and networks. European countries have generally followed this approach, he adds.
“Unfortunately, the Canadian federal government chose to enact a very different kind of law; essentially, it bans all forms of electronic messages, unless there is an exemption in the legislation or the related regulations,” says Takach. “Because of the flawed structure of the Canadian approach, the business community in Canada is now working hard to get many exemptions written into the regulations.”
Takach says Canadian companies will be disadvantaged if the country does not adopt regulations closer to the US and European model because they will not be able to use the Internet for “legitimate, non-spam marketing the way their counterparts can do so in the US and Europe.”
He believes the legislation may take until 2014 to take effect, and says its not typical for this much time to elapse between passage and enactment.
“It just shows how flawed the legislation is, that they are trying to make it right through the regulations, but that is a hard task.”
By Vanessa Del Carpio, Staff Writer
