Search Results for: casl

On Monday, Treasury Board President Tony Clement announced red tape reduction measures that will save small and medium sized businesses $10M. One of the measures will save 15,000 pharmacists a total of $8.7M per year ($580 each). Another measure announced will save $1.2M for 32,000 businesses, a savings of $37.50 each.

The government has been proudly announcing a string of red tape reduction measures, with a website devoted to its Red Tape Reduction Action Plan.

A cornerstone of the Red Tape Reduction Action Plan is the One-for-One rule:

Through the “One-for-One” Rule, the government will reduce the administrative burden in two ways:

1. When a new or amended regulation increases the administrative burden on business, regulators will be required to offset – from their existing regulations – an equal amount of administrative burden cost on business.
2. It requires regulators to remove a regulation each time they introduce a new regulation that imposes new administrative burden on business.
   • Regulators are required to provide offsets within two years of receiving final approval of regulatory changes that impose new administrative burden on business.
   • The value of the administrative burden cost savings or cost increases to business will be made public in the Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement when the regulatory change is published in the Canada Gazette.

There has been an in depth series of analyses of the impact of the yet-to-be-proclaimed Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL) published recently by Barry Sookman of McCarthy-Tetrault. I recommend reading the entire series:

• Evaluating the Industry Canada CASL regulations: why they are needed
• Evaluating the Industry Canada CASL regulations: how to assess them
• Evaluating the Industry Canada CASL regulations: family relationships and personal relationships
• Evaluating the Industry Canada CASL regulations: the B2B exception (Part I-SMEs)
• Evaluating the IC CASL regulations: the B2B exception (Part II-Non-business entities)

It appears clear that there will be an overwhelming administrative burden imposed on businesses, hospitals, charities, clubs, schools and others, associated with attempting to comply with CASL.

As Mr. Sookman writes:

CASL’s “ban all” approach to regulating CEMs will inevitably result in not-for-profit entities, educational, charities, and other organizations finding themselves barred from communicating with others electronically. They can’t send CEMs without express consent and it will be illegal to send an email or other electronic message to even ask for consent. These inadvertent consequences flow from CASL’s flawed “ban all” structure. When all commercial speech is “banned” subject to certain conditions, it is impossible to enumerate or properly craft or fairly develop all of the needed exceptions to prevent truly undesirable consequences; in this case, treating non-business organizations more harshly than business organizations.

There is no good policy reason for treating educational institutions, hospitals, medical providers, charities, and other non-business organizations more onerously than businesses.

It is clear that CASL will  “increase the administrative burden on business”. As such, the Red Tape Reduction Action Plan requires that “regulators will be required to offset – from their existing regulations – an equal amount of administrative burden cost on business.”

Have we seen the “Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement” for CASL? With so many regulatory bodies involved in enforcement of CASL, will each develop its own set of red tape reduction measures?

The intent of anti-spam laws was to increase confidence in electronic commerce. In its implementation, it may do nothing to reduce the the number of emails and phone calls we receive promoting pharmaceuticals, credit score improvements or vacations, while killing the adoption of electronic communications from legitimate organizations and businesses.

I like to flip through newspapers.

Sure, most of the news that I read is online and I always seem to have a lot of tabs open on my browser to various news sources and aggregators. Still, I have multiple papers delivered to the doorstep each morning.

On line, I read stories that have headlines that catch my eye. at the breakfast table, I try to scan almost everything. A lot of the stories are old news – frequently, I find I have already read preliminary versions of the print articles in my online scanning the day before. But I also find there are important articles that didn’t grab my attention online.

Different papers cover different angles and present very different observations to their readers. I find that I benefit from diverse view points and I enjoy reading the tidbits of news and opinion that wouldn’t merit a click online. That is the difference between reading an article on Wikipedia and glancing at adjacent articles in a printed encyclopedia.

I wonder how “digital natives” – the kids who aren’t bothering to subscribe to any papers, let alone multiple dailies – are getting the benefit of random exposure to information. Frequently, I sense that while the internet makes so much information available, we tend to pull down articles that agree with opinions we already have.

At the same time, when I read an article that is clearly slanted in its perspective, I am grateful for the opportunity to scan the web, seeking balance.

Contrast a headline that reads: “Government Caves to Lobbying Pressure on Anti-Spam Legislation“. Contrast that view with Barry Sookman’s series of articles “Evaluating the Industry Canada CASL regulations: why they are needed“, and “Evaluating the Industry Canada CASL regulations: how to assess them” or this article or this one.

It is a question of balance.

Canada’s anti-spam law (“CASL“) is continuing down a painfully slow path toward implementation.

To recap:

• The CASL legislation itself was passed in 2010
• The report of the anti-spam task force was released in May 2005, having been established a year earlier.
• The CRTC and Industry Canada have held consultations on the regulations associated with the law. Industry Canada has just released revised regulations for public comment. The first of the CRTC’s Information Bulletins were released last fall. The CRTC’s regulations were released last March.

A number of commentaries have come out in the past week regarding the revised Industry Canada regulations. Michael Geist writes “Canadian Government Unveils Big Loopholes in Anti-Spam Regulations“. Michael Fekete of Osler writes “New Draft Regulations Soften Impact of CASL, but Concerns about Jobs and Compliance Costs Remain” while David Elder at Stikeman’s writes “Many business concerns remain following revisions to anti-spam regulations“. I encourage you to read each of these commentaries.

Regular readers will know that I share the concerns of the business lawyers; I believe the law will have the effect of damaging electronic commerce in Canada.

Different perspectives, based in large part on how far the legislation strayed from a focus on spam. Take a look at what the anti-spam task force wrote in 2005:

At the macro level, spam is a direct threat to the viability of the Internet as an effective means of communication. Because of this, spam is also a direct threat to increasing economic prosperity, to more efficient public services and to the emergence of an e-economy that includes all Canadians.

At the micro level, spam annoys and offends Internet users. It also provides a vehicle for activities that are clearly illegal — or should be. These include:

• malicious actions that cause harm to computers, networks or data, or use personal property for unauthorized purposes (e.g. viruses, worms, Trojan Horses, denial of service attacks, zombie networks);
• deceptive and fraudulent business practices, including online versions of traditional mail-based frauds (e.g. the “Nigerian bank account” or “419” scam, and “spoofed” websites masquerading as legitimate businesses);
• phishing emails designed for identity theft or to steal money; and
• invasions of privacy (e.g. email-address harvesting, spyware).

That describes what most of us consider to be spam – and we would agree should be the target of legislation. But CASL reaches far beyond. If a new restaurant or dry cleaner opens up in your neighbourhood, CASL makes it illegal for them to send out a email blast to tell you about them. They can print flyers and drop unsolicited paper off at your door but don’t try saying the same thing electronically.

In my view, we strayed too far from trying to target fraud. In doing so, Canada is going to cause harm to the adoption of digital technologies and electronic commerce.

CASL is an example of what can go wrong when we try to operate without an overall Digital Economy Strategy.