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Canada Strikes At Spam

By Michael Geist, Steven Salkin and Michael Lear-Olimpi
July 28, 2005

Editors' note: Canada's national spam task force delivered its report in May to Industry Minister David Emerson. Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa and a member of the Board of Editors of our sibling publication Internet Law & Strategy, was on the task force and served as co-chair of the law and regulatory working group. The task force helped facilitate a series of cases, including Geist's own privacy complaint against the Ottawa Renegades football team over unsolicited commercial e-mail sent to him, to test the current Canadian legal framework.

The Government of Canada's Task Force on Spam concluded that the current laws governing spam are not good enough. While Canada alone is not able to deal with the spam problem nationwide, it must at least deal with the spammers in its own backyard. The current legal framework contains some significant holes and the task force's recommendations call for a spam-specific law accompanied by a new separate body to work on policy and enforcement coordination.

The recommendations, if adopted and put into legal force, would have far-reaching and deep implications for e-commerce and related activities. No public action had been taken by late July, though the government was working on the report. After Emerson finishes with the report, it would advance to the Cabinet, and then to Parliament as a bill for consideration.

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