[ Sign the CAUCE online petition to support Canada's antispam bill C-27
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/SupportC27/ ]
To: Stephen Harper HarpeS@parl.gc.ca
Cc: Party Leaders
Minister of Industry
Chair & Members, Standing Committee on Industry, Science & Technology
Dear Prime Minister Harper,
These past few weeks have seen a tremendous amount of press coverage with regard to Bill C-27 currently in from of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science & Technology.
We have seen parties previously supporting an opt-in régime in Canada, and publicly supporting the bill in the press and to the committee change their stance.
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, with 50,000 members has not: We encourage you and the committee to stand fast in this regard. An opt-out regime is what is made legal in America, by way of the CANSPAM act, and the United States is by far the main source of spam on the Internet today.
Backgrounder on opposition to the bill
On the other hand, the drafters have carefully considered the laws of Australia and New Zealand, and the results are clear: neither of those countries now has much in the way of a home-grown spam problem after having adopted opt-in anti-spam laws.
Please do not be mislead by some who are clearly misguided and wrong-headed: CAUCE has representative email marketers of high integrity and repute on our board from two of Canadas largest email service providers representing companies such as American Express and Air Canada, and literally hundreds of others, small, medium, and large. They fully support this bill, and would not do so were it to have a negative impact on their business.
American companies, for example, Return Path have written to you in support of this bill. Return Path represents over 1,000 email marketers, again, from the smallest to the largest email marketers on the planet, as well as maintaining partnerships with the largest receiving sites on the Internet: Hotmail, Yahoo! Sympatico, and Rogers.
Last week, CAUCE had the occasion to run the draft bill by the top malware and spyware experts at Google, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard, at the Anti-spyware Coalition meeting held in Montreal. There again, it got the nod of approval.
This bill, contrary to the assertions of some, is pro-business and pro-consumer. We are puzzled by the stance of some, who want to create loopholes that will undoubtedly be exploited by the criminals who spam us daily, and distribute spyware and viruses using spam.
Opt-in is fundamental and critical to the broadband support of this bill; beyond which, it is also a critical, foundational aspect of good marketing practices and is a paradigm in use each and every day by savvy marketers. It seems to us that those promoting a change to this bill are simply not in the game on a daily basis.
Complaints by users are filed daily to receiving sites by consumers mailed email they did not request, and do not want. That is, after all, the very definition of spam. Incredibly, that is what some are asking you to legalize.
It would be foolhardy to make this delicately crafted law useless were you to allow opt-in to be changed to allow anyone to mail without permission. We respectfully request that you all consider all email end users of email before you make such a decision. Think of those who suffer the onslaught of spam; your friends, your family members, and your constituents.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Neil Schwartzman
Executive Director
CAUCE: The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
cc:
Michael Ignatieff <IgnatM@parl.gc.ca>
Jack Layton <LaytoJ@parl.gc.ca>
Gilles Duceppe <DucepG@parl.gc.ca>
Tony Clement <ClemeT@parl.gc.ca>
Michael Chong <ChongM@parl.gc.ca>
Anthony Rota <RotaA@parl.gc.ca>
Robert Bouchard <BouchR@parl.gc.ca>
Gordon Brown <BrownG@parl.gc.ca>
Siobhan Coady <Coady.S@parl.gc.ca>
Marc Garneau <Garneau.M@parl.gc.ca>
Mike Lake <LakeM@parl.gc.ca>
Brian Masse <MasseB@parl.gc.ca>
Dave Van Kesteren <VankeD@parl.gc.ca>
Robert Vincent <VinceR@parl.gc.ca>
Mike Wallace <WallaM@parl.gc.ca>
Chris Warkentin <WarkeC@parl.gc.ca>
