MORTGAGEBROKER mbabc.ca summer 2014 | 41
legalease
e reality is, as it o en is in matters of
legal requirements, the people who are not
the problem to begin with will incur costs
in order to comply with the law. ose with
more sinister motives (e.g. fraud, identity
the ) will take greater steps to avoid detection
and are less likely to be concerned with the
repercussions of non-compliance with
CASL. It
is unlikely law enforcement will chase foreign
spammers rather than easier local targets.
is is particularly so if the spam originates
from countries which do not have reciprocal
agreements with Canada to enforce spam
legislation. e result is that there will be far
fewer
CEMs but the volume and nature of
spam, as that word is generally used and as I
indicated at the outset, will not be minimized
nearly as much as hoped.
Another burden of compliance is that
people who comply with
CASL are eff ectively
required to compromise their privacy rights.
For example, people who use their telephones
to send text messages (
SMS) that amount
to
CEMs are required to post their names
and addresses on a website. In eff ect, for the
privilege of sending the text message they are
forced to forego their own privacy interests in a
very public way.
Penalties are excessive
e maximum penalties for contravening CASL
are $1 million for individuals and $10 million
for corporations. Compare these amounts to
B.C. privacy legislation, which provides for fi nes
of up to $2,000 for an individual and $500,000
for a corporation. e Criminal Code provides
for a fi ne of up to $5,000 and a maximum of six
months imprisonment for many of the off ences
considered to be criminal but not at the more
serious end of criminal behaviour. Consider
that in order to penalize a criminal off ender,
the prosecution must prove intent beyond a
reasonable doubt. In contrast it is relatively easy
for a well-intentioned person to inadvertently
infringe
CASL (as confusing as CASL can be) and
attract the extremely high penalties provided.
As the money to be extracted from the off ender
is not pursuant to a criminal off ence, the
threshold of proof is far less than that required
in a criminal case. Simply put, the consequences
provided in
CASL are far out of proportion to
the wrongs addressed when one considers our
societal structure.
•
