Originally published on CAUCE.org.

On June 11, 2009 Dennis Dayman and I set an afternoon with the Canadian Government’s Standing Committee on Industry, Science & Technology to stand witness for the Electronic Commerce Protect Act in two capacities. First we acted as representives for CAUCE NA – an all volunteer organization representing the consumer and end user – and secondly as representatives of the legitimate email marketing community. Below you will find our opening statements to the Committee (and if you have two hours to listen here is the link to the audio recording of the entire session – transcripts to follow).

Mes dames et messieurs je m’appelle Dennis Dayman. I am the Secretary-treasurer of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, CAUCE, a group representing computer-users in Canada, and the rest of North America. CAUCE thanks you for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-27, The Electronic Commerce Protection Act.

As you can probably tell from my accent, je ne suis pas Canadien, je
suis un Americain, et je regrette que je ne parle pas français.

So why is an American here today addressing this esteemed committee?
Well, reflecting the way in that spam is a pan-global problem, some
years ago, CAUCE Canada merged with their American counterparts to
better serve our constituents. Spam respects no borders, and to best
represent computer users on both sides of our mutual border, we decided
to mount a coherent CAN-AM front against the blight of Spam 2.0

You heard me correctly ladies and gentlemen. CAUCE, once the exclusive domain of computer geek anti-spammers has openly embraced the marketing community for a decade now, and counts among its members and executives many individuals and companies who have an enlightened view as to why an anti-spam law works in all our favour.

My colleague Matthew Vernhout and I both work for large international ‘email service providers’, (myself for Eloqua, and Matthew at ThinData Canada’s largest ESP, both of these companies were founded and continue to operate in Toronto. Our companies provide sending infrastructure for marketing email, sending on behalf of such companies as Fidelity, Air Canada, American Express, and literally hundreds of small and medium-sized companies and we are very much in favour of this law.

Continue reading: “Presentation to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science & Technology / Comité permanent de l’industrie, des sciences et de la technologie (INDU)”