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I could say that Canada’s new anti-spam law is both horrifying and stupid, but Mark Joseph Stern, writing in Slate Magazine, already said that the other day. One could also call it absurd, interventionist, controlling, costly, offense and an all-too-typical Tory mega-solution to a mostly non-problem.

Ten years in the making and there’s still no meaningful definition of spam, still no real numbers on the breadth and depth of spam as a problem, still no clue as to what it is that an expanding contingent of federal agency bureaucrats aims to accomplish.

The CRTC is nevertheless keen. In a speech last week, Mr. Blais warned that the new anti-spam action plan laws and regulations “not only apply to email but to all electronic messages – text messages, messages on social networks and other forms of electronic communications. Basically, anyone who sends commercial messages to Canadians will need to comply with the law.”

The CRTC is ready to field complaints. “Canadians can start reporting spam and other electronic threats to the Spam Reporting Centre,” Mr. Blais said.

“The CRTC has a team of highly-qualified people ready to start enforcing Canada’s anti-spam legislation. We have former RCMP officers, major criminal investigators and sophisticated computer forensics experts who will be leading these efforts. Enforcement is now in the CRTC’s DNA.

Beyond additional personnel, we have state-of-the-art facilities in our new cyber-forensics lab—an in-house centre designed and built by the country’s foremost technology leaders. The lab will enable us to search, seize and copy digital evidence that proves violations of the new law to better protect the public. Our electronic commerce enforcement specialists will be able to search and index tens of millions of messages and reverse engineer malware to trace the source of these scams and follow their online links.”

The CRTC also has what Mr. Blais calls “serious financial clout”— penalties of up to $1 million for an individual and up to $10 million for a company per violation.

Okay. But what is spam? A 2005 federal action plan task force report, Stopping Spam: Creating a Stronger, Safer Internet, said: “Commercial email sent without prior consent — or that is deceptive, fraudulent or malicious—is spam and should be prohibited.” That’s a stunningly broad non-definition.