Protection for nannies
October 22, 2009It took seven months and a serious change of heart. But the Ontario government is finally getting serious about protecting live-in caregivers from routine exploitation.
Many of the more than 20,000 nannies in Ontario arrive here deep in debt after paying thousands of dollars in fees to recruiters, who often lure them with phantom job offers.
Now, legislation introduced by Labour Minister Peter Fonseca would ban recruiters from charging nannies any fees, with stiff penalties of up to $50,000 for violators. The bill would also bar employers from trying to pass through recruitment costs to nannies, and prosecute any other intermediaries trying to collect fees.
This is progress. When nanny abuses were first given prominence last March in a series of stories by Star reporters Dale Brazao and Robert Cribb, the labour minister tried to wash his hands of the issue. Fonseca argued that it was up to Ottawa to act – despite the fact that employment standards are primarily a provincial responsibility.
If passed, the new law would ban reprisals and specifically outlaw employers or recruiters taking a nanny’s passport, work permit or other property. The bill would also beef up enforcement. It’s about time.
— varianta initiala, la intoarcerea in Romania, probabil pe care a mers jud. Furtuna, dr. Cornel Boiangiu, afacerile Tigareta I-IV, Bricheta etc etc, TVA Dolj…
(probabil scenariu Hollywood-CIA)
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Toronto Sun 21 oct 2009 – articol de ne-gasit pe internet:
Judge slams CSIS for filtering Harkat data
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$1 billion wasn’t wasted, top health official says
October 22, 2009
Tanya Talaga
Embattled deputy health minister Ron Sapsford says he was not aware untendered contracts were given out by eHealth Ontario until he “heard about it in the press,” and he denies the province’s auditor general was blocked from investigating the agency.
Sapsford, one of the most powerful senior bureaucrats in the province, spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday about the $1 billion electronic health records scandal before an all-party legislative committee looking into the affair.
“The notion $1 billion has been wasted is simply not accurate in my view,” Sapsford told the committee, arguing there has been value obtained for the money spent, such as the creation of a secure network to drive the project forward.
However, he did acknowledge “some mistakes were made in the management of procurements” on a couple of projects. Those errors have since been addressed, he said.
Provincial Auditor General Jim McCarter this month issued a scathing report on the largely failed 10-year effort to create electronic health records, pointing to a lack of planning, as well as loose financial controls that cost taxpayers millions.
As top health bureaucrat, Sapsford helped create the electronic health records program. As the Star reported earlier, he earned a salary last year of $433,611 plus $64,781 in taxable benefits that was channelled through Hamilton Health Sciences to skirt government pay guidelines.
New eHealth board chair Rita Burak told the committee the people of Ontario are owed an apology. The eHealth scandal has rocked the Liberal government since May amid revelations the agency handed out millions in untendered contracts and hired high-priced, out-of-province consultants who earned up to $3,000 a day yet expensed minor items such as a cup of tea for $1.65.
Health Minister David Caplan resigned earlier this month; eHealth CEO Sarah Kramer and board chair Dr. Alan Hudson left their positions in June.
The mess has “undermined the public’s confidence” in the agency, Burak said. “The very serious issue of untendered consulting contracts at eHealth has unfortunately taken focus away from the important issue of patient care and progress toward an electronic health record. For this, I believe the people of the province are owed an apology.”
However, New Democrat committee member France Gelinas (Nickel Belt) told reporters she’s not sure if the apology should come solely from Burak because a “lot of people are guilty” in the scandal.
“It was nice of her to mention this, but it has yet to come,” said Gelinas. “She’s absolutely right, the people of Ontario are owed, at a minimum, an apology.”
Burak told the committee eHealth has made strides to move away from its dependence on consultants. When the ministry’s electronic health records program was transferred to the agency in April, there were 600 employees and 385 consultants, but by the end of September, there were 286 consultants, she said. By the end of the fiscal year, there will be 160 consultants.
Sapsford told the committee he stressed to former eHealth leaders the importance of conflict-of-interest and procurement policies.
“I underlined the importance of it and received assurance from the agency they were applying it.”
Sapsford denied McCarter’s claim that his office was blocked for months from investigating eHealth, which was established in 2008 after its predecessor, Smart Systems for Health Agency, was dissolved.
There was a “difference in perspectives” regarding the appropriate scope of the audit and the evaluation measures, Sapsford said. “The basic issue was not resolved until the auditor phoned me to explain the perceived lack of access,” he said. “The problem was immediately resolved.”
Also Wednesday, Gelinas received support from the standing committee on public accounts for two NDP motions to help prevent another agency mess. The first is for the auditor to conduct spot audits on consulting contracts and the second is to examine how senior provincial bureaucrats in the health ministry, hospitals and local health integration networks are compensated.
Outside committee, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak expressed astonishment that Sapsford knew nothing of the untendered contracts until reading about it in the newspaper. “It is incredible to believe that $1 billion in taxpayers’ money got flushed down the drain and that … consultants got fat and rich on the contracts and nobody knew about it,” said Hudak.
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Travers: Pro-military Tory image under fire
October 22, 2009
James Travers
OTTAWA—Friendly fire is politically deadly. It comes from unexpected directions, hits sensitive targets and can’t be returned without making the situation worse.
Rick Hillier and Richard Colvin have Stephen Harper’s government in those crosshairs. Doubts about Conservative priorities are raised in a new book from the former chief of defence staff critical of the Prime Minister’s advisers, and in memos from the senior Canadian diplomat warning of Afghanistan prisoner abuse. Hillier directly and Colvin by implication suggest a ruling party that publicly makes so much of its support for the military is privately more concerned with protecting its political skin than doing right by the troops.
Hillier’s claim is that Harper’s inner circle, borrowing a page from the George W. Bush war manual, tried to keep the image of flag-draped coffins off the evening news. Resisted as an affront to honour and tradition, the military stood its ground and continues celebrating the returning dead as war heroes.
If Hillier’s recollections of battles with the Prime Minister’s infamously controlling office are embarrassing, Colvin’s reports are devastating. Beyond putting Defence Minister Peter MacKay on the political defensive, they pile evidence on the suspicion that Conservatives jeopardized soldiers by ignoring what was happening in notorious Afghanistan prisons.
Here’s the problem. International law prohibits transferring prisoners to those who torture. To knowingly do so risks making soldiers, along with the chain of command, complicit in war crimes.
Colvin’s first-hand accounts were detailed in 2006 dispatches widely circulated within government. They make clear that ministers knew, or should have known, about serial abuse warnings more than a year later when they stood in the Commons dismissing torture allegations as Taliban propaganda.
MacKay, then foreign affairs minister, says Colvin’s memos never reached his desk, and is trying to find out why. That’s a seminal question demanding candid explanation. It’s hard to believe that congenitally risk-averse mandarins didn’t protect themselves by making sure ministers were fully briefed on a hypersensitive issue that in 2007 was being raised in Parliament often.
Allow MacKay the benefit of the doubt. But temper that benevolence with consideration of the political conditions at the time.
By late March 2007, two defence ministers, one Liberal and one Conservative, had suffered career-limiting damage by too carelessly handling the prisoner transfer file. Self-preservation alone would suggest no defence or foreign affairs minister, senior bureaucrat or political staffer, would let ignorance expose that flank.
Adding to the rotten smell are government efforts to thwart an inquiry into what military police knew about Afghan prisoner abuse. It’s that inquiry, now suspended by legal wrangling and government foot-dragging, that forced Colvin’s reports and their far-reaching implications into the public spotlight.
There’s no question Tories are spending lavishly, if not always prudently, on a military that previous administrations let fall on hard times. It is also true the ruling party successfully wove that materiel and morale support into the fabric of its own partisan definition.
But friendly fire is now hitting a vulnerable target. A prime minister and a ruling party with deserved reputations for seeking political advantage everywhere weren’t willing to sacrifice much of anything in the best interest of foot soldiers.
James Travers’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
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What happened to Canada’s education advantage?
October 20, 2009
Roger Martin
In 1992, education wasn’t on many Canadians’ radar screens. Our national attention was focused on debt and deficits. Things were getting desperate. The federal deficit had ballooned from $1 billion in 1971 to more than $40 billion in 1992-93. The federal and provincial governments owed $665 billion between them, about $300 billion of which was foreign debt. The total debt amounted to more than 95 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.
It was a bad time to be in poor fiscal shape. The world economy had fallen into a sharp recession and it was particularly difficult for Canada. GDP fell by 3.2 per cent in a single year. Unemployment spiked from 7.5 per cent in 1989 to 11.2 per cent in 1992. Recovery was proving to be slow and painful.
Enter Paul Martin, Canada’s newly minted finance minister, who took full advantage of the opportunity to make his name as the man who slew the deficit. Over the two fiscal years between 1994—95 and 1997—98, Martin achieved an impressive $33 billion turnaround in Ottawa’s fiscal position, moving from a $30 billion deficit to a $3 billion surplus. The economy had helped him by providing $21 billion in increased revenues, but he also cut $12 billion worth of federal spending.
But where did that $12 billion in cuts come from? The biggest rollback was in transfers to the provinces, money used to fund education and health care, the biggest provincial expenditures. Martin chopped $8 billion, or 24 per cent, from this budget line between 1995-96 and 1997-98, a time the provinces were all dealing with their own fiscal challenges, including legacies of debt and deficit spending. By 1999-2000, provincial transfers were nearly back to pre-1995 levels. But by then, the provinces had radically transformed their spending approaches.
Consider Ontario. By 1994, Mike Harris was newly installed as premier on the strength of his Common Sense Revolution. He had promised to deliver a fully balanced budget within four years “without touching a penny of health-care spending.” Law enforcement and classroom funding for education would also be safe from cuts, Harris promised. But, he continued, “that does not mean that savings cannot be found elsewhere in the education system.” He cut, and he cut deep. In his first two years, education expenditures dipped $1 billion, or 5 per cent. The centrepiece of this program was a 25 per cent cut in funding for Ontario universities.
Harris’s cuts were grounded in a belief that the education system was profligate. So, even when the economy finally recovered and he could dramatically ramp up spending (as he proceeded to do with health care), he kept education spending flat, and left it that way for his final five years as premier. Consequently, Ontario post-secondary education funding fell by 21 per cent during the ’90s, while enrolment increased by 8 per cent. By the end of the century, Ontario’s per capita university funding rank had fallen to tenth out of 10 provinces.
In response to dire economic times, our politicians responded by cutting education. This is in keeping with our governments’ deep bias toward consumption. Broadly speaking, public expenditures can be broken into two fundamental buckets: investment in building future prosperity and consumption of current prosperity.
Education falls into the future prosperity category. Putting a child into a classroom has zero current economic benefit. In fact, for late secondary and post-secondary institution students, education is a big current negative. It takes able-bodied workers out of the potential workforce and sticks them in an expensive classroom. But education is simply the best possible investment in future prosperity. In Canada, the average salary for someone with a university degree is $58,767 per year – 50 per cent greater than that of the average high school graduate and 69 per cent greater than that of a high-school dropout. Education pays tremendous future dividends to the individual and to the economy by making its workers much, much more productive.
The consumption of current prosperity, by contrast, consists of expenditures that we are able to make as a society because we are already prosperous. These expenses provide a large benefit today, but do little to enhance our fortunes in the future. Helping the disadvantaged among us afford shelter and sustenance is a good example. We are able to provide welfare for poor families because we are sufficiently prosperous today. Expenditures of this sort provide a large benefit – they are the mark of a good and caring society. But they don’t increase future prosperity; they consume our current prosperity.
The largest consumption of current prosperity by governments around the world is health care. In Canada, because we are wealthy, we can provide this service at a high level, which improves our quality of life. Not all health care is consumption – there is obvious future benefit in getting an injured worker back on the job or fixing a baby’s heart so that she can become a productive member of society. However, the bulk of health-care costs represent pure consumption.
Politicians of all stripes favour current consumption; it’s the kind of spending that helps get votes. And so our governments chose health care over education. As a consequence, Canada – and Ontario, in particular – has moved from a position of strength to one of weakness. We once led the world in our commitment to education investment. No longer. Our health-care system briefly lost its lead in public health-care spending in 1995, but regained approximate parity with the U.S. in 2000 and has maintained it ever since. In contrast, by 2002 education spending in Canada had fallen a full 17 per cent behind the U.S. In Ontario, Harris turned the 4 per cent advantage in per capita spending that he inherited into a 25 per cent disadvantage by the end of his term in 2002.
We’ve been off the path for 15 years. It would now take an additional spending of $21 billion across all levels of government in Canada to return to the per-capita spending position we enjoyed relative to the United States in 1995. Ontario would require $10 billion a year, consuming nearly half of the $21 billion even though only 39 per cent of the population lives here.
The great tragedy is that Canada and its provinces, especially Ontario, shifted dramatically away from a historical competitive advantage in education just as the world was finally entering the long-promised knowledge economy. There had been talk about such a shift for years, if not decades, but by 1995, it was utterly clear that the 21st century was going to be driven by knowledge and the education systems that fuel it. Right at that pivotal moment, Canada bailed. It’s not too late to repair the damage, but it soon will be.
Roger Martin is dean of the Rotman School of Management at U of T. A longer version of this piece appears in the current issue of The Walrus.
In acelasi timp, mobilul lui Miron este ghidat in alta parte, eu sunt izolat complet… Cred ca trebuie faxat la Drepturile Omului…
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CRTC allows telecoms to ‘throttle’ web traffic
October 22, 2009Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew
Canada’s big telecom firms will be allowed to regulate traffic on their Internet networks – and put the brakes on those who use too much bandwidth – but only under strict guidelines.
In a ruling Wednesday, the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission did not ban the practice known as “throttling” but it did institute new rules on how companies such as Bell Canada, Rogers Communications Inc., and Telus Corp. manage the packets of information that move at lightning speed on their networks.
Some Internet activities such as streaming movies and television shows use far more bandwidth than others such as email, web surfing, or online shopping.
Throttling occurs when Internet service providers, known as ISPs, use sophisticated software to detect so-called “bandwidth hogs,” and basically steer them over to the Internet’s slow lane. Heavy users say their service abruptly slows when it is throttled.
The industry argued at hearings before the CRTC this summer that throttling was necessary to prevent a small minority of heavy users from clogging up their networks and degrading service for everyone.
“Canada is the first country to develop and implement a comprehensive approach to Internet traffic-management practices,” commission chair Konrad von Finckenstein said in a statement.
The CRTC said its first preference is that Internet providers invest in increasing the capacity of their networks. Providers that need to manage traffic should impose higher charges on heavy users, rather than throttling or degrading the signal.
But if networks believe they need to resort to throttling, the commission said retail customers must be given 30 days notice and wholesale customers at least 60 days notice before restrictions are put in place.
If throttling had been banned, “it could have been disappointing for customers,” said Ken Engelhart, chief of regulatory affairs for Rogers. “If you wanted to talk to your friends around the world on your computer, you might find your call was being crowded out by other people engaging in peer-to-peer.”
Peer-to-peer sites are used to exchange large video and music files over the Internet.
The commission has also established a complaint mechanism for consumers.
“In the main it’s a positive step forward. The CRTC has set up a pretty good framework for dealing with this issue,” said Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor who specializes in technology issues.
“The big concern, though, is on the enforcement side,” he said. “They’ve really thrown this into the lap of individual Canadians to file complaints.”
That will be no easy task, said Steve Anderson, coordinator of a national coalition called SaveOurNet.ca.
“The ISPs have 15 to 20 lobbyists working on this, whereas I don’t. The CRTC is saying: `go ahead, prove the case,’ but it’s not that simple, really.”
Michael Hennessy, senior vice-president, government and regulatory affairs at Telus, said the firm welcomes the ruling, even though it does not employ throttling.
The ruling struck a balance between an open web and the potential need of some telecoms to manage traffic, he said.
“We are pleased that the CRTC recognizes that, as the Internet becomes more video-centric and more interactive, there will be potential times when some sort of traffic management may have to be considered.”
Earlier this year, the CRTC sided with Bell on its use of throttling during peak periods, but, at the same time, launched a review of the issue, resulting in Wednesday’s decision.
The commission said the new rules take effect immediately.
With files from Canadian Press
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Scandal snares IBM executive ZoomBookmarkSharePrintListenTranslateIBM Corp. put a top executive on leave yesterday after he was charged in an insider trading scandal for allegedly leaking secrets about IBM’s earnings and financial dealings with corporate partners.
The company said Robert Moffat, a senior vice-president and cost-cutting maven who was considered a possible candidate to succeed CEO Sam Palmisano, no longer serves as an officer of the company.
A woman who answered the phone at Mr. Moffat’s home in Connecticut said he would not comment. Kerry Lawrence, a lawyer representing Mr. Moffat, said the U.S. government hasn’t accused Mr. Moffat of profiting from the alleged scheme.
“Not only have they not alleged that, but that definitely did not happen,” Mr. Lawrence said.
Rodney Adkins, who has been senior vice-president in charge of development and manufacturing, was tapped to assume Mr. Moffat’s position on an acting basis. That gives him oversight over IBM’s mainframes and computer servers.
Mr. Adkins is the highestranking black executive IBM has ever had.
Mr. Moffat was one of six executives and hedge fund managers arrested last Friday in connection with a wideranging scam that authorities say generated more than $25million (U.S.) in illegal profits.
The bust ensnared one of America’s wealthiest men, Raj Rajaratnam, a portfolio manager for the Galleon Group hedge fund; two people from another hedge fund; and figures from chip maker Intel Corp. and consulting firm McKinsey&Co.
The hedge fund defendants are accused of trading securities in several publicly traded companies based on confidential information they got from the executives.
Mr. Moffat’s arrest is a rare stain on the reputation of IBM, which promotes “trust in all relationships” as one of its key values.
Mr. Moffat, a college track star who has worked at IBM since 1978, is known as an operational expert who has worked in some of IBM’s toughest divisions trying to unlock more profit. That included the personal computer business, which IBM sold in 2004 to China-based Lenovo Group.
IBM has trumpeted Mr. Moffat’s ability to slash costs and make the company faster and more efficient, particularly in manufacturing.
Mr. Moffat, 53, is accused of supplying Danielle Chiesi, who worked for a hedge fund known as New Castle, details about IBM’s earnings; the timing of a restructuring at IBM partner Advanced Micro Devices Inc.; and the financials of Sun Microsystems Inc., whose books IBM was poring over this year as part of an acquisition bid.
It’s unclear from the court filings how Mr. Moffat would have benefited. Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Moffat’s lawyer, declined to comment further on the case.
His arrest comes after a tough stretch for IBM, which is based in Armonk, N.Y.
Two weeks ago the company acknowledged that the U.S. Justice Department is looking into allegations the company abused its dominant position in mainframe computers, one of IBM’s most important products. And last week the company reported higher quarterly profit and boosted its 2009 earnings forecast, but the stock fell.
The Associated Press
IBM CORP. (IBM-N)
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Ignatieff gets his facts wrong in Arar case
October 22, 2009
Tonda MacCharles
Maher Arar talks with reporters in Ottawa, after testifying via video link to a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee hearing in Washington, Oct. 18, 2007. U.S. legislators apologized to Arar for his seizure by U.S. officials who took him to Syria where he was tortured.
TOM HANSON/THE CANADIAN PRESS
OTTAWA–Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has told a British newspaper that Canada dispatched Maher Arar to Syria to be tortured.
Ignatieff made the erroneous statement in an interview published in September in The Observer while clarifying his stand against torture. He has had to defend himself against persistent accusations, often made by Conservative opponents, that he supports “torture-lite” based on his previous writings on the subject.
“Canada sent Maher Arar (a Canadian engineer) to Syria, and a court found that he had been subjected to extraordinary rendition, that his claims (of torture) were true and that he had delivered no intelligence to anybody. It was a disgrace. So, we don’t do it. Ever. Period. Off the table. We don’t get other people to do our dirty work for us, and we don’t do dirty work ever.”
Arar was sent to Syria by the United States in late 2002 after he was detained while in transit to Canada through JFK Airport in New York.
Contrary to what Ignatieff said, no court has made findings of fact in Arar’s case.
A Canadian commission of inquiry – not a court – that heard some evidence in secret concluded the American authorities deported Arar under the Bush administration’s extraordinary rendition program, first to Jordan and then on to Damascus, where he was jailed without charges for more than a year by Syrian military intelligence.
The former Liberal government in Ottawa consistently denied it ever played a role in Arar’s rendition, and the inquiry concluded Canadian officials were not directly complicit in the affair.
Arar, a Syrian-Canadian computer software consultant, said he was tortured during the first two weeks in Syria, and for most of the rest of the year he was jailed in inhumane conditions in a small, dirty cell he labelled “the grave.”
The American and Syrian governments refused to participate in the inquiry led by Justice Dennis O’Connor, and Arar did not testify.
Nevertheless, O’Connor concluded in September 2006 the Americans “very likely” deported Arar on the basis of erroneous information the RCMP provided that he was a suspect with terrorist links.
The government, under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, apologized to Arar for the role its agents played and settled a lawsuit out of court for $10.5 million.
Arar is still attempting to sue American authorities over his ordeal.
The Star requested an interview to discuss Ignatieff’s statement, but his spokeswoman, Jill Fairbrother, declined the request.
“It’s clear and I don’t think he’ll have much to add if the subject is torture.”
When told that Ignatieff was wrong and asked if she could verify the quote, Fairbrother said she no longer had a tape recording of the interview.
Ignatieff returned to Canada from the U.S. in 2005 to run as an MP. He was elected as an MP in January 2006, and was in Canada when the O’Connor inquiry reported.
UBC law professor Michael Byers said while public figures sometimes make mistakes, Ignatieff’s statement was related to his own position on torture, “a matter on which he wrote extensively while a Harvard professor, with those writings having since been subject to intense scrutiny.”
“For him to get the facts wrong on the highest profile case of torture involving a Canadian citizen is deeply worrying.
“It suggests a certain lack of attention to detail, and perhaps even concern, on a matter that was engaging the Canadian public, a commission of inquiry, and courts in both Canada and the United States at the very same time that he was expressing opinions on torture in The New York Times.”
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In acelasi timp, ofertele sunt pensie medicala dupa anumite tratamente, cred genul pe care le-a avut si Michael Jackson, Yasser Arafat, genul care se rezolva terminal…
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Liberals back Tory plan to dilute anti-spam bill
Providing your email address will imply consent
By SARAH SCHMIDT, Canwest News ServiceOctober 17, 2009
The Liberals are getting behind a Conservative plan to water down the government’s proposed anti-spam law so some marketers can continue to send unsolicited emails.
Liberal backing means the amended bill will have enough support to pass the House of Commons.
The bill could be further diluted Monday when the Liberals propose their own changes.
Liberal industry critic Marc Garneau was not available yesterday to comment on his party’s amendments, to be debated Monday at the House of Commons industry committee, but a source familiar with the proposal says they would limit the reach of the bill in the area of spyware to be more favourable to the computer software, telecommunications and music industries, covered in the Electronic Commerce Protection Act.
The Liberals will support most government amendments dealing with the anti-spam provisions of the bill when MPs on the industry committee vote Monday on specifics of the bill, a spokesman for Garneau said.
Industry Canada officials unveiled them earlier this month in response to concerns raised by business groups about the potential scope of the legislation when it came to tackling spam.
Some of the 40 amendments are technical and will not affect the scope of the bill, but others will narrow the reach of the anti-spam provisions. They include new exceptions for product updates, solicitation to participate in surveys or market research, and information on self-governing professions.
The government proposal also expands implied consent to receive unsolicited emails in instances where a person has provided an email address to the sender, and removes the need for explicit consent for software programs for updates or upgrades, if consent was obtained in the past.
And the transition period – during which companies can continue to send unsolicited emails – would be doubled. Known as the grandfather provision, companies will have three years to obtain consent from their customers to receive emails under the new plan. The bill initially allowed for an 18-month transition period, but business groups complained this was too short.
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