On spammers

Michael Geist has the gory details as to how the Libs and Bloc are working with business lobbyists to gut an anti-spam bill:

At yesterday's hearing, it was discouraging to see lobbyists for Canadian Chamber of Commerce and Canadian Intellectual Property Council huddling with Liberal MPs before the start of the hearing. It was even more incredible to see lobbyists for the Canadian Real Estate Association draft a series of questions about the bill, hand them to a Bloc MP, and have them posed to the witnesses moments later.

The general tenor of the hearing saw support from the Conservative MPs, general support from the NDP MP (with some fear that the bill may be watered down with the proposed amendments), CREA questions from the Bloc, and a repetition of lobbyist questions from the Liberal MPs, who persistently wondered whether the bill is too broad or even too transparent (raising the possibility of excluding it from Access to Information).

So let's ask what appear to be the most obvious questions. Is there some principled reason why the Libs and Bloc are doing the work of lobbyists to hack away at one of the few consumer protection bills the Cons have been willing to introduce? Or is the problem more that both see it as easier to repeat a corporate line than to even think about how the issue affects Canadian consumers?