The Canada Email Surcharge Legislation Email Warning Is A Hoax

Last significant update: 06 June, 1999

This information can be freely reproduced in any medium, as long as the information is unmodified.

This is another in a series of "If you don't do something now, the Government is going to make you pay to use your computer!" hoaxes. Thanks to Bernard Becker for, on 21 April, 1999 being the first to alert us about this hoax, which now comes in two versions.

The original claimed to be Canadian legislation; a United States version soon followed. Here are the main points of the Canadian version; for the full text (ugh!), click here:

Subject: NRET: E-MAIL SURCHARGE  Date: April 15, 1999 1:08 PM

Internet Subscriber:
Please read the following carefully if you intend to stay online and
continue using email: The last few months have revealed an alarming
trend in the Government of Canada attempting to quietly push through
legislation that will affect your use of the Internet.

Under proposed legislation Canada Post will be attempting to bill email
users out of "alternate postage fees". Bill 602P will permit the Federal
Govt to charge a 5 cent surcharge on every email delivered, by billing
Internet Service Providers at source. The consumer would then be billed in
turn by the ISP. Toronto lawyer Richard Stepp QC is working to prevent
this legislation from becoming law.

Note that most of the major newspapers have ignored the story, the only
exception being the Toronto Star that called the idea of email surcharge
"a useful concept who's time has come" (March 6th 1999 Editorial). Don't
sit by and watch your freedoms erode away! Send this email to all Canadians
on your list and tell your friends and relatives to write to their MP and
say "No!" to Bill 602P.

Kate Turner
 Assistant to Richard Stepp QC
 Berger, Stepp and Gorman
 Barristers at Law
 216 Bay Street
 Toronto, ON
 MlL 3C6

Here are a couple of links to check if you'd like more information: AppleLinks Macintosh News (leaving our site) and Canadian Forces College (leaving our site)

For the U.S. Postal Service "alternate postage fees" version of this hoax, click here.

Please do not forward this -- or any other hoax -- to all your friends.

Instead, you should reply to the sender -- and as far back up the email chain as you have energy -- informing the originators that this is a hoax. For this particular hoax, I suggest that you provide a pointer to this URL (http://www.umich.edu/~virus-busters/hoaxes/canada602p.html)
For virus or hoax info, please see our main page (http://www.umich.edu/~virus-busters/) or go to another reputable site, like DataFellows (leaving our site).

   -BPB

visits to this page since 06 June, 1999 03:23 EDT