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Canada Adding Legal Teeth to Electronic Documents

Saskatchewan, one of the country's most-rural provinces, approved its Electronic Information And Documents Act last week, making electronic contracts worth more than the bits in which they're stored and validating broadly defined "electronic agents" that can include World Wide Web and E-mail servers and applications, as tools to execute such contracts.

Meanwhile, in Canada's most technology-laden province, Ontario member of Provincial Parliament John Hastings saw a well-received second reading of a private member's bill he introduced which would, in effect, be nearly identical to the Saskatchewan law.

Michael Geist, a professor at the University of Ottawa Law School and an Internet law specialist, said the two bills were similar for good reason.

"The Ontario and Saskatchewan efforts are based on a Canadian standard - the Uniform Electronic Commerce Act (UECA), which was passed as a model law in September of 1999," he said. "That, in turn, is based on an International standard that comes out of the United Nations.

"There is a similar model law in the US called the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA)," he added, "and in similar fashion, it's based on the same international standard and it's up to US states to enact it."

Whether the laws are drafted in Canada or the US - where early adopters such as California and Pennsylvania passed their versions of the UETA in 1999 with several more following - most have so far stayed true to the original specifications from the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law.

"I think it's absolutely critical that we see similar language across the board between provinces, states (and) countries," Geist said. "Given the borderless state of e-commerce, the effectiveness of this model law is that everybody enacts the same law. If we find that various jurisdictions begin to move in their own direction, then the seamless nature of e-commerce is really going to be damaged."

Geist said the laws are designed to support e-commerce "by providing a new level of certainty to electronic transactions."

"The whole idea behind the law is what's seen as electronic equivalence - the idea that we will treat online in the same manner, or an equivalent manner as we treat offline. So, the proposed laws in Canada, as well as what we see in the US and elsewhere, are really provisions designed to facilitate that."

Said Geist: "In many ways, there is an international wave of support for this model code, and I think it reflects a growing appreciation for the need for a common legal approach to e-commerce and the usefulness and, I think, proper direction this model code takes.

"For some people there is some measure of uncertainly around electronic contracting - whether it's the clicking of an 'I accept' icon on a Web site, or incorporation of traditional legal norms into the online environment."

In Ontario, private member's bills rarely become law, but indications are that the proposed legislation submitted by Hastings, a member of the ruling Conservative party, will likely form the basis of whatever legislation the government finally unveils.

"I think there could be some changes made around the issue of privacy," Hastings told Newsbytes. "That's one of the concerns that was brought up by some of the opposition members (Thursday). That would be something that may be taken into account by the government when they introduce such follow-up legislation."

Hastings said the government is unlikely to decide how to handle the bill in committee until late June.

"E-commerce will have drastic impact on how business is undertaken and how citizens will communicate with their government," Hastings said. "The bill is a way of accommodating those objectives."

While debate continues at the federal level in the US over competing proposals for electronic signatures laws related to digital contracts, Geist said the UECA and UETA are "really focused primarily on contracting."

"There is a reference to electronic signatures, rather than digital signatures, because the UECA - and the Saskatchewan and Ontario versions of it - are designed to be technology neutral," he said. "While digital signatures are today the favorite method of authentication, there is a recognition that might not always be so, and the law is designed to function regardless of which technology if the favorite one."

Reported by Newsbytes.com, www.newsbytes.com.

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