The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government wants to crack down on online identity thieves.
On Thursday, Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette introduced Bill 24, An Act to protect consumers from the misleading or fraudulent use of a person’s identity or image.
The bill is intended to be a response to what has recently been experienced by several public figures, such as Véronique Cloutier, Normand Brathwaite, Maripier Morin, Claude Legault, Marie-Claude Barrette and Ève-Marie Lortie.
Their faces and voices have been used without their consent by fraudsters to promote bogus services or products: high-performing financial products, miracle weight loss products, anti-diabetes creams, etc.
Bill 24 proposes to combine the Office de la protection du consommateur (OPC) and the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), and to give them a new power to make orders, like the one currently held by the courts.
Both the president of the OPC and the president of the AMF could order a person or company to stop using a person’s image without their consent, for example in false advertising.
If the order is not respected, it could be filed in Superior Court and the offender could ultimately be charged with contempt of court, which is punishable by jail time.
The offender would then be liable to fines of up to $62,500 for a person, $125,000 for a company (or 5 per cent of its worldwide turnover).
At a press conference on Thursday, Jolin-Barrette thanked Barrette who, last year, broadcast the documentary “Marie contre Goliath” on the phenomenon of identity theft.
“Ms. Barrette, I say thank you. The cry from the heart that you have launched will not be left unheeded,” said the minister.
“Thanks to you, Quebecers will be better protected. The new tool that the OPC and the AMF are equipping themselves with will allow us to intervene more effectively and more quickly.”
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
