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electronic documents to avoid dealing with a variety of formats; private
sector parties can set their own rules by contract or other agreements.
Under the Canadian federal Personal Information Protection and
Electronic Documents Act, 7 federal departments and agencies may “opt
in” to the e-government initiative and begin using electronic means of
doing business when they have the necessary technology in place in
order to deal with the issue of whether government departments are
technologically equipped to deal with e-government. There is a
provision for making regulations using electronic versions of forms and
methods of filing or otherwise submitting information to a department or
agency. The Canadian province, Ontario, takes a different approach in
the Electronic Commerce Act, 2000.8 While no one is required to make
or accept an electronic document, consent may be inferred from a
person’s conduct if there are reasonable grounds to believe that the
consent is genuine and is relevant to the government ministries and other
public bodies, however, consent must be explicit. Thus, a public body
need only do business electronically when it is in a position to do so. In
New Zealand, the rules of courts and tribunals will govern whether and
to what degree they will accept the use of electronic technology for court
purposes (as opposed to accepting electronic documents as evidence in a
case). In addition, New Zealand expects government departments to
issue guidelines as to when they will or will not accept electronic
communications: e-government websites with forms and the availability
of e-mail addresses on websites will imply, of course, that electronic
communication is welcome.
2.3.12 The Canadian statutes do not apply to wills, powers of attorney for
property or personal care, trusts created by will or codicil, deeds and
mortgages, and election documents. Part of the rationale for this is that
these are documents where there should be only one copy, an original in
the traditional sense, and part is that these documents may require the
more ceremonial act of a traditional handwritten signature. Most ecommerce laws provide for some exceptions and these are the common
ones. In New Zealand, in addition to similar exemptions, certain types of
notices must continue to be in writing. Some jurisdictions make
exceptions for notices of cessation of service from utility companies, for
example.
2.3.13 E-commerce legislation takes a functional approach. For example, legal
requirements found in statutes that documents be in writing is
considered to be based on the need to ensure that the document be
7
8
S.C.2000, chapter 5.
S.O. 2000, chapter 17.