Two agencies basically useless

A restaurant owner tried to report a potential fraud to Canada Fraud Centre. In The Guardian, he is quoted, “You can’t just simply say here is information about a potential fraud.”

I’ll bear witness to that. “We’re not interested in a new scam unless someone has lost money to it.”

When I received a call a couple of weeks ago with a new approach, it rose above the noise of the CRA etc. scam calls. This one offered a 0 per cent interest rate on my credit card.

I tried reporting it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre website (CAFC). But there was only provision to report losing money to a scam, so I phoned them instead but same result. It seems they don’t wish to warn us, but would rather report back to us that we lost money in scams.

Years ago, I tried to make use of Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation because it was advertised, but to the same avail. To report businesses with which I have never dealt that regularly send me spam, for our tax dollars I was told to add them to my spam-blocker.

That’s two agencies without mandate to advance anything in the field for which they exist. Nothing would be lost if they were to disappear. I can’t speak much to the Do Not Call list because I wasn’t foolish enough to use it, but I imagine it’s a great place to get a verified list of numbers that “you’re not allowed to call.”

Justin O’Brien,

Winsloe