Spam is the bane of the Internet and accounts for 90 per cent of all e-mail traffic. After years of dithering, the Canadian government is finally moving to enact legislation aimed at tackling the problem that has now become a criminal movement.

A bill is before the House of Commons, which recently retired Liberal Senator Yoine Goldstein hopes will merge with a private member's bill (S-220) he introduced to reduce spam.

Goldstein, a lawyer, became interested in the issue after growing annoyed with the amount of spam filling his inbox. He wants consumer power to launch legal action over spam, and to hold Internet service providers responsible for blocking the messages.

But Goldstein is concerned about the government's plan to involve several different agencies.

"Anytime you have a total of four agencies to oversee government legislation, one of them brand new, you set the stage for what I would call paralysis," Goldstein says.

McAfee released a documentary this week to highlight what they call "hacker commerce," the new type or organized crime that uses the Internet for everything from identity theft to spam to phishing.

"The numbers speak for themselves," says Ross Allen, McAfee's Canadian general manager. "A 500-per-cent increase in spam so far this year, and our sales of security products have been the best ever."

Consumers need to educate themselves and use firewalls, anti-spam software, and other tools, Allen adds.

Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor specializing in technology, says spam carries real costs for people, companies, and governments - and any new law will be a response to a digital world that is increasingly lawless.

"Spamming pays in Canada right now because the risk of being made liable is so low," Geist says. "What we have to do is realize that all our major partners in the G7 already have anti-spam legislation, and if we don't we risk becoming a haven for spammers to send spam to Canadians and everywhere else in the world."