The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday edition that phone-initiated fraud is a scourge on the public, which has only been told to "smarten up." A Globe editorial says that left in the wake of staggering financial losses are unsuspecting Canadians -- often the elderly -- who got hoodwinked by bad actors claiming to be the Canada Revenue Agency, a bank or even a grandchild. If Canada wants to crack down on phone scams, it has got to start treating them like crimes instead of as minor nuisances of modern life. Where is the CRTC in all of this? All it has delivered are well-intentioned but toothless half-measures. For years, the CRTC has been working with the telcos on a call traceback process, a way to sniff out the origins of scam callers and analyze traffic patterns. Puzzlingly, the CRTC made participation voluntary. The phone companies have the technology to block by default nuisance calls based on reasonable analytics. Bell Canada, for instance, in 2019 sought out the CRTC's permission to use artificial intelligence to detect and block scam calls. The request was approved; Bell has been stopping around a billion calls a year. Other telcos have not sought permission to do the same because they do not have to.