Industry committee  We've very much appreciated this opportunity to come and particularly to hear your questions. We look forward to the final report. There is a big difference between business-to-business commerce, business-to-consumer commerce, where a number of your concerns over protecting consumers come in, and consumer to consumer.

Industry committee  But prices are currently going down.

Industry committee  This is an answer that is best shared between us because you can see that the concentration or that integration offers consumers more choice. It is often a question of scale.

Industry committee  Without economies of scale, it is difficult to have the reach, the strength, the innovation.... That is one aspect of the issue.

Industry committee  That is what happened after more competition was introduced. It is the same thing for small companies and consumers. That is why the government made the decision to bring in more competition in order to bring down prices.

Industry committee  I think it's difficult to look to the government to become the advertising agency for all things Canadian, outside of Canadian cultural content, which is treated differently. Part of the challenge is trying to find out where the electronic world really differs from the physical world.

Industry committee  In terms of the international positioning, we are a little hampered by the delay in our data, and if we compare 2007 in Canada to 2010 or 2011 in another country, we're going to look a little backward. So I'm glad that Forbes has declared us a good place to do business, but in terms of measuring how well we're performing as a country on e-commerce, we're a little hampered in our ability to do that in a timely fashion.

Industry committee  In the newspaper reports about Shared Services Canada, where there's a consolidation of the IT spend of the government, I'm reading that this is a way to improve the smartness of the spend and perhaps improve the cost-effectiveness of that spend rather than have duplicative data centres or networks.

Industry committee  My experience is going to be much better with the ICT industries, since that is part of my portfolio, rather than autos or airlines. Aside from the general economic downturn, there has been a gradual diminution of manufacturing in Canada, because there are offshore, lower-cost countries, like China, that are able to make more and more of this gear at affordable prices.

Industry committee  I spend most of my life on my BlackBerry when I'm not in meetings. I can't really say how much of our purchasing of supplies is done online with delivery later. I am unaware of that. A lot of our transactions with our colleagues and clients are done through e-mail or website postings.

Industry committee  That's a Treasury Board Secretariat responsibility within the new Shared Services Canada, I presume. Treasury Board also has a service sector that promotes good delivery of services and cost efficiency. Therefore, they are presumably also promoting electronic means where it makes sense.

Industry committee  I'm going to ask Janet to talk a bit about that, but just generally, the more we can take down the concerns over security or the concerns over the cost of spam to the small business owner...that's one of the things we're trying to accomplish beyond protecting Canadians.

Industry committee  Instead of the two programs I mentioned, that of the BDC and of the NRC, it might be better for government or for the public sector to deliver services in order to encourage clients to do business online.

Industry committee  The G-7 is a little more difficult because the data is not always comparable. I think the adoption statistic I used in my opening remarks was that Canadian businesses are investing, per worker, 60% of what the U.S. is doing. That is a gap that has maintained itself, if not increased, over the last seven or eight years.

Industry committee  Yes. When we were consulting on the digital economy strategy, there was a very thoughtful think piece put in by the Council of Canadian Academies. They focused on the adoption question, and they felt it was essentially causally related. It doesn't explain all of the productivity difference, but there was a key role due to the underinvestment in ICTs; hence the emphasis on trying to pick examples from different types of firms that can be used as best practices for others and generally raising awareness through every vehicle we have, through all government programming, to emphasize the need to think smart about the use of ICTs, whether it's to protect your existing market position or to improve productivity, cut costs, reach new markets, or have new products.