Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you very much to all of our witnesses today. I found the testimony quite interesting. I appreciate your time.
I often think about the big tech companies. I know they can be placed into many different categories. We're talking a lot about online platforms, but there's a lot of big tech out there today.
I was reading in the Toronto Star today that Apple just reached the $3-trillion mark. That's a third larger than the GDP of Canada. That's just to put Apple into perspective. These companies are very powerful. They're bigger than some G20 countries with regard to their value. They are major players.
When I was a member of provincial Parliament in Ontario, I moved a bill on the right to repair. It was the first one of its kind in Canada. Apple executives and their lawyers came to my constituency office to see me. I was shocked. I had never engaged in an international multinational corporation because of a bill I put forward in the Ontario legislature. I got a bit of a feel for how powerful these companies are.
Back in the late 1700s, Benjamin Franklin became the postmaster general. It placed him at a huge advantage. If you were a publisher, the best job you could have was to control the mail. He became a publisher and was able, I think in 1774, to start to distribute his paper. Before that, he wasn't allowed to distribute it because the previous postmaster general wouldn't allow him to distribute his newspaper. Platforms today get to pick and choose what they distribute, in many ways. There was a new regulation put forward during Benjamin Franklin's time to remove those conditions and open up the mail system to create fair competition.
We're at a stage right now where we need to make sure that, as the Internet grows.... I think a couple of people mentioned that there are some good and bad sides to the Internet. We see it as something that can be used for the betterment of society, and we need to put in place the right types of rules to ensure that Canadians are getting a fair deal from this ever-changing technology.
I'd like to ask Ms. Donovan a question with regard to higher education in general. I know you had an experience with Harvard. In general in America today, how powerful is big tech when it comes to controlling the voice of research?