Evidence of meeting #29 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was product.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
4:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canpages Inc.
In fact, I now clearly have their approval, because we know they are using that information for their own purposes as well.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Lise Zarac Liberal LaSalle—Émard, QC
But you have not received their permission.
Have you acquainted yourselves with municipal legislation?
4:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canpages Inc.
I am no legal expert, but I believe it has.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Lise Zarac Liberal LaSalle—Émard, QC
Is it easy to comply with the current legislation, which was drafted before all of this innovation and the advent of this new technology? Is it easy to comply with laws currently in effect where new technology is concerned?
4:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canpages Inc.
There is no doubt that technology changes quickly and that legislation does not always keep pace. Right now, we are talking about laws that were passed long before streeting and the Internet.
4:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canpages Inc.
As a result, there are a few imitations. At the same time, I think these laws were drafted based on common sense, for the most part, and we try to apply that common sense in our everyday activities. I think that is quite a reasonable approach.
My sense is that what Google and Canpages are doing now guarantees a very high level of privacy.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Lise Zarac Liberal LaSalle—Émard, QC
Do you not think it would be wise to review those laws, because of new technology?
4:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canpages Inc.
That is something you may want to consider, but I know that in our case, it has not slowed us down.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Lise Zarac Liberal LaSalle—Émard, QC
You said something earlier that concerns me greatly. You said that with your product alone, there are some 3.5 million searches done on a monthly basis.
4:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canpages Inc.
It is more than that.
4:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canpages Inc.
That is the number of visitors.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Lise Zarac Liberal LaSalle—Émard, QC
You were proud to be able to say that because, as you say, there have been no complaints. However, this is a major concern for me, because the Internet is not always used for positive or appropriate purposes. There is a great deal of exploitation over the Internet.
You said you do not go into residential areas. However, we know that in municipalities, businesses are often mixed in with residences. If people are conducting 3.5 million searches per month, they may find images on your sites that depict a lot of children. Although it may not be able to distinguish the face of one child in particular, you can see that there are a lot of children in a given area.
Does that not concern you? You talked about the municipalities. If you talk to people, they tell us that the most important thing for them is the safety of their children.
4:45 p.m.
Managing Director and Head of Google Canada, Google Inc.
Google takes safety extremely seriously. I think in this case the best answer I can give is that the images in question were taken in public places. They're nothing that any of you or anybody else couldn't see while walking down the street at a moment in time. They're static images, often months or maybe years old—
4:45 p.m.
Managing Director and Head of Google Canada, Google Inc.
—that anybody, any individual, has access to. I think the important thing to note is that we provide the ability to take those images down. But we take privacy and security extremely seriously.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome to both of you today.
Mr. Poilievre has established that Canadians should not have to worry about being captured in compromising situations, and what I want to talk about are the vulnerable in our society. The vulnerable need to be safeguarded. Google and Canpages need to assure Canadians that predators are not able to use this technology to take advantage of the vulnerable in our society.
You have said that the images of individuals and licence plates will be blurred. I have many shelters in my riding of Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, and I note that Saskatoon is one of the cities listed to be photographed by Google Street View. I would like to understand this. Will this blurring extend to sensitive locations such as these shelters? Many of these shelters are in public places or in business sections of my riding. How can you ensure that the privacy of these vulnerable individuals will be protected?
4:45 p.m.
Managing Director and Head of Google Canada, Google Inc.
In addition to working with the Privacy Commissioner, the committee, and local law enforcement officials, we plan on reaching out to umbrella organizations in advance of launch to notify them of both the blurring technology and the takedown process, such that any organization that feels, for whatever reason, an image of their location might be sensitive has the ability to take that down.
We'll be as proactive as possible and work with the stakeholder organizations. Again, I remind the committee, though, that these are images that anybody could see through a number of different sources, be they books, maps, or local-level imagery.
4:45 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canpages Inc.
I totally concur with Mr. Lister's statement. I would just add that in the case of shelters, which is a very sensitive case, we thought a lot about what we could do to go even further. We realized that, first of all, we have complete blurring, so privacy is guaranteed, but that it would be dangerous, actually, to provide extra services around shelters. It would certainly attract attention, because people would ask why that building was blurred. Therefore, the best thing about shelters is that nobody knows where they are, and it's going to remain like that.
