Thank you very much.
I want to say at the outset, Madam Denham and Madam Cavoukian, congratulations for your leadership on the issue of protecting the privacy rights of Canadians. You both have been champions of the issue and have been very forward-thinking. It has been very helpful.
I'm interested in the issue of privacy by design because the problem with legislating a solution is that, if we are simply looking at going after the problems after the fact, we're always playing catch-up and that's not a system that I think is conducive to building the kind of social media world that we're interested in.
So the question of privacy by design I think is fascinating and is one that I hope our committee seriously studies. I compare it to the issues in the 1990s across Canada with the forestry industry and the fights with environmental groups. It seemed that there was continual conflict until the sides sat down and started to come forward with a standard, which was forestry certification—the FSC. There are still a lot of problems with the FSC, but it became a standard that people had to meet in order to find a way to get past the continual conflicts in the forest.
It seems to me that this might be a way of moving forward on issues of privacy. My question is, does it have to be legislated? Do we have to just hope for opt-in from the giants and from the small players? Or is there a way of saying that when you're dealing in Canada this needs to be set up, that this is the gold standard and we expect you to stand by that gold standard? How do we actually make this doable on the ground?