Thank you for your question.
I know you attended the WCIT in Montreal. As you heard from the rest of the world, we live in an open world, so you cannot control everything and contain it in a lockdown mode. We need to make sure we have the ability to manage the risks that are out there.
The Privacy Commissioner today is doing a very credible job engaging the industry, in setting up what the frameworks are, and what needs to be. The consultation process is ongoing.
If you have specific prescriptive rules of a certain type, what may happen is you might be looking backward rather than forward. You have to change it every so often. This world is moving very fast.
At the same time, you've all heard the terms “crowd sourcing” and “crowd funding”. If you want to spur innovation and growth in the country, you need to allow the digital world to come into Canada, live here, grow here, and nurture industries here. You have to be inviting.
As a nation we need to strike a delicate balance, that we not only create a condition whereby we not only attract companies coming in and businesses grow, but at the same time we make sure we have the right protective tools and the ability to deal with them.
For example, today any Federal Court has the power to award punitive damages if the company is out of line in any area. The Privacy Commissioner could lay down certain rules and guidelines if somebody is out of line. For industry not to be engaging in this conversation and just having a set of rules would be very difficult because again you're looking backward rather than forward.