Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Collins, for taking part in this committee hearing. Your participation is really very important to us. In fact, in this new digital reality, there are many questions and beliefs to elucidate. We are currently experiencing a type of lawless and faithless digital far west.
The company names don't matter much to me. I am more interested in the ways they use our personal data for profiling. In fact I am especially interested in the tactic that involves third party companies in countries where the electoral laws are not the same. We have to deal with that.
Normally, a country's laws control elections well. However, the situation can become problematic if we are dealing with a company in a country where the laws are different. In the current situation, the data are in Facebook, but a company is using Facebook data to do advertising. So they are in two, three, or perhaps even four countries. Even if we legislate in our respective countries, that is Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and others, those companies can settle in the Cayman Islands or any other tax haven. We have no control on the provenance of the funds or on the amounts spent.
We have to clean all of this up, but in your opinion, where should we start?