Thank you.
Mr. Balsillie, I'm really interested in this discussion on surveillance capitalism. I was deeply against the regulation of Google because I wanted to see it develop. Imagine, me a socialist, and here is an entrepreneur warning us about surveillance capitalism. We are living in an upside-down world.
What concerns me is that in Canada we see Google with their former policy director in the Minister of Canadian Heritage's office. In the United States, Google's patent director is now in the patent office. There are serious questions about the undermining of patent law in the United States by Google because of their enormous power. The Bank of Canada has warned about the power of companies like Google to undermine competitiveness. We see in the tech sector that patent lawyer Michael Shore has said that the U.S. is turning into a “banana republic”, because legislators are rewriting the law to protect the interests of giants like Google. Meanwhile, the U.S. has dropped from first to 12th in global patent strength ratings over the last four years.
For Canada's tech sector, given the very close, comfy, cozy relationship between Google and the present government, where do you see us taking our tech sector in terms of innovation and building a credible relationship with Canadian consumers on issues of privacy?