Evidence of meeting #106 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was google.
A video is available from Parliament.
10:50 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Will they get the same? I'm sure they'll get better, but will they get the same as GDPR, or are you going to purposely triage and say that this one's going to be getting GDPR, and this one's not?
10:50 a.m.
Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada
We're not going to make explicit choices like that. What we do, as has come up in the conversation, is.... There is data protection and privacy legislation that varies from country to country. We need to meet the obligations in each country. What users are going to see is that the entirety of the controls and tools available to them are improving both as a result of our investment and the obligations of GDPR.
10:50 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Has there actually been any data breaches from Google's databases compared to what's happened with Facebook?
10:50 a.m.
Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada
Not that we're aware of.
10:50 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Okay.
You've said that you don't sell the data. I agree with you. Why sell it? You own it. It's totally valuable. Just rent it out and let people ask you for it. That's your model. Is that correct?
10:50 a.m.
Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada
We own the data that we have about you, and we use it to sell ads.
10:50 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
The reason someone stole the data from Facebook is that they said, “Why would I give you this data? I'm going to use it and sell the ads even to these bad actors. I'll use it. Why would I give it away?” Someone had to go in there and fake it and steal it.
Has anybody tried that? Is that happening to Google?
10:50 a.m.
Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada
Not that we've seen.
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Thank you, Mr. Baylis. We're right at the edge here.
Thank you to everybody—
Mr. Angus
10:50 a.m.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Mr. Chair, because we were slightly condensed in this round because of the last round, and our two witnesses have provided us with an enormous amount of information, I'm wondering if it's possible to send them questions. We didn't get to questions like smart city, questions of moderating the Google Maps, and some of the questions on innovation.
I'm just wondering if it would be possible, through the chair, to follow up with questions so that we can make sure we've done all of our due diligence.
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Absolutely.
Are you okay with answering those questions when they come?
10:50 a.m.
Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada
I assume they'll be routed through the committee.
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Yes.
I just have one question for Mr. Balsillie, and I'm sorry, time is definitely up.
You mentioned the term “surveillance capitalism”. I guess the whole reason we're here today was started from a potential voter fraud somewhere across the water in another country. If we don't change our laws in Canada to deal with surveillance capitalism, is our democracy at risk?
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Thank you.
Thank you all for appearing today.
The meeting is adjourned.