Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 4th, 2018

[Bianca Wylie]

From being in communities and talking to people...and maybe this just needs to be said because I'm running community meetings and talking to people about data and technology. Some of the sitting people in government seem to think that it's cool to be doing things with technology leaders, that somehow that's making the country appear to be progressive, and that's great for....

Whatever this enthusiasm is, it sounds ridiculously simple but this is why I find this embarrassing. It is not cool to be hanging out with companies when you know the impacts of these companies, and that how this rolls down into life in Canada is affecting things regarding our sovereignty, democracy and privacy.

People on the ground are not amused, and this is a message I would like to deliver on their behalf. This is not funny. This is not fun and cool. This is part of how Silicon Valley does its work. It makes things seem cool, friendly and easy to use, but magical. Don't ask how it really works because you're not a technologist. You see how this all plays out. It scares people out of feeling able to challenge what's going on. You fear that you're going to look like a Luddite, you're going to look stupid or your question might not make sense. These are all pieces that, when you posed that question, came to mind.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Kent.

Next up is Mr. Baylis.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Assume that you had the right to write the laws right now. We have a moving target, obviously. As Charlie pointed out, what we thought was great 10 years ago doesn't look so great now. With the rules we put in 10 years ago to allow the Internet and data to elaborate and grow, we're now starting to say, "Whoa, what have we done here?" I imagine 10 years from now we might be doing the same thing.

If you could frame out for us, in a big picture, from a philosophical and actual point of view, what would be the three things you would do right now if you were the government and you had that choice? This is in terms of our privacy, the use of this data and the control of it.

I'll start with you, Ms. Wylie.

[Bianca Wylie]

Thank you.

This is hard for me because I don't think we know the answers, so I'm just going to riff a bit on some areas.

One of them is that we need to be having conversations with the people in this country about some of the things we're talking about in terms of privacy. Because I think there are also a lot of opportunities with data, we need to talk about trade-offs.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

The first thing you'd say is that.... I have to admit that I was one these people. As we got into the study, I started saying, “Oh, my God.” Then we scratched the surface a bit more and I said, “Oh my gosh, they're doing this too.”

You're saying that we should go out and educate our population about what's actually happening right now with their data and privacy.

[Bianca Wylie]

Yes.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

You would make the contention that the population is not up to speed.

[Bianca Wylie]

I would, and that's me included, even though I'm trying. There were times when we did nuclear public safety campaigns. We talked about fire. We talked about risks to public health and risks to the country. I think it's time for that again. That's one piece.

Secondly, I'm drawing a little diagram here. I think laws should be made slowly. I think we need to understand.... I don't know if you've heard of it. It's called the pathetic dot. Lawrence Lessig had a model. There are four forces that shape our lives. We are the dot at the centre of these: norms, markets, architecture and law. It is extremely important to remember that, with what we're dealing with now, to do better is going to require work on all four of these fronts and the understanding that this is a confluence discussion. This is not a linear one.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I understand your first point, which is that we're going to go out and we're going to inform the public. We've done that. Then they're going to cry, “Do something.” What would you want us to do now that they know? What should we do?

[Bianca Wylie]

I'm not trying to be evasive. I really don't think what I think is that important here. I need to understand what we all think about some of this stuff when we talk to each other. If I hear other stories from other people what I think today might start to change. I think that is all the way up....

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Do you have a philosophical perspective on, say, “If you want to collect my data you have to ask for my permission,” or “I don't mind you collecting my data so long as it's not used”? Do you have some line or anything when it comes to the acquisition and use of data?

[Bianca Wylie]

Yes. I think clarity in what is being exchanged is important. I also think, and this goes back to the first point, that limiting.... It is more of a single-use idea rather than “just have it” and then it can keep evolving in terms of what you're doing with it. Clarity in that language in a terms-of-service situation, so that people aren't.... Teresa Scassa is a legal scholar. She describes how it's not consent right now; it's surrender. I think that's quite an accurate way to put it, so some focus over there would be helpful.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

You would say inform the public, and once you've informed the public let there be.... I might say, “Hey, I don't mind you knowing all this stuff about me because it makes my life easier,” but you might say, “I don't want you to know any of this stuff about me, because I find it intrusive.” In a philosophical sense, say, inform the public and then have maybe a sliding scale of what can and can't be done. We could implement this on things like terms of use and so on.

[Bianca Wylie]

Yes, and also on things like standards. Explore other mechanisms that aren't just the law. I don't think we can pull this all off within law, particularly not privacy law. There are too many other things going on.

I also think just because you ask specifics, I know in this city case I'm looking at, identifying the data that is critical to public service delivery and planning, that should be hived off as something that we pay attention to and understand how that works.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.

Professor.

[Prof. Maurice Stucke]

It's interesting because we've written a couple of books and we were ready to defend our thesis. I remember there was this one head of a competition agency who then looked at us and said, “Okay, so what are we going to do about it?” It kind of caught us flat-footed because we were just identifying the problem without necessarily having the solution.

What I would encourage would be, basically, threefold. First is to ask what your competition authority is doing about the market power problem. Marshall Steinbaum and I wrote a piece that just came out from the Roosevelt Institute on reinvigorating antitrust.

To what extent is the Canadian competition authority prepared for the digital economy? I think that's an important issue for you to.... Should the standards change to make it easier to go after these anti-competitive restraints?

The second would be, then, what are the necessary preconditions for effective privacy competition? Some of the themes you heard from today already touch on this: GDPR-like provisions on data portability, issues on who owns the data. What I would encourage then is really to bring together scholars on what some of the things that are necessary that we could put in so that we don't have to regulate, so that we can allow then the market forces to provide optimal privacy by design.

The third component, which we really haven't touched on, would be consumer protection. Here would be both before and after. What is it that we can do to simplify it for consumers so it's not like surrender, so that they actually have the ability to choose and feel comfortable in using this data?

The risks that I hope that I identify show that it's really multifold. You have concerns about journalism right now that the ACCC is looking into. You have concerns about addictions of young individuals and the effects they have on well-being.

There are other important implications that these data-opolies will have. I just identified those three.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you.

Next up for three minutes is Mr. Angus.

We're going to go through another round after this and then we have some committee business at the very end. We need to discuss some things in camera.

Go ahead Mr. Angus. You have three minutes.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Have I said lately what a great chair you are? You're going to give me a few extra minutes if I keep ragging the puck here. I want to thank you for your excellent work.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

You're about to get another seven.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Professor, I'm really interested that you nailed the question about the Competition Bureau in Canada. Our Competition Bureau is a great model for the 1980s and 1990s. They deal with price regulation and have a very narrow frame. This is not the kind of thing they step into. We have a Privacy Commissioner who is now stepping into all manner of issues, but some of this does lead to antitrust and he doesn't have the authority.

We need to be looking at these.... Our domestic models are based on very 20th-century problems, and we're moving into a 21st-century world very rapidly.

I'd like to talk about this need for antitrust. We can understand our own data. I could put it on Facebook and an old high school friend could meet me. Someone could sell me something. Where could my data go wrong? Someone could defraud me. We have no ability to comprehend mass data and the power that say Google or Amazon has.

The Bank of Canada, which is not a radical organization, has spoken up about the danger of the innovation economy in Canada suffering because of the power of these data-opolies. The Economist talks about the creation of these innovation kill zones. They can anticipate where new start-ups are coming and they can put them out of business. We have not seen the kind of competition we expected in the market in the digital economy.

In terms of antitrust, how important is it that we have some kind of antitrust mechanisms in place to protect not only the rights of citizens but also—here I am a socialist, talking about the market—making sure that we have a good market of competition?

[Prof. Maurice Stucke]

I'm not going to say antitrust is.... I'm from antitrust. I worked at the Department of Justice for many years before teaching. I could see the power antitrust can have. It's not the silver bullet. It's necessary, but it's not sufficient.

You do need to re-amp the tools, the way you point out. We talk about this in our book, Big Data and Competition Policy, and there was a report that came out by the Canadian Competition Bureau recently on big data.

I've seen the work the European Commission is doing, and what the French and German competition authorities, the CMA from the U.K. and Australia are doing. Now the United States is starting to have hearings on this as well. This is a key component that any competition authority needs to ramp up to better understand the risks in this economy. There are multiple risks that we didn't even talk about today.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Wylie, you mentioned earlier about dystopian realities. We are now in a dystopian reality. We have Google dropping its “Don't be evil” motto, working on censored search engines in China.... We've had some of these big data firms tying in with military operations. We've also seen the slide of democratic regimes in Europe, in eastern Europe, to much more authoritarian models.

My concern about a company like Google Alphabet having so much control over public space is that we do have the potential—we can see it around the world—for these powers to be misused.

How important do you think it is that in any of these smart city models we have citizen engagement, citizens on the boards and citizen rights to ensure that public space is still protected as public?

[Bianca Wylie]

It's extremely important.

I think the challenge at this point in time is that technology often works to the end-user, to me. I have an app. I use a product.

When you have companies starting to set up projects like Sidewalk Toronto, where every product line is almost a parallel government line of business. It might work a bit better than a city website. Who knows? In these cases, this is getting extra dangerous, because we're having this opportunity to hide what's going on, to hide it behind the technology and start to confuse people. Is this a corporation or is this a government?

I think that's really dangerous. Beyond having engagement and representation is also making sure that we're doing this fundamental education around who does what. What do we want to keep protected in terms of who does what?

This blur is real and this blur can happen through data. Education is very important to do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

We'll go through another round.

I just want to challenge you, Ms. Wylie. You said that you weren't going to respond to Mr. Baylis's question because you thought you weren't qualified to, but I think, for people who see the fire, it's important that you either put it out or you give people who can put it out your information on how to do it. I challenge you. Don't feel like you can't advise us on what it should look like, how to protect our data or how to use our data, etc. You're here for a reason, so feel free to give us your opinions. We think you're qualified to be here.

Next up for seven minutes is Mr. Erskine-Smith.