Evidence of meeting #121 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 cse.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Anthony Durocher  Deputy Commissioner, Monopolistic Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau
Dan Rogers  Deputy Chief, SIGINT, Communications Security Establishment
Eric Santor  Managing Director, Canadian Economic Analysis, Bank of Canada
André Boucher  Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Communications Security Establishment
Alexa Gendron-O'Donnell  Associate Deputy Commissioner, Economic Analysis Directorate, Competition Promotion Branch, Competition Bureau
Dave Van Kesteren  Chatham-Kent—Leamington, CPC

12:10 p.m.

Liberal

Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON

We've heard of a lot of these social media platforms like Facebook being called data-opolies—I think Mr. Santor said “superstar platforms”. The fact is that people don't really have a choice. If they're on Facebook, and all their data is on Facebook—their photos, all their family, all their connections, their networks—to go off Facebook and go to another platform, as long as that data is kept by Facebook, it's very difficult for people because it's become a very important part of our social norm. They essentially have become monopolies.

My question is whether or not the current tools that we have in the legislation are sufficient to be able to deal with that new kind of monopoly, which is these large data platforms.

12:15 p.m.

Deputy Commissioner, Monopolistic Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau

Anthony Durocher

Canada's current competition framework is not meant to penalize monopolies per se. The competitive process ensures that firms that are innovating and investing and giving consumers a desirable product should not be punished for that. Our job is to ensure that these markets remain contestable through competition on the merits, and that small or existing or nascent firms are afforded the opportunity to compete on the merits of their products and services that they're providing to users.

Certainly, we're mindful of what's going on internationally on this front too, and we did note the GDPR has a data portability provision in it, which is noteworthy from a competition perspective as well. Our focus remains on ensuring that we have the cutting-edge tools to work with this. In our very broad consultation with our data paper, we consulted with the business, legal and academic communities.

There are no answers to this. There is no silver bullet. But we are confident that we have the tools to deal with it. We're going to keep them up to date.

12:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Vice-Chair Liberal Nathaniel Erskine-Smith

Thanks very much.

The next five minutes will be shared by Mr. Van Kesteren and Mr. Gourde, but Mr. Van Kesteren is first.

October 18th, 2018 / 12:15 p.m.

Dave Van Kesteren Chatham-Kent—Leamington, CPC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here.

I'm not normally a member of this committee, but I did serve on this committee, as a matter of fact, when I was first elected 12 years ago, so it's kind of a homecoming for me.

I think the assumption of most Canadians would be that the Communications Security Establishment is well trusted. We believe in our Canadian institutions, and I would go along with that. I think you're doing a great job.

I'm curious. How many people work for your agency?

12:15 p.m.

Deputy Chief, SIGINT, Communications Security Establishment

Dan Rogers

I think at this point it's somewhere around the order of 2,500.

12:15 p.m.

Chatham-Kent—Leamington, CPC

12:15 p.m.

Deputy Chief, SIGINT, Communications Security Establishment

Dan Rogers

Twenty-five hundred.

12:15 p.m.

Chatham-Kent—Leamington, CPC

Dave Van Kesteren

There are 2,500. That's a pretty good number, but when one looks at the NSA, for instance, in the United States and looks at.... First of all, there's just the enormity of their buildings. They have thousands upon thousands and thousands.

As I said in my opening remarks, most people would trust your organization, but what assurances do we have that organizations like the NSA...?

Mark Zuckerberg was in front of Congress a short number of months ago, and there were some real charges laid before that. There was collaboration between that organization, the CIA and a number of others. How do we not know that all of our information, all of the work that we do on all our files, isn't just being shifted about there?

12:15 p.m.

Deputy Chief, SIGINT, Communications Security Establishment

Dan Rogers

Thanks for the interesting question and for your remarks about CSE being trusted.

In our context, we've had a very close relationship with our Five Eyes partners and our international allies in that space for a very long time, 70 years. The reason for that alliance is a shared set of values around things like protecting democratic institutions and a trusted alliance between our countries. We have conventions in the intelligence context that we don't target each other's citizens and a long history with them of ensuring that we have privacy protection measures that are afforded to each other's citizens as well as to our own. In the intelligence space, that's a long-standing practice and it continues today.

12:15 p.m.

Chatham-Kent—Leamington, CPC

Dave Van Kesteren

I chose the United States, which is the largest group, I think, that would have the capabilities of doing whatever, but, of course, the Chinese are not far behind, and we've recently heard some disturbing reports of.... Somebody help me.

12:15 p.m.

NDP

Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON

Huawei.

12:15 p.m.

Chatham-Kent—Leamington, CPC

Dave Van Kesteren

Huawei. Those are, I think, more the issues that Canadians are somewhat concerned about. I know I certainly am.

What do we have in our defence mechanism to guard us from that type of foreign attack?

12:15 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Communications Security Establishment

André Boucher

This goes to the security end of our organization.

Maybe piling on a little bit on what Dan has said about the team and the size of the team, the power of 2,500 is really the power of 2,500 plus our Five Eyes colleagues, and that helps you scale, when you're facing foreign threats of different kinds, of all kinds. We work very closely together. We share advice and guidance, and we share the perspectives on what the threats are, the methods that they use, and what to do about it.

On the specifics of countries or technologies, of course there will be moments when, within the Five Eyes, we might have different views and different opinions, but that's to be expected, because we're from different nations. We have different sovereign rights and different organizations, and we have different systems, in fact, and a different presence already. Where you see perhaps some discussions between us, our situation is different. We take different measures, but at the end of the day, around the table, when we sit down and look at a similar scenario, we always come to the same conclusion. Where there might be some differences on the surface, I assure you that, where it matters at the deep end, we are very closely aligned, and we have been for 70 years.

12:20 p.m.

Liberal

The Vice-Chair Liberal Nathaniel Erskine-Smith

Mr. Gourde, you have 30 seconds.

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

Jacques Gourde Conservative Lévis—Lotbinière, QC

I'll be brief.

The security of confidential information is very important in Canada. For example, your cell phone numbers and email addresses will remain confidential if you don't give them out.

Two years ago, I was in Florida, where they have a public directory. I went onto the platform and typed in my name and address because I wanted to know whether a telephone number would appear. All my cell phone numbers and email addresses appeared on the screen. We can't do that in Canada. Canadians' personal information is secure and confidential, but it isn't in other countries.

Is there something we can do to correct that?

12:20 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Communications Security Establishment

André Boucher

In the example you cited, it's a bit like the old white and yellow pages in the phone books that used to be distributed. There are varying degrees of information. If your information has appeared on the Internet, then it's all around the world because it's on several global servers. If you did the same search in Canada, you'd probably have found the same thing.

What's private is the information that's on your device and that you haven't shared. This goes back to previous questions. You have to be very careful when you share information. You have to read user contracts carefully and understand what you're committing to because you're dealing with a public network.

12:20 p.m.

Liberal

The Vice-Chair Liberal Nathaniel Erskine-Smith

Thank you very much.

The next five minutes will go to Mr. Baylis.

12:20 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Durocher, you said you did an investigation into Google. What did you investigate? You said they made a commitment to stop doing something. What did they commit to stop doing?

12:20 p.m.

Deputy Commissioner, Monopolistic Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau

Anthony Durocher

Basically, the investigation was focused on search advertising and display advertising. Overall, we looked at seven potential theories of any competitive harm as to how competition may be hindered or how Google's actions were raising rivals' costs. On the balance of the evidence, we concluded that only one of those theories warranted taking action, and it essentially had to do with what's called the AdWords API terms and conditions.

It's a rather technical issue, but advertisers in the digital economy sometimes have to manage campaigns across different platforms, and essentially the inclusion of certain terms in that prevented advertisers from doing so effectively and using Google's rivals. This was dealt with with a five-year commitment that was provided to not introduce these terms and conditions into Canada.

I should point out that the Federal Trade Commission, which is our sister agency in the United States, had previously done a review and found the same issue as well.

12:20 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC

My concern is that, as was already mentioned, the European Union and its commissioner who takes care of anti-competition, Margrethe Vestager, fined Google $3.6 billion. She said, “Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors.”

First of all, this sounds like anti-competition activity by our rules too. Did you investigate this?

12:20 p.m.

Deputy Commissioner, Monopolistic Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau

Anthony Durocher

That's an excellent question.

That's why it's important to recognize that the competitive dynamics are not the same across countries necessarily. The European Commission has two decisions relating to Google. The one you mentioned is related to Google Shopping. Google Shopping did not figure prominently in our review, because the nature of the service that was introduced in Canada was really.... It came out in 2016. The introduction of these services are not the same across countries. That's why when we explore what other agencies are doing, we have to recognize that the nature of the services offered and the competitive dynamics are not necessarily the same as in Canada.

12:25 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC

What Google was doing in Europe, you're saying, they were not doing in Canada, or did we not have laws to stop them from doing it in Canada?

12:25 p.m.

Deputy Commissioner, Monopolistic Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau

Anthony Durocher

I would say the evidence suggested it did not raise an issue under our laws.

12:25 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC

That means they could be doing the exact same thing in Europe as they're doing here, but in Europe it's bad enough that they get fined $3.6 billion, and here we say that it's not affected by our law. Is that what I understand?

12:25 p.m.

Deputy Commissioner, Monopolistic Practices Directorate, Competition Bureau

Anthony Durocher

We're an evidence-based agency, and I would suggest that the evidence, as it pertains to countries in Europe, is not the same that we would consider here, nor the commercial realities—