Thank you for the question.
I know that the CBA's white paper, for those of you who have had a chance to review it, does talk about two countries in particular, Estonia and India, which are quite different for a number of reasons from Canada. We thought, as I think this committee did as well, that Estonia is sort of a model example within the specific context and culture of that country. I would say the similarities between the lessons learned from Estonia for Canada is the paramount importance of privacy and data security. My understanding is the federal government's digital exchange project adopts similar technology to what underlies X-Road. Those are two things we can take from Estonia.
I would say that pretty much after that everything is quite different. The federated model works with Canada's governance. We have multiple levels of government. A foundational identity documents it with different levels. Birth certificates sit with provincial governments. Citizen and immigration documents sit with the federal government. The federated model makes sense because of that decentralization. I think when we look at the private sector involvement.... I think in Estonia it was pretty much a government top-down position, as it was in India, whereas in Canada we already have movement. We have things that are in flight right now. I'll talk about a couple of things probably a few more times through my comments today.
The Digital ID & Authentication Council of Canada was created coming out of the task force on payments that was appointed by former finance minister Flaherty, because the task force on payments said that for digital payments to work, you absolutely need digital ID. DIACC has at the table provincial governments, the federal government, telcos, banks and credit unions. They have come together to create a pan-Canadian trust framework that would ideally underlie all players in the digital ecosystem in Canada.