Evidence of meeting #148 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.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Thank you.
We will go into the next round, which will be our final one. I think we have four more questions to be asked, or four more time periods. On the list, we have Mr. Graham, Mr. Erskine-Smith, Mr. Nater and Mr. Baylis, each for five minutes.
Is that okay?
Go ahead, Mr. Graham.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thanks.
I want to build on other questions on timelines. At the very beginning, in the first round of questions, we were trying to get a sense of whether you would be ready for the next election in 2023. That seemed to be a difficult question to answer. I never got an answer that said “yes, Google will be ready to implement Bill C-76, by the 2023 federal election”, assuming it happens at that time.
If we know that it's going to be ready for 2023 and we know it's not going to be ready for June 30, 2019, do you know? Are you actively working on it now? Do you know if it's going to be ready at some point between those two dates?
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
Simply put, it would be clear to say that we are going to strive to have it ready by 2023. I couldn't commit to you specifically about when it may or may not be ready.
The other thing that is worthwhile noting is that as a global company we work on global elections, so the teams that are working on this are deploying the transparency report from place to place to place. It will continue to evolve and grow in terms of that. As well, our own advertising systems will continue to evolve and grow.
That's why providing a hard date—that it will take two years or however—is very difficult. Between now and then, there will be a number of changes that have already been introduced in the system that would actually impact that.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Understood.
When GDPR came in fairly recently, how long a lead time did you have on that and how long did it take for you to put it in place?
Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada
I believe the conversations around GDPR took upwards of four years to deliberate on the legislation itself and then its implementation. It's still going through implementation. The focus we had on GDPR from the outset was both on participating in the discussion about the content, the tone and the objectives of the legislation, working closely with the European Commission and their staff, and then on also ensuring we had the systems in place to be able to comply with it. That's still an ongoing process.
If you're drawing an analogy, there's an extreme distinction between the way the amendments to Bill C-76 were considered and implemented and the way legislation normally is considered and implemented.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I appreciate your point.
Mr. Kee, I talked in the last round of questions about the 15 word changes. Between rounds, I've been looking through my notes, because I do sit on PROC and I was involved with the Bill C-76 process from beginning to end. We had numerous witnesses and numerous submissions, but I cannot find any from Google. On those 15 words, how would—
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
That would be because the changes were introduced during clause-by-clause after the witness list had closed, so we didn't make representations to the committee because the provisions in question were not being considered at the time.
As I said, I'm more than happy to circulate them now. They were provided to the Senate committee when it was at that stage.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Okay. Thank you. That's good to know.
That's all I have for the moment. I appreciate your being here. It's been an interesting meeting, so thank you very much for this.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
You're not going to accept political advertisements. That was the decision that was made, right?
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Okay.
How are you going to stop me from advertising? You say that you don't want to accept my ad, but I'm, like, nefarious. I'm not a good actor, so I'm going to try to put an ad up anyway. How are you going to stop me?
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
As I mentioned in my opening remarks, there will be a combination of automated systems that will be evaluating advertising that comes in, as well as, basically, ad enforcement teams that will be also reviewing all the ads.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Okay. To stop me, you're going to have this system that you're going to put in place to identify an ad, right?
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Then you're also going to have a separate team to identify ads as well—one automated, one not automated—and they're going to identify these ads, right?
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
Yes. Often what happens is that the automated systems will review the ads at the beginning and look for flags or tags that indicate that it's probably a political ad. Then, in some instances, that will go to a human team for review, because it may require a contextual analysis that the machines simply can't provide.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Right. You are not able within this time frame to make the registry, but you're able to put in the programming, the people and the resources necessary to stop it, right?
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Okay. I come along and I have this ad. Either you can take this ad and put it on the registry or you can just stop it, but you clearly can identify it, right? We've agreed on that. You've just said that you can identify it.
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
We will be using our systems to identify and enforce our ad policies, yes.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
You said to me that you agree that you can identify that this is the ad.
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
Correct.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Okay.
Once you can identify that it's the ad, instead of saying “I have all my technology and people to block it”—you've got that—why can't you just say, “Okay, I've identified it, and I'm just going to put it on the registry”?
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
Simply because, again, the real-time time frame in order to do that would actually be tricky for us to comply with, to update a registry, and, as I said, it also would be delivering that information to third parties.