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.
3:40 p.m.
Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada
What I will say is that we are trying to evolve our products to a point where we reach compliance with the Canadian regulations. At the moment, we can't do that. It's a tremendously difficult task.
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
What about Washington state? Are you going to run political ads at the local level in Washington state?
3:40 p.m.
Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada
We didn't during the last cycle.
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Are you committed to doing so in the next cycle?
3:40 p.m.
Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada
I can't speak specifically to the obligations of Washington state. I don't know if they evolved.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Here's my frustration. You have a company that makes billions of dollars, and looks at a small jurisdiction in Washington state and a small jurisdiction in Canada, and says, “Your democracy doesn't matter enough to us. We're not going to participate.” If a big player decided to change the rules, I guarantee that you would follow those rules.
We are too small for you. You are too big. You are too important, and we are just not important enough for Google to take us seriously.
3:45 p.m.
Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada
I'd contest that observation, because as we mentioned, there have been other examples where we've had to make this decision. We don't do it willingly. We look for every route we can to have that tool available to voters.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
What's the largest jurisdiction where you have made a decision like this?
3:45 p.m.
Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada
As Jason just mentioned, the advertising has to be blocked in France. That's the reality. The reality for us here is not a commitment to democracy in Canada. The reality here is the technical challenge we confronted, with the amendments to the Elections Act. The internal evaluation resulted in the decision that we can't implement the technical challenges in time for the election cycle.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I accept that timing is a constraint. What I struggle with is when you don't give me a direct answer when I ask whether you are committed to doing so for the next federal election, or for the next election at the local level in Washington state.
That is an obvious frustration. Can you say, “Yes, we're committed to doing so. We'll fulfill that,” as a clear answer to my question?
3:45 p.m.
Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada
The reason I paused in replying to you is that in a parliamentary system, we have fixed election dates. But conceivably, there could be an election date within the next six, nine or 18 months.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Okay, but let's say you're looking at a four-year cycle. Do you think that's reasonable?
3:45 p.m.
Head, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada
What I'm saying to you is that we work to improve all of our elections tools, and to meet the expectations of our users, and especially of regulations. Our intent is always to increase both the quality and the breadth of those tools.
As we look at the obligations under the Elections Act, our intent is to try to reach those standards. We're faced with a time frame right now where we couldn't do that for this election.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I understand. By 2023, I expect that you'll be able to do that.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
It's a shame that you were unable to do so, but Facebook was able to figure it out.
The last thing I want to ask about, just because you've raised it, is recommended videos on YouTube. You've recently made a decision. After many years of not considering this to be a problem, in January of this year you decided that borderline content would not be recommended. Is that right?
3:45 p.m.
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
That's correct.
I would dispute the characterization that this isn't something that we considered to be an issue. We've been examining this for a while and doing various experimentation with the recommendation system in order to improve the quality of the content the users would see.
3:45 p.m.
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
The borderline content policy was introduced earlier this year. That's correct.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I was referring to and taking my direction from a number of past Google employees who were quoted on Bloomberg suggesting that you two actively dissuaded the staff from being proactive on this front specifically. I take it that you don't think that's true.
Lastly, I understand the idea of safe harbour, where someone posts a video, posts content, and you can't be liable for everything that somebody posts. However, do you agree that as soon as you recommend videos, as soon as your algorithm is putting in particular content, boosting particular content and encouraging people to see particular content, you should be liable for that content and responsible for that content?
3:45 p.m.
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
I would agree with you insofar as, when there's a difference between the results that are being served or the result of a passive query versus a proactive recommendation, there's a heightened level of responsibility.
With respect to notions of liability, the challenge is that there's a binary that exists in the current conversation between whether you are a publisher or a platform. As a platform that is also, in the case of YouTube, taking in 500 hours of video every single minute and has over a billion hours of content being watched every day, being able to—
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I'm only talking about content that's recommended by you, specifically.
3:45 p.m.
Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel, Google Canada
Yes. In that case, we are endeavouring, through the process of the recommendation system, to basically provide content that is relevant to what we think the user wants to watch, in a corpus that is much larger than conventional publishers are actually dealing with.
3:45 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
It's a long answer that isn't really saying anything. The answer is obviously yes.
Thanks very much.
3:45 p.m.
Conservative
