Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to make a confession. I'm a recovering digital utopian. I came here as a young democratic socialist and I fought hard against regulation. Imagine that, because we saw all the start-ups and we saw a great digital future. That was 2006. Now in 2019, I have conservative chairs here who are pushing for government regulation. That's the world we're in with you folks.
It's because we're talking about democratic rights of citizens, re-establishing the rights of citizens within the realm that you control. We're talking about the power of these platforms to up-end our democratic systems around the world, which is unprecedented. We're talking about the power of these platforms to self-radicalize people in every one of our constituencies, which has led to mass murder around the world. These are serious issues. We are just beginning to confront the issues of AI and facial recognition technologies and what that will mean for our citizens.
It's what our Privacy Commissioner has called the right of citizens to live free of surveillance, which goes to the heart of the business model, particularly of Facebook and Google, and it came up yesterday and today from some of the best experts in the world that the front line of this fight over the public spaces and the private lives of citizens will be fought in the city of Toronto with the Google project.
Mr. McKay, we asked you questions on Sidewalk Labs before, but you said you didn't speak for Sidewalk Labs, that it was somehow a different company.
Mr. Slater, we had experts say this is a threat to the rights of our citizens. Mr. McNamee said he wouldn't let Google within 100 miles of Toronto.
How is it that the citizens of our country should trust this business model to decide the development of some of the best urban lands in our biggest city?