Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We're pleased to be here today.
My name is John Weigelt. I'm the national technology officer for Microsoft here in Canada. My colleague Marlene Floyd, national director of corporate affairs for Microsoft Canada, joins me. We appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee today. The work you've undertaken is important given our increasingly digital world and the impact of technology on jobs, privacy, safety, inclusiveness and fairness.
Since the establishment of Microsoft Canada in 1985, our presence here has grown to include 10 regional offices around the country, employing more than 2,300 people. At our Microsoft Vancouver development centre, over 700 employees are developing products that are being used around the world. Cutting-edge research on artificial intelligence is also being conducted by Ph.D.s and engineers at the Microsoft research lab in Montreal. That's in partnership with the universities there.
Powerful technologies like cloud computing and artificial intelligence are transforming how we live and work, and are presenting solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems. At Microsoft we are optimistic about the benefits of these technologies but also clear-eyed about the challenges that require thinking beyond technology itself to ensure the inclusion of strong ethical principles and appropriate laws. Determining the role that technology should play in society requires those in government, academia, business and civil society to come together to help shape the future.
Over 17 years ago, when Bill Gates asserted that “trustworthy computing” would be the highest priority at Microsoft, he dramatically changed how our company delivers solutions to the marketplace. This commitment was re-emphasized by our CEO, Satya Nadella, in 2016. We believe privacy is a fundamental human right. Our approach to privacy and data protection is grounded in our belief that customers own their own data. Consequently, we protect our customers' privacy and provide them with control over their data.
We have advocated for new privacy laws in a number of jurisdictions, and we were early supporters of the GDPR in Europe. We recognize that for governments, having computer capacity close to their constituents is very important. Microsoft has data centres in more regions than any other cloud provider, with over 100 data centres located in over 50 regions around the world. We're quite proud that two of these data centres are located here in Canada, in Ontario and Quebec.
Protecting our customers and the wider community from cyber-threats is a responsibility we take very seriously. Microsoft continues to invest over $1 billion each year in security research and development, with thousands of global security professionals working with our threat intelligence centre, our digital crimes unit, and our cyber-defence operations centre. We work closely with the Government of Canada's recently announced Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. We have partnered with governments around the world under the government security program, working towards technical information exchanges, threat intelligence sharing and even co-operative botnet takedowns. Further, Microsoft led the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, signed by over 100 global organizations that came together to defend all customers everywhere from malicious cyber-attacks and to do more to keep the Internet safe.