Thank you, Mr. Therrien and Mr. Vickery, for being here.
It seems that we have a fundamental question to ask as a society, and that is, when we come to data, what will we allow and what will we not allow? It really falls on the government to make the rules and not allow each company to decide how and when they use data in whatever manner.
I'm going to put that question to both of you, in order to understand. Before I do so, I'll say that we've always had targeted marketing. I was just looking up Michael Dell from Dell Computers. Before he became a computer mogul, he used to sell newspapers. He would look at the database of people who were newly married or people who had just moved. He was extremely successful as a teenager doing that. I could get that data now from, say, Facebook. If I wanted to sell newspapers the old-fashioned way, tell me who has just moved and who just married. We've allowed targeted marketing before.
Now, selling of data—nothing to do with Facebook, again; I give charitable donations, and I know that some of these charities share my data with other charities, because it's a good way to hit someone up again. Sometimes they ask permission to share the data, and sometimes they don't. That sharing of data for commercial reasons, that targeting, has been allowed. Both of these things have been allowed in the past; Facebook makes it far more efficient. If I were a political party, let's say the Green Party, I'd say that whoever's posting a lot about environmental issues might be a good person for me to target to get a donation or to convert.
I want to ask you this fundamental question. What should we allow, knowing that these things have already happened, and what should we not allow? How should we as a government put parameters around this behaviour?
I'll start off with you, Mr. Therrien, and then we'll go to Mr. Vickery.