Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Dufresne, for being with us.
I'll take a brief step back in time. In the last century, when people bought a newspaper in the morning, they felt they were buying a product that gave them news, an account of what was happening in their society. But then someone thought about it and said that the newspaper was actually selling the reader to the person who was buying advertising in the paper. The buyer wasn't who we thought. In those days, a company that owned a lingerie store, for example, and bought advertising in the newspaper generally had no idea who its customers were or even who the newspaper's readers were.
Today, however, with social media, the dynamic is completely different. Indeed, people almost voluntarily provide their personal information to large conglomerates that sell or share this information in order to make huge profits. In other words, citizens provide information free of charge, enabling these large companies to target advertising precisely to their wants, desires and needs. At the same time, this enables large companies, large conglomerates, to reap considerable profits.
You spoke earlier of a consumer or citizen reflex. Do you get the impression that most people around us understand that they are selling themselves for free to the Web giants and social media?