Finance Committee on Feb. 27th, 2014

[Darren Hannah]

That's an interesting question. Ideally we'd like the federal government to be regulating that space. We want a certain degree of uniformity. Our concern is that right now it is fractured. If you come to a bank, you know that you have the protections of the Bank Act and everything associated with that. If you go outside that to some other institution, it's unclear.

We think it would be reasonable to make sure that everybody, no matter what provider they go to, has a certain level of expectation about solvency, security, customer disclosure, and recourse.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Do you want those three proposals of yours through the Bank Act, then?

[Darren Hannah]

No, through the Bank Act it would only apply to the bank. We want something broader than that. We want something that applies more broadly than just to the bank.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Through a legislative measure, or what?

[Darren Hannah]

The mechanism can be whatever works, frankly.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I'm just trying to draw you out. My time is almost up here.

[Darren Hannah]

If legislation would work, that would be fine. It's really a matter of whatever is effective.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

My colleague here is saying that I need to cut myself off.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We'll have to continue this discussion. Thank you.

We'll go to Monsieur Bélanger.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

My first question is for you, Chair, if I may. Have the credit unions been invited to present before the committee on this matter?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I believe they're....

Are they up next, or...?

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I don't know whether the committee would consider that, because they are quite present throughout the country. Mr. Saxton brought it up, as we just heard. There are the caisses populaires as well.

Another reason, if I may, is that a couple of years ago the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $8 million or $9 million to Développement international Desjardins to help Africa and Latin America hone their cash transfer system on telephones. I suspect this is something that would be related to payments, because in order to have payments you need credit or cash or something in your mobile apparatus. I don't know if that has been looked at. At the up end of it, how do you account for cash transfers or the ability for a mobile instrument to pay?

I think it would be useful if the committee heard from them. I would just make that suggestion, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay. We appreciate that.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I want to go back to the security side of this.

Mr. Cumming, you flashed four names out there, Target being one of them. I hear that 25 million of their customers had their personal information hacked—who knows what has happened to it—and a few others.

Which security recommendation is your priority? Perhaps you could answer that quickly, because I have another question about that for each and every one of you.

[Hugh Cumming]

First and foremost our belief, since we are talking about mobile, is that mobile has great potential to provide a security framework for consumers in turning security into a user consent model and also unburdening merchants. The Target hack and all those hacks really are part of a response to PCI requirements of the payment networks' requirements of having to maintain sensitive data and an inability to really have standardized ways in which people handle data. That results in large-scale repositories of data behind infrastructure that was never meant to house that kind of information.

Moving away from that I think is important—

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I'll stop you there, because I have only a couple of minutes.

The one concern I have, and I think it's shared by many people in North America, not just in Canada, is that when we hear that NSA has gathered information through Google, Apple, and so forth, what's to say the same thing has not happened in our country? There's a double concern here about hackers and safety, and of course about who gets the information that is supplied to banking and other financial institutions.

The question I wanted to get to is this: Is anyone currently using quantum computing techniques for security? This is directed to anyone.

[Darren Hannah]

I have no idea.

[Hugh Cumming]

I think it's still early days for those approaches. I think we're challenged with security.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

So you know what I'm talking about.

[Hugh Cumming]

I do.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Will you be considering that use?

[Hugh Cumming]

We're looking at a number of things. We work with biometrics and other approaches. The challenge with security is that for it to be effective, it needs to be broadly adopted and well understood, and that's something that makes making changes like this take time.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Is no one else into that at all yet?

[A voice]

No.