Evidence of meeting #12 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was zoom.
A recording is available from Parliament.
8:25 p.m.
Harry Moseley
That is absolutely correct. We've moderated it at 20% of the speaker and 80% of the translator. The reason we do that is so you can hear the tone of the speaker as well as the words.
8:25 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Okay. Thank you for that clarification.
Let me just see here. What else did I have? I put my notes away, but I do have some other questions I wanted to ask. I guess probably back with the Translation Bureau again—
8:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
I think I could further clarify that translation is, I believe, in writing. Interpretation is oral. Is that, right, Madame Laliberté? Okay. That's the difference between translation and interpretation: one is oral and one is written.
We'll move on, though, to Madame Petitpas-Taylor. There has been a request by Ms. Blaney to complete this whole second round, so after that we'll have two minutes for Madame Normandin and two minutes for Ms. Blaney.
8:25 p.m.
Liberal
Ginette Petitpas Taylor Liberal Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I have a comment and, then, a question. I'll be switching languages.
Ms. Laliberté and Mr. Ball, I'm certain that I speak for my fellow members when I say thank you. We appreciate the services you provide to the House of Commons every single day.
I'm from New Brunswick, Canada's only bilingual province, so please know that both official languages mean a lot to me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for the work you do.
Mr. Moseley, yesterday I realized there is a new verb out there called “zooming”; we've been doing an awful lot of zooming lately.
I'm wondering if you would be able to tell us what steps Zoom is taking to protect our personal data. We've heard a lot of about that in our first session today.
Also, could you talk to us about what steps you are taking to protect our privacy?
8:25 p.m.
Harry Moseley
Security, privacy and protecting data is paramount at Zoom. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we take that very seriously. It is one of the four core principles Zoom is built on.
We've made an abundance of changes as part of the 90-day plan, which has been referenced a couple of times in this session, most notably the upgrade to our AES-256 GCM encryption, which is the highest level of encryption service. Everything is encrypted from the digital device from the time it leaves the platform all the way through the network, through our data centre until it reaches the destination. Everything is fully encrypted at rest. We have defaulted to complex passwords. We have defaulted waiting rooms. Moreover, if you did a cloud recording, we have defaulted to having that with a forced complex password as well.
8:30 p.m.
Liberal
Ginette Petitpas Taylor Liberal Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
Did I understand we can purchase additional security features to make sure that added security measures are in place?
8:30 p.m.
Harry Moseley
The encryption services, the security services, are paramount and they are part of the existing platform in its entirety. We take it very seriously.
8:30 p.m.
Liberal
Ginette Petitpas Taylor Liberal Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
That's great.
John, I'm curious to know how many employees Microsoft has in Canada?
8:30 p.m.
National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada Inc.
We have over 3,200 employees in Canada with very strong development capabilities in Vancouver. And Microsoft Research in Montreal is doing leading edge research in AI and AI use in languages. We're quite proud of that.
8:30 p.m.
Liberal
Ginette Petitpas Taylor Liberal Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
That's great.
Thank you.
That's all, Madam Chair.
8:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Thank you.
The clock says 8:31.
Ms. Normandin, Ms. Blaney, I really want to give you the time but they're telling me they need to clear the room.
Is it okay if we call this meeting to a close today?
Perhaps we can work something out for tomorrow's meeting. I know there won't be the same witnesses, of course, but...
That is the end of the meeting. There are a couple of housekeeping things to do. I'm going to flag them today because we don't have enough time and we can discuss them tomorrow if needed.
The next meeting is on April 30 and the first panel will be other parliaments or institutions. The second panel will be procedural, legal and constitutional witnesses.
I also want to remind everybody to start thinking about recommendations for the final report. We will only have about two meetings to discuss the draft report. As much as possible, could we start thinking about that or if there are going to be any dissenting reports?
But we can speak about that tomorrow.
Yes, Ms. Blaney.
8:30 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
I was just going to ask if there's a timeline for having those recommendations in? I think that would be helpful.
8:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
I've been informed by the analyst that by May 7 or so, he may be able to have a little bit of a draft report done, but then by May 11 we should have the complete draft report done. We will have two days after that, and we need to have everything completed ideally by May 13 to get our report done for May 15. That includes dissenting reports and all of our recommendations, and allowing enough time for translation so that we can submit on May 15. We can discuss that a little bit more tomorrow if you like and we can carve out some time for that.
In conclusion, I want to thank all of the witnesses. This was a very enlightening panel. We've learned a lot.
You will see that your submissions and what you've said here today will be a large part of our report and recommendations to Parliament.
Thank you and good night.