Evidence of meeting #47 for Industry and Technology in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was something.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Okay. Thank you.
My final question, returning to one other thing I asked previously, is this: You have said that you're not sure if YouTube or Google has reimbursed somebody who has been the victim of a fraud that occurred on your platform, and you're not sure whether or not YouTube or Google has collected revenue from an ad that has, after the fact, been determined to be fraudulent. Do I understand that correctly, that you're not sure?
Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
I think there are a lot of mechanics—
Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
—that are part of that, which means that I'm not able to give you the yes-or-no answer I think you're looking for.
Liberal
Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
I think we have to do everything in our power to be—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
It's not about power, though. To me it's about morality and justice. I'm just asking if you think that YouTube and Google should. Whether you do now or not, and whether you know you do now or not—I can appreciate that you're not sure here today—I'm asking, do you, as Google's representative here in Canada who is here before us on the company's behalf at a parliamentary committee, think you should?
Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
I think that we should be having no business with fraudulent scammers—
Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
—and that's what we work to do every day.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Yes, but clearly you do.
It's just disappointing to me, Ms. Patell. It's a very similar answer to what we heard from Meta when they were here a couple of weeks ago. I suspect I speak on behalf of most members of the committee when I say that we would hope the answer to that would be yes.
I'm going to pass the floor to Monsieur Ste-Marie for a couple of minutes to very quickly ask one more question, and then it will go to the Liberals for one more. Then we'll wrap up.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette—Manawan, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
People from Wealthsimple told the committee that other countries have laws requiring platforms such as YouTube to verify the identity of ad buyers when those financial ads promise high returns. They are asked to verify the identity of the advertisers to ensure that they are not fraudsters, and that must be done properly by an institution that is recognized in the country.
Why don't you do that here? It would simplify a lot of things. It would prevent a lot of fraud. Why don't you verify the identity of the purchasers of advertising to make sure they're not criminals before publishing the ad on your platforms?
Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
In fact, we do that. I think what we're dealing with.... We do that in a number of different ways. We have advertiser verification for onboarding. We also have additional enhanced verification obligations for sensitive, higher-risk sectors, including financial services sectors. For example, we make sure we're checking their licences and elements like that.
On Google, we don't allow most crypto ads, for example, but in the limited areas where we would, like a crypto exchange, we require registration with FINTRAC. These are steps that we endorse and take, and we do them proactively. We don't do these things because we're legally obligated to. As I said, we've been rolling them out across 240 countries.
I would also point out that we need to do this in a way that is a portfolio approach. The reason I say this is that identification documents are one element—they're one way of demonstrating that you are who you say you are—but—
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette—Manawan, QC
Thank you for your answer, but, for a financial ad, looking at the driver's licence of a fraudster or an honest person is not enough. You should really check whether the institution is recognized by the authorities here, and therefore whether it is authorized to publish that type of advertising. If an individual tells you to do such and such a thing, it should simply be blocked, and only real institutions that are registered with official authorities should be allowed to advertise.
That's what you should do. It's all very well to say that you look at the driver's licence, but that's not enough. Will you commit to doing more to block fraudulent financial advertising?
Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
I think what you're talking about is financial services verification. This is an area that we hope to work on with the Government of Canada, because there are some steps that need to be taken in order to enable that, which are specific to Canada and don't apply in other jurisdictions. This is something that we do in Australia, for example. I'm sure you've heard that.
In Canada, there is shared jurisdiction when it comes to financial services. That is a space where we look for the federal government to play a role, because we would need to work together to create what is essentially a mandated registry that is a single registry, is machine-readable, has certain parameters where the registry requires certain identifiers, acts as a clearing house to validate these financial services providers and is then something that our systems can interact with. There are a few steps that need to be taken here in Canada before that's actually available for us, but it's certainly a conversation that we've had with Finance Canada that we look forward to continuing to have. It's a conversation that we welcome.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Thank you, Ms. Patell.
Again, we appreciate your answering many of our questions. I think we're all a bit frustrated with some of the answers, but I appreciate the efforts you're putting in here today.
We recognize that you at Google, across many of your platforms, are doing a lot and taking new measures every day to combat this evolving issue. We recognize the hard work that's being put in, but, of course, you also have a financial interest in doing so. It's not necessarily out of benevolence. It's important that people trust Google's platform; therefore, it's important that you combat frauds and scams. Most people in the western world use your services. It's ubiquitous to use Google, Gmail and YouTube. We use them every day. You have billions of users.
What we're trying to determine.... We recognize what you're saying. There's a role for governments to combat the fraud in the first place. There's a role for banks, Interac and payment rails to stop the flow of the money. There's also a role for people to become educated and to stop themselves from clicking on scams. We recognize that it's multi-faceted.
However, to be clear, what we've heard from many tech companies—yourselves included—is that there is not a dedicated percentage of your revenue for education. You do not have a dedicated customer service standard for responding to or removing frauds. You have billions of daily users. You're one of the largest companies to ever exist in history. You have hundreds of billions of dollars of annual revenue.
The sense we're getting from what we've heard today and from other tech companies' testimonies is that you may be doing a lot but that you're not doing enough. There may be a role that we will recommend to government, such as that there be some requirements for tech companies, whether that's a customer service standard, whether that's something like a dedicated amount of your budget that goes to education, or whether you should be held financially accountable for reimbursing people who use your platform and click on something that you've permitted on YouTube that loses them $31,000. These are questions that we're wrestling with. There are some things that we will discuss and potentially recommend to the government.
Again, as you are one of the largest and most profitable companies to ever exist, it's difficult for us to hear that our constituents are losing tens of thousands of dollars because of things you're allowing on your platform that are misleading them and that look very convincing. It's difficult for us to accept that you're doing everything that you can, given your vast resources. It's a bit disappointing to hear some of the lack of concrete action in terms of reimbursement, customer service standards and dedicated budgets for education.
We appreciate that you've been here today, and I'll allow you to have the last word.
Thank you.
Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
Thank you.
Listen, this is a situation that has human cost. We take it incredibly seriously. With everything we are doing across our products, our partnerships and our public education, our goal is to disrupt the business model of scammers, not to reinvent it. When we look at how incentive structures are created in legislation, we want to look at how we incentivize information sharing across actors. How do we ensure that policies like competition and privacy don't prevent that or penalize that kind of information sharing? We want to incentivize the public awareness. We do want to incentivize standards, like having a basic understanding of the advertisers on your systems, and to do that in a smart way for this AI era.
There are steps that governments can take to create an incentive structure to have industry players held to a high standard while not shifting liability from perpetrators. There are also resources, quite honestly. We are dedicating an incredible amount of time, energy and resources to prevent this type of action. I believe that Google is a leader in this space. I just want to say that we are on the same side in this debate and in this fight. It is a fight. That is the kind of energy and commitment that we bring to it.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Thank you very much.
Ms. Patell, I appreciate your being here. We're going to move on to a couple of other things. You are welcome to go. We appreciate your being here to share some insight with us. Thank you very much.
Colleagues, I'm going to give the floor to Madam O'Rourke on something quick. Then we have just a couple of quick minutes to wrap up here.
Madam O'Rourke.
Liberal
Dominique O'Rourke Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd just like to move the motion that was put on notice last Friday, for mid-sized business growth and retention.
Would you like me to read it in its entirety?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
I don't think it's necessary, Madam O'Rourke.
We're just looking to see if there are any members who wish to speak to this motion, which was put on notice on Friday, June 12.
Madam Clerk, I'm going to need you, because we're going to have a vote here.