Industry and Technology Committee on June 18th, 2026

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

My time is up, but I just want to remind you that I started out by saying that, after my assistant reported a fraudulent ad, no mechanism was put in place, he received no acknowledgement of receipt and the ad continued to be published for days.

Thank you very much.

[Jeanette Patell]

I'm happy to work with your office on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Ste‑Marie.

Mr. Guglielmin has the floor for five minutes.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our witness for being here today.

Google has said Gemini is used to detect and block scam ads in real time. It reads behavioural patterns, account age and campaign patterns. Can you walk us through what that actually looks like in practice? At what point does Gemini actually intervene?

[Jeanette Patell]

It's a great question that probably requires a subject matter expert. I'd be happy to connect off-line and do a deeper dive with our subject matter experts on this. In sum, this would be continuous analysis running in the background on the types of behavioural cues. For example, I talked about our onboarding process. When we take on a new advertiser and are doing a trust assessment, we have our advertiser verification process. Then, we have something called limited ad serving.

The point here is that scam networks rely on three things. They rely on speed, volume and deception. We've built our systems to be economically unattractive to scammers, so that we are too slow, too limited in reach and apply too much transparency for it to be worth their time.

In the first place, we have the advertiser verification process. Then, we have limited ad reach. That throttles their ability to reach users. A scammer is casting a wide net. They want to reach millions of people in the hopes that a handful might fall for that deception. Then, we apply the transparency rules of your ad centre, being able to see who the advertiser is and where they are located. This is where, on that limited ad serving.... In the background, Gemini will be assessing behavioural patterns to understand if this actor is trustworthy or if there are....

For example—

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

I'm going to interrupt here. I want to bring up Gemini, since we're on the subject here.

Recently, you guys launched a lawsuit for the Outsider Enterprise case. For people who don't know, who might be listening at home, a foreign, criminal cyber-network used Gemini to create phishing links and websites. They sent out some 2.5 million fraudulent text messages, made 9,000 websites and were able to scam people.

Is Gemini able to keep pace with that kind of abuse, or do you see a gap emerging among how professional scammers, fraudsters and foreign actors can use tools like Gemini to scam people, whereas you can't use Gemini to protect them at the exact same speed?

[Jeanette Patell]

It is a constant challenge. We see the power of AI for defenders, and we apply it every day. We see this as kind of a two-sided coin. AI must be used for defence. It is kind of how we're able to tackle the scale and complexity of this challenge and the dynamic nature of it, but yes, obviously, malicious actors are weaponizing. It's so sad that technology that can be used to hopefully cure cancer, to improve diagnoses and all of these incredible societal benefits, is being misused by these actors.

I do think that this is one where you're in a bit of an arms race. Our company is focused on how we strengthen the protections. Going after the actors who abuse our tools is a tactic that is pretty novel in doing that.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Would you say that you're playing catch-up, though? The people who are using the tools are able to sort of outpace you, and then you're having to play catch-up, just by the way the technology currently works.

[Jeanette Patell]

I don't know if I would characterize it that way, but I do think it's a constant space of innovation. We have to be very dedicated and diligent about tackling it.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

In this particular case, there are hundreds of thousands of Americans who were affected. Were any Canadians affected by this?

[Jeanette Patell]

I'm not familiar with that. I can see if that information is available.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Guglielmin.

Mr. Ma, the floor is yours, sir.

[Michael Ma, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Patell.

Earlier, you talked about being proactive in educating the public. Can you be specific in terms of what Google's plan is in that? In that regard, how much is Google spending on educating the public?

[Jeanette Patell]

Thank you for the question.

This is actually a space where we would really welcome working in partnership with members of this committee, and with any member of Parliament, to help support education of their citizens.

I'm going to speak about two or maybe three things.

One is about our work with the Canadian Anti-Scam Coalition to support their efforts to amplify education resources for the Canadian public. We're working on some workshops targeting literacy tools for retirees. We're hoping to roll those out over the course of the second half of this year. Please feel free to reach out.

Also, there's something called Be Scam Ready. The reason I point to it is that it was developed in part through our teams in Toronto. It gamifies the learning journey, and it's also learning by doing.

Ms. Begum was talking about what steps the government can take. One of the things we've observed in public education is that instead of just having a broadcast out—a broad message diffused in hope that people read and understand—have the learning by doing. Be Scam Ready is something that could be put in any of your households. We're happy to share it with you. It equips Canadians and users around the world with some of those critical skills to identify scams when they're happening, and it gives them that moment of pause and reflection, so that scammers who relied on speed and pressure no longer have that tool at their disposal.

This is something for which I don't have a specific dollar figure to share with you, but it is something we invest in every year. We are looking to do more of that in Canada, and we're happy to work with all of you on that.

[Michael Ma, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

The second part of my original question is this. How much is Google spending on this?

[Jeanette Patell]

I was saying that I don't have a dollar figure available on that.

[Michael Ma, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Are you able to estimate a percentage of your revenue?

[Jeanette Patell]

Unfortunately, I can't on the spot, no. It's also pretty dynamic. We look for opportunities. It's not only a spend thing. It's how you build products and tools that can equip the public. It's not just workshops. If you have an Android phone, we now have a tool that will warn users—in real time—that if a phone call displays a suspicious pattern, it might be a scam.

We're doing this in a whole multiplicity of different ways, so the investment really spans quite a number of actions.

[Michael Ma, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Without a target, then, how do you know you've spent enough in this regard?

[Jeanette Patell]

I think this is an issue where we always have to do more, so we bring our A-game to this every single day. We're committed to showing up every day and investing in our products, in our partners and in the public. I don't think there's a floor or a ceiling. This is just something where we have to strive to work together to tackle this challenge.

[Michael Ma, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Okay.

We all know fraudulent advertisers often attempt to purchase visibility through the same advertising systems used by legitimate businesses. How does Google ensure that commercial incentives never override consumer protection considerations in enforcing decisions?

[Jeanette Patell]

Thank you for that.

I think it goes back to how we look at the digital ecosystem. I don't know if any of you answer phone calls anymore from phone numbers that you don't recognize. There's a whole generation of people who no longer pick up the phone, because trust was broken. Our incentive here, then, is to preserve trust in the digital ecosystem. That's how we look at it. That's why we've built our business model and our enforcement mechanisms so that we are not making profit from this. We are able to block these ads before they're ever seen by users, so that they don't enter our ecosystem.

We try to make it as unattractive as possible for scammers to even come to Google in the first place, and they'll go look elsewhere.

[Michael Ma, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Ma.

Colleagues, I'm going to take a couple of moments here to ask a few questions, and then we're going to go quickly to Monsieur Ste-Marie, the CPC and the Liberals for one more round.

Ms. Patell, I want to pick up on something you just said in response to Mr. Ma, as well as to Mr. Falk earlier. I understand you're saying that in most instances—I believe you said 99% of cases—you are blocking fraudulent activity from occurring. Let's put that aside for a moment. When it does occur, as it did, for example, in this instance of the Prime Minister being put forward through a deepfake and somebody falling victim to that.... Did you earn money on that ad?