Evidence of meeting #9 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was technology.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director, Government Programs, IBM Canada
That is as defined by the Privacy Act.
Liberal
Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS
Okay. That's a pretty careful answer. I heard earlier that there is dissatisfaction with the act. If the act isn't good enough and is creating new problems, where does it create the problem and how does that get solved in a way that protects the consumer?
National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada Co.
The difficulty that we as an organization are finding is with the interpretation of some of the timeframes, and understanding where that relationship was established, how we have defined that relationship, and whether or not we can go back and re-establish that relationship with someone we had thought we had established a relationship with in the first place. So going through all the language and the different interpretations makes it very challenging for us to look looking at our repository of customers with whom we feel we had a long-standing relationship, and to make those annotations so we explicitly identify that indeed we have had that contact and they have opted in.
Liberal
Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS
That's interesting because, frankly, I would have thought that Microsoft would have fewer problems with this issue than almost anybody else, because so many people are your customers.
National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada Co.
We have gone through that list and do have a quality list of customers. We have an understanding that there is a large number of customers, however, for whom we do not have that explicit knowledge. We feel that is something that we do need some time to go through to have a better understanding of how we reconnect with those people, and whether we are allowed to reconnect, etc.
Liberal
Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS
If someone had registered as owning some of your software, or they have installed it, is that the kind of relationship you require?
National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada Co.
No. It's more or less someone who has come to a Microsoft event five years ago—or let's say three years ago—and for whom we have a piece of documentation saying they were there. Perhaps it's a survey, but at that time it didn't have an explicit statement saying that they expected to receive email from us. That interpretation is causing challenges for us right now as we look to implement the full language of the act.
Liberal
Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS
I would have thought that would be a very small number of people. Granted, it would be a larger number for your company, but still, relative to the population and to the total range of customers you are after, I would have thought that the number of those who had gone to a meeting, seminar, or whatever would be pretty small, wouldn't it?
National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada Co.
As we went through it, we first thought it was a relatively small number. We then found that number had increased to a point where it did create a challenge for us.
Liberal
Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS
Would that account for the majority of your email—and here I'm trying to find another word than spam—soliciting more business? I would have thought such email normally wouldn't be going to someone like that. It would be going to people who don't go to those seminars.
National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada Co.
It's a matter of what that commercial communication is, and in trying to keep people up to date. The definition of commercial communication is also another area we're trying to look at.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Thank you very much, Mr. Regan.
Thank you very much to all the witnesses.
We had some very good answers to some very broad and sophisticated questions. The last time, I didn't mention to the members that they had sophisticated questions. I made sure I mentioned it this time.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
There are two pieces of business for the members here. One is to please remember that once a meeting is gavelled, if you have any communication for the clerk or the researchers, it should go through the chair. That applies to staff as well.
Finally, I've asked the researchers to come back to us after our next meeting and to let us know if there are things that we need to cover for a robust study, that if we haven't asked questions about those things and solicited information on them. So I hope that next week they will give us some guidelines, and maybe some questions that we ought to ask, to make sure that we plug any holes for a future study. So you can be assured that this work is being done as well.
The committee is adjourned.
