It's a question that I encounter each and every day when I talk with entrepreneurs and innovators across Canada, that is, how can they harness some of the capabilities of technology? Unfortunately, there's a lot of confusion out there. Canadian businesses, 80% of which are small-to medium-size enterprises, are focused on innovation. Technology is one of the things they need to do to survive, but they don't really have core competency in that area. They want to have their basic services up and running, but that's not their primary business. They want it to be simple and they don't want to go through a legal quagmire. As soon as there's a question raised about compliance, about legislation, they'll typically throw in the towel and go with the tried and true.
There is privacy legislation in British Columbia, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, suggesting that government-held information should not leave Canada unless one has consent from the affected individuals. It's not an outright prohibition, but there have to be certain safeguards in place if you're handling government information. Surprisingly enough, a number of organizations in British Columbia and across Canada believe that this legislation applies to them. So that's the first challenge, just being clear and concise about what applies to regular private sector businesses. There are appropriate safeguards that you can apply.
Then you enter into what I call the Hollywood script scenarios. People will imagine all these nasty things that could happen. These scenarios are almost the equivalent of a Hollywood mystery novel, almost suggesting that people will fly in with helicopters and seize individuals. It's a matter of getting over the misperceptions about possible choices in where the data are hosted, looking at what's local, and determining what safeguards need to be in place to deal with the information. In many cases, when you work with enterprise-class service providers, security and privacy are well handled, but there's confusion in the marketplace that is causing people to pause.
In addition, there are individual organizations that, out of fear or uncertainty, would suggest that information must remain within the region. They fear not being able to capitalize on the economies of scale to drive their costs down and, ultimately, to be able to charge small business more for their services.