Mr. Chair, first of all, I would like to clarify something: I represent Wikimedia Canada, but not the Wikimedia Foundation.
Members of the committee, let me introduce myself: My name is Jean-Philippe Béland, and I am the vice-president of Wikimedia Canada.
The mission of Wikimedia Canada is to give Canadians free and open access to knowledge, in addition to providing them with the tools and skills required to contribute to sharing their knowledge globally. We help Canadians to collect, develop and disseminate their knowledge and other educational, cultural and historic content in all languages of Canada, including aboriginal languages, under a free licence or in the public domain.
In this context, a free licence is a licence that the authors apply to their creations, which allows anyone to use, transmit and edit the content of creations without permissions or royalties, while the authors retain authorship of their works.
This work applies in large part to online projects, under the Wikimedia platform. Wikipedia is the most known of Wikimedia projects. It is a collaborative encyclopedia consulted by several million visitors every day and is available in over 300 languages. The Wikimedia projects are supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, based in the United States, and of which Wikimedia Canada is an official branch.
Wikimedia is a non-commercial and advertising-free platform. Unlike Google or Facebook, the Wikimedia Foundation does not keep personal data profiles of its users.
The importance of Wikipedia in the field of access to knowledge is well established. The encyclopedia is developed by thousands of volunteers from around the world, including many dedicated Canadians. The site is ranked sixth among the most visited sites in the world, and it is very often among the first results given by search engines. We can say with certainty that Wikipedia is one of the most popular sources of information and knowledge among citizens. In fact, it is a central node in the Web ecosystem, since Facebook and YouTube recently announced that Wikipedia content would be a central element of their plan to combat false news.
The type of licence used to distribute content on Wikipedia is a cornerstone of the project, enabling the widest possible dissemination of knowledge by allowing the content to be reused without royalties or permissions.