Evidence of meeting #97 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was apple.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Maybe I can clarify what I'm trying to reach. Does Apple have a policy in terms of consumer compensation that's global? We have a series of civil lawsuits that are out there, and then you have government investigations. Your compensation model for consumers, is that a universal policy among all Apple users, or is it different state by state?
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
Can you clarify what you mean by compensation?
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
The battery replacement, for example.... What I'm trying to get at is whether the Canadian consumers are guaranteed under Apple's policies to receive the same treatment as, for example, the United States customers or customers in France or customers in Israel. Do we get that automatically? Is that the policy of Apple, or does it go state by state to decide the policies on how it treats its consumers?
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
Our customers worldwide are our reason to be so we have to listen to them. I can't imagine that we would favour one country's customer over another.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Okay, but you don't know if that's the policy or not. I think it's a simple question I'm asking you.
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
It's our philosophy to listen to our customers.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
There's a difference between a philosophy and a policy. Then I guess it's your philosophy, so then I expect it's the same thing—and this is what I'll come away with—that Canadian consumers are going to get the exact same treatment as anybody else in the world.
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
They currently are.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Sorry, I just want to interrupt for a second.
I know you didn't have the answer, but could you follow up with that and forward it if you can get us the answer to that? I don't know if there is an answer.
Counsel, McCarthy Tétrault LLP, Apple Canada Inc.
Certainly, Mr. Chair, we will find out if there's a better answer to give than the answer Ms. Famulak has already given, that Canadians have been treated identically to everybody so far, and whether there's any policy in place that makes that unexpected in future.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Thank you. That's what we're looking for, whether or not that's the policy of provision.
I know that I have limited time, Mr. Chair.
I have another question. Apple, for example, in Canada has fallen from 73% of the market in 2010 to 51% of the market in 2017. This obviously has an effect on your operations, but is this a one-off? Have there been any other unknowing changes to software related to performance enhancement in the previous applications, or have there been subsequent to this any other slowdowns or deliberate changes without consumer knowledge? Is this a one-off at the end of the day?
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
What we communicated is consistent with the way we always communicate to our customers about software updates and what we do with that ReadMe statement. As I described before, it could be different every time. There are always features that are being constantly re-evaluated and updated. Is this a one-off in terms of the power, are you asking, or the unexpected shutdown? We sure hope the unexpected shutdown problem is solved now.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
In terms of software performance, though, without customer knowledge, have any other updates had similar programming to what we're currently looking at?
Regional Counsel, Canada and Latin America, Apple Canada Inc.
This is the current software right now, so as I described, 11.3 is coming out with some enhanced features.
NDP
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you very much.
I don't normally jump in with my own questions and comments. However, I will on this one. I had the same situation with my iPhone, and this is the first that I'm hearing.... My phone was shutting down at 30% and I took it to an Apple store and didn't hear anything about this. I love Apple. It's a great product for me. I was disappointed because I remember walking into the Apple store and being very frustrated with the lack of answers that I was getting because it wasn't an older phone. It was relatively new. Take that back for what it is. It was very frustrating for me.
Having said all that, I thank our guests for coming in. I hope it wasn't too uncomfortable, but we learned a lot today. We are going to suspend for two minutes and then we're going to go in camera.
[Proceedings continue in camera]
