Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to our witnesses here today.
Last week was really interesting. We had Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta here. I, quite frankly, was shocked by the fact that we had a panel in front of us that had been fined in the multi-billions of dollars across the world, yet we haven't had any of the same kind of oversight here. They also have the distribution rights to many of the works you actually perform here.
Since that time, in fact, Microsoft, which was here, has been challenged in its takeover of Activision, which affects many of you and the people you represent. They have now identified that they're going to lay off a whole bunch of people at Activision, when they previously said they wouldn't, so the U.S. is taking stronger steps there.
I would just like to go across the panel right now because we have to decide on this bill, which basically moves a lot of stuff to regulation. At best, it will be implemented in probably three years' time, or we can rework it across the board in terms of starting almost from the beginning. That's also because the government is unwilling to separate the Privacy Act aspects of this, where I think there's quite a lot of common ground, from the AI stuff.
Maybe we'll start with ACTRA here and go across.
Should we start over, or should we try to continue to work? I'm on the fence on this. Quite frankly, I was really disappointed with last Wednesday's.... I've never seen a panel, in all my years here, where we literally had companies, representing the influence of so many Canadians, that were fined and paid those fines—and lawsuits—including to other governments across the world, for billions of dollars. We've never had a panel like that, and yet they walked in and walked out of the room, just like we were nothing at all. They sent in government relations people, including people who were actually bought from government teams of the past, from government relations.
Do we go ahead with a process that exposes us to potential regulation that's devolved from Parliament in many respects—to be updated—or do we try to rework things and put Parliament back in the front seat?