Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, and committee members. Thank you for inviting me to share my thoughts.
My name is Ritesh Kotak, and my work is focused on cybersecurity, privacy and digital transformation. I hold an MBA and recently completed my JD wherein I had the privilege to intern at the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic. In addition, I frequently contribute to media on tech and cybersecurity segments.
I would like to highlight a few areas that impact our country's ability to compete, especially with regard to small and medium-sized businesses, SMBs, and I will aim to provide the committee with recommendations on how to address these areas through policy and legislation.
The core of my recommendations involves the need to create a small business hub, which is a one-stop shop for entrepreneurs who seek support and access to government entities.
The pandemic has highlighted the need to leverage new digital tools. I'm sure that most of you have personal and/or professional social media accounts, but have you ever thought about what would you do if you lost access to those accounts? Imagine that you become a victim of a cyber-attack, your accounts get defaced with content that violates the platform's community standards, and now you're not only locked out of your Facebook account, but also Instagram and WhatsApp.
In December, I gave an interview to the CBC's Go Public segment on this very topic where SMBs were hacked, defaced and spent months trying to unsuccessfully recover their accounts. It took a request by the media to finally have these accounts recovered. Not only were they hacked, but business accounts were also defaced with sexually explicit material or terroristic imagery. The victims believe that they were phished. Essentially, they clicked on a fake link, and thereby provided their log-in credentials and then subsequently had their accounts compromised.
They went through the process with Facebook to recover their hacked account. The portal is not easy to navigate; there's no contact number or email address. Even if the account is recovered, it is still suspended because the hacked imagery violated the community standards even though it wasn't the user's fault.
Since conducting that interview, I have been inundated from coast to coast by small business owners who have been going through this nightmare for months and have been unsuccessful in recovering their accounts. As a result their businesses have suffered, not to mention the stress this has caused them.
When one of these victims complained in writing to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, the latter's response was that since the account was hacked, they needed to contact their local police department. The police stated that there was nothing they could do and that the recovery of the account was between the user and the platform. The police's mandate is to find the hackers, not to restore the victim's account.
When the victim contacted Facebook Canada, they replied several weeks later saying that the user must contact Facebook HQ in the U.S. It has been months and no replies have come from Facebook HQ. There is no clear recourse or avenue for support.
I am sure there are many businesses in this exact situation. If we are going to be competitive, especially in the new digital economy, we need better mechanisms to help SMBs. Victims are revictimized by the process and are extremely vulnerable. Many turn to expensive online tools and consultants who charge thousands of dollars but are unsuccessful.
If I lose access to my bank account, I can go to the branch and verify my identity and recover access, but the same cannot be said for these platforms. We need mechanisms to protect consumers and to mandate these platforms to make it simpler for SMBs to recover their accounts to get back to business. Every day the page is offline is money that the business loses.
These experiences highlight the need, as I noted earlier, to create a small business hub. My parents are small business owners in the food manufacturing sector, and when the pandemic hit, they along with numerous businesses had to pivot their operations online. They didn't have deep pockets and access to IT departments. Many SMBs lack these resources and expertise compared with large commercial organizations. Put yourself in their shoes competing against major retailers online.
Major corporations have volume and can offer consumers free shipping. Your cost as an SMB is significantly higher. Major corporations have experts who assist in meeting complex regulatory requirements, such as compliance with product labelling. In comparison, if a small business were to seek compliance or advice, they would naturally contact the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for assistance, which often, even frequently, proves inadequate. The only options are to risk it or hire expensive consultants.
We need a fundamental shift from a reactive enforcement model to a proactive support model. We need a small business hub that would assist in addressing this.
I know my time is expiring, and I look forward to your questions about potential solutions to solve these issues and grow Canada's competitiveness.
Thank you.