It's quite clear that the digital trade chapter, in particular, is designed to liberalize digital trade further. It won't come as much of a surprise that the template used in this agreement, which is similar to the template that we saw in the TPP and some other agreements, has its origins largely in the United States. It's the U.S. that has pushed for particular provisions.
What is perhaps most striking to me is that there are certain provisions that are optional, in the sense that all countries profess to say they are trying to move in a certain direction, have a certain amount of privacy protection or consumer protection and the like. However, where you see actual requirements, those are areas, I would argue, where there are some limitations in terms of our ability to establish full data sovereignty, for us to establish some of our own rules.
The best examples are the ones I provided in terms of data localization, requiring the information to be kept local, or restrictions on data transfers. Another interesting one, for example, that ties into your questions around the large companies, must be around algorithms. We've seen a lot of emphasis lately on seeking greater information about the algorithms that are used by Facebook, Google and other companies to determine how they are making some of their choices with respect to advertising and the like. There are restrictions in this agreement on our ability to compel disclosure of algorithms.
On many of these issues, there are good reasons for some of those provisions, but there is no question that Canada's ability to regulate in the digital space will be circumscribed by this agreement. We've effectively agreed to certain provisions in this agreement that will take certain policy options off the table down the road.