Welcome, Mr. Brun, Mr. Cormier and Mr. Berthiaume. Thank you for participating in this exercise. Your presence is greatly appreciated.
Mr. Cormier, I'll start by reassuring you that, last January or even earlier, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security and the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics began to address issues related to the unique identifier. We looked at models from abroad, including Estonia's model, which raises a number of other issues.
Before I ask you some more practical questions, I want to point out that the unique identifier is one of the cybersecurity issues. When someone gets their hands on the unique identifier, we'll be faced with the same issue.
I'm pleased to hear that you're offering protection to all your members. However, financial institutions tend to charge their clients to protect the clients' data from identity theft. The financial institutions themselves make the offer. Do you have the same philosophy?
To have my salary deposited into my bank account and to make transactions, automatic withdrawals and Interac payments, I must give my name, address and social insurance number to the institution that I'm dealing with. However, I must use a third party to protect this information. Why do I need to rely on someone other than the entity to which I give the information?