Thank you for the question, Ms. Michaud, and thank you to the author of the article.
Let me give you an example that I think will answer your question.
You know that preventing harm is also part of the government’s role. Remember the Rogers case. Twelve million Canadians lost access to telecommunications services, which even prevented them from making payments, since Interac services were connected to the Rogers network.
In this instance, the government was swift to act. I believe I was in Japan, but I spoke to the president and CEO, or CEO, of Rogers within hours, asking him to take very concrete action. On the one hand, one could say that Rogers is a large company that probably invests hundreds of millions of dollars in cyber security, but on the other hand, 12 million Canadians were without telecom services for hours.
At that point, I challenged not just the CEO of Rogers, but all the CEOs of the major telecom companies, telling them that they all had to deploy their teams that day to help Rogers. It was no longer a matter of competition, but an emergency, because Canadians were unable to go to the grocery store or put gas in their car. Their payment cards were no longer working.
You’re going to argue that there should be resilience within the system. But in subsequent hearings, we realized that, curiously, there wasn’t as much resilience or redundancy in the system as we thought. Yet everyone was saying that the Interac card operator obviously had to have a back-up system.
I think the facts have shown that things needed to be improved. I also think it’s the government’s role to protect the public interest.
You’re right that most companies do it well, but I think the Rogers case is a great example of the role government plays. At the time, we did it voluntarily. For that matter, I’d like to thank the various companies for their willingness to help. They even signed a memorandum of understanding on the subject. The number of pages it contains proves that there was a great deal to be done.
I think that, for future such emergencies, having powers at our disposal and the ability to tell companies that they haven’t done their job and that it’s hurt Canadians, would be a good thing. I think it’s justified.