Information & Ethics committee  Thank you for your question. I'll bring it even closer to home. An initiative in the United States is a digital literacy corps of young people who are trained to go out into the community and provide training to members of communities in various cities across the country. Looking at these and other initiatives, we found it sad that we have an excellent system set up that is very well respected, that is doing good work, that is reaching those people who might be more difficult to reach, and that we denied it funding.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Certainly. The education piece fits squarely into that. When you're looking at data retention, you're looking at corporate responsibility, being amenable to removing images and data at a certain point. The education piece is really important, though, especially with youth. You could have a company that is very respectful of this, that doesn't retain profiles after a certain time period after they're closed.

Information & Ethics committee  Sure. I'll start, and then I know Matthew will have lots to say. I think one of the issues you mentioned is that training is so germane. Professional development training is almost going the way of the dodo bird. I believe at the Ottawa Board of Education there are currently two professional development days a year, and there are teachers who are teaching many different subjects, as well.

Information & Ethics committee  I will start with the obvious. Considerable funding has been dedicated in these countries to promoting a digital agenda that facilitates digital literacy skills development. It's largely to—

Information & Ethics committee  Oh, my gosh. In Australia, I believe it's hundreds of millions of dollars just for the digital literacy pillar. It's on top of their digital economy plan. You also have quality places created for children online as part of the strategy for children to learn and develop skills.

Information & Ethics committee  The Privacy Commissioner would be better positioned to specifically address whether she feels she has sufficient power to work with companies. Certainly having these standards, whether they are entrenched in legislation, or whether it is decided that these should be self-regulatory codes and guidelines, as has been done in other media, when these standards are put out, they do become the benchmark.

Information & Ethics committee  You've touched both elements. As we said, a comprehensive approach has a public education direction as well as school-based education. To deal for a moment with the public education agenda, Go ON UK is just one example of a program that's intended to educate the general population.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  The federal role can provide leadership in supporting gatherings, events, facilitating opportunities for multiple stakeholders to come together and conceptualize what this framework might look like, what the needs are. What really is apparent in countries where they have digital literacy as a pillar in their national strategy is this notion that it's not just government led, it's not industry led, it's not just community led, that you really do have to bring multiple stakeholders together to work together.

Information & Ethics committee  With our young Canadians survey next year, we will be going into classrooms from grade 4 to grade 11. We will have a wide range of information. We do two versions of the survey: one for younger students in grades 4 to 6, and one for students in grades 4 to 11. Outcomes for various digital literacy skills, privacy included, are throughout the curriculum in Canada, but as you can imagine, it varies from province to province.

Information & Ethics committee  That's something that is germane, and I know you've heard a lot of testimony about how you almost have to be a legal professional to understand many of the privacy policies. There is best practice out there. Sara Grimes alluded to a few children's sites that do an exceptional job.

Information & Ethics committee  Traditionally, the most effective responses are comprehensive partnerships. In its recommendations as well, the OECD was stressing the importance of having community, education, government, and the private sector work together to create these comprehensive approaches.

Information & Ethics committee  It is currently being evaluated, but in the U.K. they created the concept, as I said, of a digital entitlement. With that they've prevented the siloing of digital literacy skills development among the general public and their being classified as just work skills development. There are many programs that were initiated in the U.K.

Information & Ethics committee  We are quite optimistic. We made a submission to the government consultations for the digital economy and are still quite hopeful that, as it has been in other countries, digital literacy will be a core pillar of any national strategy. We were also very heartened in reading Janet Goulding's testimony, that she indicated the importance of digital literacy skills development throughout her testimony.