Information & Ethics committee  No, I had never heard of them, and I still have never met any of them.

Information & Ethics committee  No.

Information & Ethics committee  We haven't got to that stage yet. As Mr. Bartus said, he has just closed, and we've been essentially running around getting all of these arrangements made. We're going to look at the privacy policy over the next couple of weeks. Certainly, we're going to do our best to make sure that it explains to Nexopia's users what Nexopia does with its information, what options they've got, what alternatives there are.

Information & Ethics committee  Don't forget that the previous set-up was such that you deleted your profile, you went away for a day, you came back, and it was still there. So there wasn't a true delete. There wasn't a false delete; there wasn't any delete. That's certainly going to be fixed. That's a commitment the company has made.

Information & Ethics committee  Could I just add one little point? It is really important to distinguish between anonymous, targeted advertising where what you're trying to do is serve the ads to people who would be closest to their interests. So if they've been browsing auto sites, they are going to get auto ads.

Information & Ethics committee  The federal commissioner's office is a very reasonable, very business-like sort of office. The problem the previous owners of this site had is they didn't engage with the commissioner's office, and if there's one piece of advice I would give to any Canadian business, it would be that if you have a privacy issue, engage with the commissioner's office.

Information & Ethics committee  I've helped hundreds of companies deal with privacy policies, and you're stuck in the middle. If it's too detailed, then people complain because it's hard to understand. If it's not detailed enough—and this happened with some of the early decisions when PIPEDA first came in—then you're not giving enough information to allow informed consent.

Information & Ethics committee  I can't give you chapter and verse, but there are some sites in the U.S. that have privacy policies that are three lines long: “We won't use any of your information for anything. We promise.” It's that kind of thing. It's not particularly informative. It doesn't really tell you, as we're required to do under our law, who is the contact, who is the person, how you withdraw your information, how you withdraw consent, etc.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. We had a discussion with the Privacy Commissioner even before Mr. Bartus purchased the company. We came to an arrangement with respect to the timing. As you saw in the recommendations, they were done in two steps. These are going to be done in two steps. The first set have to be done by, I believe, January 31 and the rest of them by April 30.

Information & Ethics committee  The only comment I'd make is that the current federal Privacy Commissioner has a very interesting role as an ombudsman, as a privacy advocate, that she's able to do because she's not also judge and jury. She doesn't do any adjudication. Once you change that role, where now the Privacy Commissioner is also adjudicating, is also instituting penalties and so on, to some extent, then, it can affect the other role.

Information & Ethics committee  I think the privacy policy should be updated. I think the timing we're looking at is somewhere about the end of November or early December. We should be able to deal with it relatively quickly.