Government Operations committee  I paid my own way.

Government Operations committee  Good morning, Minister. I have just a few questions. The first one is on equalization. I'd like to know how much we are transferring to provinces on equalization, and maybe it's too complicated to tell me, but roughly how much each province gets. What are the criteria for equal

Government Operations committee  Can you tell me what the criteria are?

Government Operations committee  Well, I did a little bit of research. My understanding is that Hydro-Québec is excluded from calculations of the revenues of the Province of Quebec, yet Hydro-Québec, in the 2012 numbers, which are the last ones I can find, gave the province $900 million in taxes. Is this accurat

Government Operations committee  I never get to talk to the Department of Finance. Okay. I'll try another one, and you'll tell me it's some other organization. Under the Constitution, education is a provincial matter, yet I think we are giving something like $10 billion a year to universities. Why are we doin

Government Operations committee  If you can't prove there's any economic benefit, I don't think you should be touting an economic benefit until it can be proven.

Government Operations committee  Yes. What is clearly not open data?

Government Operations committee  Okay. You talk about how this open data is going to create a larger economy, etc. What proof do you have that this will contribute to improving our economy?

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much. I know these sites are called open data and they're open sites. However, I think also about the security side. Are these sites protected in some security way from hacking? You can have a hacker get in there—we have histories of it—and provide a whole bunch o

Government Operations committee  My other question is about Crown corporations. Are Crown corporations involved in this activity? If they aren't, why aren't they?

Government Operations committee  What you're saying in effect is that you don't have anything from Crown corporations.

Government Operations committee  Just to respond to that, it would seem to me that Crown corporations are more likely than departments to be the sources of the information that the public wants. They have particular functions that relate to the public and it would seem to me that they should be at the forefront

Government Operations committee  You're using the term “metadata”, and I wonder if you can give an example or two of metadata.

Government Operations committee  I'm not going to divert you into another topic, but there have been issues recently with CSE collecting metadata. What you're describing, basically, are all the details related to a certain subject area? Is that right? Metadata is basically the whole picture—everything.

Government Operations committee  I was just going to say that, like Mr. Martin, I worry about precedents. If you start giving out these things, you get to a stage where you can't say no any more and you could be into problems. I'm just one of those who believe that if you have to come here to ask for it, you'r