International Trade committee  In terms of this particular initiative, we are participating in a Toronto Board of Trade event alongside Minister Bernier and the Mayor of Toronto to promote the site itself. The head of Google Canada, Sam Sebastian, will be going across the country later in the summer and fall t

International Trade committee  Certainly. As I mentioned in my remarks, we offer a number of services to small businesses because small and medium-sized enterprises are big customers both in terms of number and importance on our advertising side, as well as in the services and tools we provide to them. Importa

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Davies. I think you raise an important point, in that when we're talking about digital businesses and conducting business online, we are talking about services trade and we're talking about the transmission of data between countries, between communities, and betwe

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Members of the committee, députés et députées, thank you for having me here today. As this is our first time appearing before the trade committee, I'd like to take a few moments to tell you about Google Canada. In 2002 Google Canada opened our f

Information & Ethics committee  I think in the context of your study today on identify theft, metadata is an element, but a small element, of what is used to construct an identity. If someone is trying to engage in identity theft, there are very specific pieces of information that they need to know about an ind

Information & Ethics committee  I can't speak specifically to whether we've had a relationship with law enforcement about that, but certainly, any open e-mail system provides some level of anonymity or pseudonymity, and you can create an e-mail account under whatever name and specific identity you'd like. There

Information & Ethics committee  I think the answer can only be anecdotal because, obviously, we're in a very well-placed position to make significant investments. The reason you see new companies and new software initiatives frequently being the victims of data breaches and large scale criminal enterprise is th

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm pleased to appear before the committee again, the first time this session, to speak about such an important subject, information security and identity theft. My comments don't reflect this, but I'll just make a note right now that I'm glad

Government Operations committee  I think Ray, in his examples points out—once again I'm coming back to the transition point—that there are some easy victories, which are natural resources data, which for Canada are extremely valuable. It's traditionally been the sort of data that companies have had to collect th

Government Operations committee  Just to add to that point about Challenge.gov, kaggle.com is how the private sector conducts exactly the same experiment. They put up challenges for business questions and ask statisticians and data experts to help them solve them for financial awards.

Government Operations committee  Once again we're in a typically Canadian conundrum. There's a small number of companies that already understand this and are looking to the data portal to improve and to provide them with information that they can use in their business practices—in many ways they are. But there a

Government Operations committee  An important addition to your point is that any organization is not overloaded with technologists. Ray's company and mine are exceptions. So the expectation is not going to be that society has to ramp up and learn programming languages and applied mathematics. In fact, adopting t

Government Operations committee  I think in my discussion I already mentioned the ready accessibility of data sets that are relevant, well structured, machine readable, and regularly updated. I think one of the key measurements, luckily for everyone, is the actual use of the data. The data portal itself has unlo

Government Operations committee  You mentioned at the beginning of your remarks the age of the people in the room—and I'm probably in that demographic as well. I think it's a process of culture change, but it's not age based. It's about your approach and the way you conduct your work. Within the government, we'

Government Operations committee  From the point of view of a public policy wonk, I would say any release of data sets that have traditionally been held in cabinets, in government buildings, is a step towards transparency, and certainly in releasing data you provide essential nutrients for the growth of strong po