INDU meeting 47 · 2026-06-18 — Committee Evidence — LegisWatch

Summary

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology met to study financial fraud and deepfakes, hearing from Jeanette Patell, Director of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google Canada.

Jeanette Patell described Google’s multi-layered anti-fraud systems, including Gemini-powered tools that block over 99% of policy-violating ads before they serve, Android protections against billions of malicious calls and messages monthly, and the Global Signal Exchange, which shares over 1.2 billion signals among more than 300 organizations. She recommended Canada join the Global Signal Exchange, invest in public education and law enforcement resourcing, and create a mandated, machine-readable registry of verified financial services providers to enable enhanced advertiser verification, noting that such a registry requires federal action due to shared jurisdiction over financial services. She disagreed with the suggestion that Google should reimburse fraud victims, arguing that the focus should be on holding criminal perpetrators accountable rather than shifting liability from them, and she declined to provide specific figures on spending for public education or customer service response times, stating these are context-dependent.

The committee adopted a motion on notice for a study of mid-sized business growth and retention, with all parties expressing support. Members also thanked the clerk for her service on her last day with the committee.

AI-generated summary — may contain errors; verify against the official evidence.

Witnesses · 1

Jeanette Patell

Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada

Opening remarks

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to speak before you today. My name is Jeanette Patell. I'm the director of government affairs and public policy for Google Canada. At Google, our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Keeping our users safe is foundational to that mission. Financial fraud and scams exploit people and undermine the trust that is essential to the digital ecosystem. This society-wide challenge has grown in scale and complexity, with global fraud losses estimated at nearly $580 billion for 2025, according to Nasdaq's “Global Financial Crime Report”. This is driven by sophisticated transnational criminal operations that combine online and offline methods. At Google, keeping our users and partners safe is our top priority. To tackle this global problem at scale, we've invested for over two decades in advanced technologies, robust policies, legal action and expert teams dedicated to protecting the users of our products and services. Our interventions have significantly improved with our latest innovations in AI, specifically our Gemini-powered tools. While our teams have long…

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