Google gets hardly any requests for users' data in Canada compared to global average

According to a Google transparency report, Canadian government departments, entities, and agencies asked Google to cough up data on 38 users over six months last year (July to December), primarily due to criminal investigations. The report states that Google complied with 21 of the requests, or 55 percent.

38 is a very low number when compared to our closet neighbour, the U.S., which saw well over 4,500 requests. That's more than 10 times the requests per capita than Canada. In fact, America topped the world in requests. Brazil and India came in second and third, each with less than 2,000.

Google does not always know if requests are related to criminal investigations and didn't clarify whether police services count or what levels of government the requests came from.

Seven requests for content removal also occurred in this time period in Canada—three for blog material, three for internet searches, and one for YouTube. Google's report states that it fully or partially complied with six of these requests, or 86 percent.