I call the meeting to order.
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the 105th meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
I would like to acknowledge that this meeting is taking place on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe nation.
Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.
I'm going to go over the usual messaging.
You are not mandated to wear masks, but please wear one because it helps to protect you and your colleagues. You're not allowed to take any photographs of your meeting on the net. You can find it later on; it will be posted.
When you speak, address yourself through the chair. Also remember that the audio system is very sensitive, so please ensure you don't have other devices sitting next to your computer so we get feedback. That's pretty hard on the ears of the interpreters.
We're dealing today with tech giants and their roles in going against government bills, etc. We have six witnesses. One is not here yet, so when he comes on, the clerk will suspend for a minute and we will bring him on and test him.
We will start this morning with Joan Donovan, online disinformation and misinformation expert, Boston University College of Communication.
We also have Georg Riekeles, associate director.
Joining us online, with Corporate Europe Observatory, we have Bram Vranken, researcher.
From Internet Society Canada Chapter, we have Philip Palmer, president, who will be coming on a bit later.
We have, from OpenMedia, Matthew Hatfield, executive director, and from Village Media Inc., Jeff Elgie, chief executive officer.
We will begin, and you each have five minutes as a group, not as a person. If there are two of you, then you will have to split the five minutes. I will give you a 30-second shout-out to wrap it up. Even if you can't finish what you wanted to say, there's always an opportunity during the question period for you to plug your bit in.
We'll begin now with Ms. Joan Donovan for five minutes, please.