Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I tabled the amendment raising concerns about Meta's role. This is the role of Meta in disinformation. It's been flagged in the European Union and the United States. Meta has simply been appallingly bad in promoting disinformation and stoking, I would suggest, an amplification of hate.
I offered that amendment to subpoena Rachel Curran, who is head of public policy for Meta Canada, because of Meta's appalling role in disinformation. Subsequent to this, two other factors have come to mind.
First, we have a role to look at the CBC and its mandate. I understand that the president of the CBC, Catherine Tait, is coming before us on November 2. It's kind of superfluous to look into the CBC or have a motion on the CBC when they are already scheduled to appear in front of this committee.
Second, Madam Chair, I want to bring to your attention and the committee's attention an extraordinary piece of investigative reporting that appeared just this past weekend. It's by Jesse Brown and Karyn Pugliese from Canadaland. These are two very effective journalists. They went into what they saw as a major source of disinformation. The heading of the article was the “The anti-Trudeau hate farm based out of Cairo”. This is a major source of disinformation in Canada.
The YouTube channel called Street Politics Canada, since April 2022, has published approximately 600 YouTube videos catering to an audience of Canadian conservatives. In the last 12 months, their videos have received more than 10 million views. Jesse Brown and Karyn Pugliese looked into this and showed real investigative reporting. It would be great to see Postmedia, which is heavily subsidized, actually do some investigative reporting.
It turns out that the journalists found that Street Politics Canada is actually run out of Egypt, specifically from the 11th floor office of a company called Geek Labs in the Cairo neighbourhood of Degla. The former Street Politics social media manager conceded that if they told people they were Egyptians talking in Canada, the company would not get the success that it has had.
This is a major source of misinformation. The social media manager goes on to say, “We knew that our audience were the conservatives in Canada.” I certainly hope that the member for Carleton and Conservative MPs are not re-tweeting, or amplifying, this blatant disinformation that is foreign-based foreign interference. I find it appalling that this has played such a key role in the Conservatives' infrastructure.
The amendment that I offered is to look into the disinformation that we're seeing on Meta. It's fair to say that there's a broader problem of disinformation writ large. That is something that would be entirely appropriate for our committee to look at.
I'm sure my colleagues have comments on the amendment. I'm beginning to see from these two pieces of important information that what we probably actually need is a motion that allows this committee to undertake a study into misinformation and disinformation writ large, particularly at a time that is so troubling after the Hamas terrorist attacks. We now see the loss of civilian life in Gaza because of IDF bombing. This is a major concern to all Canadians, and we need to get good information.
It's fair to say that the CBC has done an exemplary job. It has been extraordinary. Its journalists have often laid their lives on the line, and continue to do so. An attack on the CBC and its independence is inappropriate. The fact that we have the president of the CBC coming forward means that Mrs. Thomas' original motion is kind of moot; we already have the CBC coming before us.
I think this committee should absolutely take on the broader issues of disinformation. I'm particularly interested in the comments from my colleagues to see what direction we should take. I'm beginning to think that my subamendment isn't the most appropriate way of doing that, given the surprising disinformation of foreign interference used by the conservative infrastructure and by Meta's appalling actions in fomenting and amplifying disinformation through the course of the last few weeks.