Evidence of meeting #18 for Canadian Heritage in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was young.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
Ms. Tessier-Bouchard is not here; she will be here on Monday.
I would like a clarification. You said that Mr. Al Soud’s time was suspended, but he was asking how much time he had left.
Are we waiting for Mr. Cooper’s sound issue to be resolved? Are we continuing Mr. Al Soud’s time? Can you clarify?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Lisa Hepfner
I reset the clock to zero when he started his questions again.
I can suspend the meeting if you want.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
I asked because Mr. Al Soud wanted to ask questions for Mr. Cooper. I wanted to know if Mr. Al Soud wanted Mr. Cooper to be able to answer his questions.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
I would like to put my questions to Mr. Cooper, but if the audio isn’t working, we can’t do anything.
I can easily direct my questions to someone else.
Vice-President, Data and Partnerships, Mental Health Research Canada
I think my audio is fixed, sir.
Liberal
Vice-President, Data and Partnerships, Mental Health Research Canada
I apologize. The light went out on the little USB thing. Can you hear me?
Liberal
Vice-President, Data and Partnerships, Mental Health Research Canada
Thank you.
The answer is that we look at capture rates. Only about 2% of Canadians over the age of 16 are participating in loot boxes. Unfortunately, what we found is that about half the people over the age of 16 who participate in loot boxes are experiencing PGSI, which is a problematic gambling indicator. It is an extremely addictive behaviour. At this point, it's not widespread among the Canadian population, but if it were to expand.... It is one of the most addictive things we are seeing among all types of gambling activities.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
Thank you.
Ms. Paul, I'd like to follow up on your opening remarks.
You noted a degree of dishonesty among certain platforms. I think I'm being modest in that assessment. Kick has become a major platform, mostly because it is welcoming of gambling streams. Twitch is imperfect but has adopted stronger restrictions and moderation policies.
I'm curious. What does the divergence between Kick and Twitch tell us about the competitiveness pressure to reduce moderation in order to attract an audience? Certainly, I think of Meta and the pressures there.
Director, Tech Transparency Project
I will note that Kick is not a platform we focus on because we focus on the largest platforms that are of most consequence to general populations.
That said, we have done some research on Twitch, not related to gambling but to entities monetizing Russian propaganda regarding the Ukraine war. We looked at the social media platforms that Pew Research Center, for instance, has shown to be the most popular among teens: Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. These are platforms where, largely, we do not see a lot of effective moderation, particularly on Instagram. Instagram is one of the platforms we ran test ads on, targeting teens for gambling. Every single one of those ads was approved, including ones for which we were able to generate images with Meta's own AI tool.
These are companies that make very specific claims about their policies banning this kind of content, particularly in advertising, but we do not see that actually practised effectively by their platforms.
Liberal
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to thank the witnesses once again for sharing their knowledge and opinions on this extremely sensitive and extremely interesting subject with us.
Mr. Morin, between your opening remarks and those of the other witnesses, a lot has been said. I’ll try to gather everything I would like to ask you. You said earlier that you would have needed half an hour to answer my colleague Mrs. Thomas’s question. I would also like us to each have half an hour to further develop our ideas.
In your opening remarks, you spoke mainly about the age of young people who are approached for the purpose of radicalization. They are getting younger and younger, you said. In addition, Mrs. Thomas raised this topic with you to understand a bit about the process and know how it works. There was also discussion of the issue of games like Roblox, where young people can communicate with each other online. I imagine the conversation must be very lively there.
I would like you to explain to us a bit about the process leading to radicalization. Many of us are worried parents who don’t know a lot about it. How can we identify these changes in our youth? How can we be vigilant about that? What is the process, for example, of an organization that will try to target our youth to radicalize them?
Full Professor, UNESCO Chair in the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Extremism, Université de Sherbrooke, as an individual
Thank you for your question.
The first criterion is not to look at the number of hours the child spends on social media, because it’s not necessarily a good indicator. It may be an indicator of a mental health issue in the child, but not necessarily that they’re becoming radicalized.
I’ll be careful with what I say because there’s no established profile. The important criteria or indicators that we observe include the young person’s social isolation, their psychological distress, a complete change in their habits, different friends, intolerance to any contradiction in a conversation, etc. Again, there are many false positives in these criteria that I’m citing. Anyway, I am the proud father of an 18‑year-old young woman. What I’m describing to you could have happened in my life, and I don’t think my daughter is becoming radicalized.
We’re looking at violent extremism, so the act of committing violence. I think what should concern us beyond that is looking at what happens beforehand. That’s why I invite us to take a step back. I believe that one of the current harmful effects of social media—I think my colleagues have said it well—is that the business model of a number of social networks, in the sociopolitical space, focuses on emotion, conflict, confrontation and stopping the debate of ideas. It also aims to trap people, ultimately, in echo chambers. I think that, collectively, we must recognize that this is a problem.
On Monday, I was testifying before another committee on the issue of anti‑feminist discourse. I give you the example of important influencers like Andrew Tate. The spread of this type of discourse on social media means that, today, many young men subscribe to an extremely unequal view of the relationships between men and women. They start their social, romantic and sexual lives with completely preconceived ideas that do not match those of young women and their expectations. I provided some quite shocking statistics on Monday. With reservations, I think more than 40% of young men believe, for example, that feminism is a strategy by women to control society. There are about the same number of people who think that equality between women and men has been achieved today and therefore that feminism, understood as a vision for the equality of men and women, is no longer useful and is no longer relevant.
You see, beyond the violent extremism that our security and intelligence services deal with, if we take just one step further, we collectively face a bigger challenge with our youth. I do not believe in the good faith of a number of platforms. Remember the Christchurch attacks. I won’t describe them to you again. After the Christchurch event, platforms and governments came together to try to remove content. I remind you that a man was able to massacre 60 Muslim individuals live online. It was filmed, so the massacre could be watched.
There have been advances, but in recent years, we have seen a regression. A number of platforms that had improved are now backtracking. You know them. This includes Twitter, where there is less and less moderation.
Excuse me, I gave a long answer.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
No, that’s perfect. I ask long questions, so your answers are completely justified. They’re much more interesting than my questions, by the way.
I understand and admit that it’s very difficult to convince the platforms to collaborate. Earlier, we heard Ms. Paul talk about Meta’s business model, which almost encourages this kind of illegal trade and content, from which it profits.
As legislators, what strategy could we adopt with respect to harmful influencers and their negative impacts, or with those predators that can often be identified online, like the 764 movement you mentioned? There’s a list of terrorist entities in Canada. Could we not make a kind of similar list? Without constraining the platforms, aside from allowing us to locate these individuals, would it be effective and feasible for Canada to establish a list of entities deemed illegal due to the content they propagate on the platforms? Would that be an interesting option to explore?
Full Professor, UNESCO Chair in the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Extremism, Université de Sherbrooke, as an individual
Being on the Canadian list of terrorist entities already gives law enforcement additional powers to require platforms to provide information. As I mentioned earlier, the problem today is that there are small movements of influencers who are recruiting. It’s no longer always the large organizations with a storefront that can recruit people. I think that’s the problem today.
I must inform you, however, that I was part of the expert committee that advised the Government of Canada on the moderation of harmful online content for Bill C‑63.
I think that bill was a good starting point. It was a bill. It needed to be critiqued and improved. It was really a good copy on the table, with which it was nonetheless possible to move forward.
That working base did three things.
The first is that it gave platforms the responsibility to remove content and to demonstrate that they had indeed removed that content.
The second was that it appointed a commissioner who could verify that the content had indeed been removed. It was also supposed to provide data to researchers to help them better understand how content moderation works.
The third is that it nonetheless created an ombud position, which is very important because we all value freedom of expression. It was important for people who felt oppressed by the sudden removals by the platforms to actually have access to the ombud, and for their posts to be returned.
I think the bill was going in the right direction. The European Union does it. The United Kingdom does it. Australia does it. On the other hand, Canada is in a much more complicated situation because the United States, which is next door, is still putting pressure on Canada not to impose restraints. However, I believe it will now become a matter of public health and social cohesion.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Lisa Hepfner
Thank you, Mr. Champoux.
Mr. Généreux, you have the floor for five minutes.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I thank all the witnesses.
Mr. Bridgman, you said that 80% of people get their news from content published by influencers. Which news are you talking about exactly? Are you talking about public and political news? In general, does this also refer to news that’s aimed at young people by influencers?
I’ll soon be 64 years old and I use social media, but I still watch television from time to time. I may be old, and I still have some old habits. What part of the population is represented in this percentage exactly?
Director, Media Ecosystem Observatory
From a young person’s perspective, we’re all old.
When I talk about 80% of young people, I mean those aged 18 to 34. Thirty‑four years old isn’t that young, and the percentage is certainly higher for those under 18.
The 80% represents the young people who regularly follow online influencers and consume their products and content. They also follow their opinions on politics on a daily basis.
Young people may watch television from time to time, but probably not very often. They read a bit of the news, but most of the updates they receive throughout the day come from influencers. However, those influencers do not stick to the facts. The media report the facts. Influencers also report the facts, but they add their interpretation, their opinions and what it implies for our politics.
Conservative
Bernard Généreux Conservative Côte-du-Sud—Rivière-du-Loup—Kataskomiq—Témiscouata, QC
When looking at the polls, we see a trend, namely that young people have more right‑leaning opinions than their elders. What reason explains that? Are there more influencers who are politically right‑leaning?
I see you nodding, Mr. Morin. You can intervene after.