Declaration of Emergency Committee on Nov. 17th, 2022

[Kim Wilford]

They reside in the Bay area and in southern California.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

They live outside Canada, then.

Is that correct?

[Kim Wilford]

That is correct.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

I have one last question, Ms. Wilford.

The Proclamation Declaring a Public Order Emergency went hand in hand with a number of orders and regulations aimed at resolving the crisis.

To your knowledge, did any of those provisions or orders target GoFundMe?

Did the declaration of emergency change anything for GoFundMe?

[Kim Wilford]

GoFundMe made the decision to remove this fundraiser quite a while before the Emergencies Act was invoked. We were just working within our own terms of service to decide whether or not it complied with our policies. We made the decision to remove it based on that and the information we were getting.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

Thank you.

Thank you, Monsieur Fortin.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

I will now pass the chair to you, sir, so I can continue with my round.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Green. The floor is yours.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

Thank you very much, sir.

I want to take a moment and acknowledge, Ms. Wilford, that you came here with another set of testimonies from GiveSendGo. They've left and you've now been at this for a while with this committee. You've also, I think, participated in the inquiry as well. I thank you for being present and for availing yourself to these questions. I just wanted to say that as a chair and as a member of Parliament here.

I know that results will be coming out of the inquiry. I'm interested, in the course of my future action, in beginning to contemplate ways we can improve upon our laws and regulations, and the recommendations going back to government that might help us avoid future situations like this.

I'm still upset and actually have deep concern about the thought of $1 million coming from outside the country to a direct action like this, but I'll set that aside for a moment.

Since the declaration of emergency, legal changes have been enacted and now require online crowdfunding platforms to report large or suspicious transactions with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre, which is Canada's financial intelligence unit.

How do these regulatory changes impact your business? What changes have you made to comply with them?

[Kim Wilford]

You are correct that we were required to register with FINTRAC following this situation. Our team has now registered and is working with them to provide all of that information. Our policies and internal responses are having to evolve in order to provide the documentation.

As I mentioned before, Stripe was the payment processor here. They're the ones that have the vast majority of the information that FINTRAC is interested in. We're really working with Stripe and the authorities to ensure that we provide them with what they need in our efforts to be a responsible crowdfunding platform.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

Stripe would have been the processor and would have verified the origin of the transactions.

When you said that Visa payments were coming in, the first four digits would have identified that they were Canadian and not American. Is that correct?

[Kim Wilford]

That is correct.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

Okay.

If the regulations were in place before the events leading up to the declaration of emergency, or actually the whole “freedom convoy” for that matter, how would they have impacted the related fundraising campaigns on your platform?

[Kim Wilford]

Even before these regulations, we are still always trying to operate actually above the law. We were reporting things we saw all the time and working with various authorities and our processors.

I actually don't think that it would have. We are always wanting to be as responsible, as transparent and as helpful as possible.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

I referenced January 6.

We're trying to take away the learnings from this situation to provide a report back to Parliament that will improve upon our legislation and, hopefully, offset any potential gaps we might have in our own legislation.

I'm going to ask you to think about and respond to how the events in question led to any changes in the terms of how your platform carries out risk assessment. We're trying to learn about risk assessment for crowdfunding and campaigns.

[Kim Wilford]

We always take a risk-based approach, depending on the donation velocity, the size of the donation, the campaign content and the virality of something. The teams are looking at it from a variety of angles, such as human reviews and machine-learning reviews. Our practices are always evolving and we're always learning from these situations as to how to be better and create a more responsible environment for our users.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

You'll note that I asked you about the notes. Here in Canada in the work we do, we're often trying to draw from primary sources of information.

Internally, are you debriefing about this or is this just an event that has passed and you're moving forward with other operations with this in your rearview mirror?

[Kim Wilford]

We're always trying to learn from situations and improve our policies and procedures. We may not have as much written documentation as you would hope, but we are meeting often as a group and continuously improving our approach.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

Would you make a commitment to this committee that as you wrap up the inquiry and this particular participation, and on your own reflections as general counsel within GoFundMe, that if you do have any reports back to the executive or to your board or whomever you are reporting to on things you may have done differently—learnings or potential gaps in legislation—that you would report that back to us?

[Kim Wilford]

Yes, but we believe we handled this campaign in a very responsible fashion. It was extremely unusual in a variety of ways. We did everything we could to ensure that it was in compliance with our terms of service and to ensure, at the end of the day, that all the funds were returned to the—

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

That's time. I'm going to “chair” myself. I think I'm out of time. I am out of time, in fact.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

I was going to, Mr. Green, but I was relying on your great integrity.

Thank you.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

I know—you are very good. I'm trying to be disciplined as the chair and not take advantage, because I know my friend, Mr. Brock, is anxious for a round. We will give him five minutes now to—

Yes?

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Chair, I think the vote is over. It was a little while ago, so the senators should be arriving back very soon.