Regulating fake news is the hardest issue. My fake news might not be your fake news. Voter suppression's already illegal. Foreign interference is already illegal, and C-76 takes some really good steps toward closing the final loopholes that are there. C-76 would put in place an offence of impersonating a politician or a political party, so that you couldn't purport that the advertisement came from a particular elected representative or party.
In the Canada Elections Act it's already illegal, if you're a candidate, to claim the person you're running against is going to drop out of the race for some reason. That was a common tactic that was used, so we legislated against it. In C-76, voter suppression and robocalls are all things where we've updated the legislation to deal with whatever the new dirty tricks are, potentially. I don't see any problem in saying, “Today, a lot of the dirty tricks are potentially happening on social media. Which entities have the resources and the ability to actually ensure that the rules are followed?”
It's impossible to try to track down every purveyor of misinformation, disinformation and voter suppression. It's much easier to regulate the social media platforms. It's technologically feasible. They're telling us they're changing the world. They should be able to have a transparency and a repository of election ads without too much of a hit to their bottom lines, and I think we can do that in a way that respects freedom of political expression. One of the things we've learned over the last 18 months is that regulating social media platforms is actually what has to happen now.