Exactly one year ago the Prime Minister issued a very stern statement to Facebook. He told them to clean up their act or we would regulate them. Then that never happened. Our committee then began our study, which really brought us down the rabbit hole of some really dark operators. I feel a real disconnect when I hear how we're talking about foreign actors, and foreign players and foreign countries, it seems, jamming the phone lines on election day, when from what we've seen, it could be two guys above an optometrist's shop, with good datasets and the ability to switch and turn votes—100 here, 50 there—who could actually dismantle the democratic system.
When we met with 17 jurisdictions around the world, they all expressed their frustration about the unwillingness of Facebook to take any responsibility. In fact, our sister committee in the U.K. has called them “digital gangsters”.
Yesterday the Toronto Star did an editorial that read, “Ottawa should stand up to Big Tech on privacy and democracy”. It read, “Yet our government seems uncertain, even paralyzed, in the face of the multiple challenges posed by the tech giants.... The United States...and...Europe...are taking strong action to counter some of the worst effects of Facebook....yet Ottawa seems...content to sit on the sidelines.” That's not me saying that; that's the Toronto Star, yesterday, presumably after it got to see your report.
I have two quick questions. One, what assurances did you get from Facebook that nobody else internationally seems to have gotten? Number two, to reiterate, will you give us the names of whoever you spoke to at Facebook so we can invite them to see what kinds of reassurances the Canadian people will get?