Thank you, Chair.
Thank you very much for being here and for your very informative testimony.
I'd like to focus my questions on the foreign threats to democracy and what I call the enabling technologies: the social media platforms, the “data-opolies” that are allowing for those foreign threats to actually take hold.
I note that, as legislators, we are the front lines of democracy globally. If those of us who are elected representatives of the people are not able to tackle this and do something about these threats.... This is really up to us and that's why I'm so pleased that the grand committee is meeting today.
I also note the co-operation that even our committee was able to have with the U.K. committee on AggregateIQ, which was here in Canada when we were studying Cambridge Analytica and Facebook.
However, we do have a problem, which is that individual countries, especially smaller markets, are very easily ignored by these large platforms, because simply, they're so large that individually there is not much we can do. Therefore, we do need to work together.
Ms. Weintraub, do you believe that right now you have the tools you need to ensure that the 2020 U.S. election will be free, or as free as possible, of foreign influence?