Thank you very much.
I really appreciate the testimony today. We heard today that disinformation propaganda has always existed, and we realize that social media have given actors the ability to spread their messages at lightning speed, and it gets harder and harder to bring those messages back.
I'll share with you what the implications of that have been for me.
In 2017, I became the victim of a disinformation campaign among the Conservatives during their leadership campaign. They were sending out fundraising emails asking people to give them five dollars to stop MP Iqra Khalid from bringing sharia law into Canada. That spiralled into a massive social media campaign against me, to the point where I had police patrolling my residence, because somebody had released my address and people were being encouraged to kill me. I had right-wing extremists hanging out at my constituency office, terrorizing my community staff, and 90,000 emails in my inbox, etc.
It took a very long time, and I still to this day deal with lots of the consequences of that fundraising campaign that the Conservative leadership in 2017 had led to.
I really am curious to know where the responsibility lies here. Was it the Conservative candidates raising money off my personal safety and security by spreading disinformation? Was it social media platforms that allowed this to happen without removing it, without fact-checking, or is it media, in general, that are not playing the role of the watchdog that they perhaps used to in the past?
I'll start with Professor Loewen and then go on to Mr. Al-Rawi.