Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 24th, 2024

[Dr. Lindsay Hundley]

What I would say is that there's not a static number of fake accounts. There are fake accounts that are created every day, and we are taking them down, often within minutes of their creation.

I think the thing that's important to understand is that when you're operating at the scale that we are, it is hard to tell when a new account is a fake account versus a new account that hasn't been aged, so we have to apply a lot of different levers to be able to distinguish between those. If we're not sure, we'll put the account into an identity checkpoint or a thing like that.

I don't think that this is an issue of capacity. It is just what it looks like when you're operating on the Internet.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Fisher. I can attest to that. Just last week I had a fake account taken down through Meta after my staff found it.

I thought it was your charm that propelled you to victory, not your thousand followers on a Facebook page.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

That concludes our first round. We'll now reset with six-minute rounds.

Mr. Cooper, you have six minutes. Go ahead, sir.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Fernández, the Trudeau government has introduced Bill C-63, known as the online harms act. It has been characterized as Orwellian by Margaret Atwood. The Atlantic has published an article in which it labelled the bill as “Canada's Extremist Attack on Free Speech”. The bill has been characterized this way: “The worst assault on free speech in modern Canadian history”.

Among other things, the bill will establish a so-called digital safety commission, a massive new bureaucracy of censors who will have the power to impose penalties on any person or social media service found to have permitted what Justin Trudeau deems to be “harmful content”, whatever that is. The penalties will be established by the Trudeau cabinet, not Parliament.

Do you have concerns about this so-called digital safety commission and the effect it will have on the free speech of Canadians online?

[Wifredo Fernández]

We are monitoring the movement of this bill through the legislative process. Yes, we do have concerns about its impact on free speech in Canada.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

I would ask Meta the same thing.

[Rachel Curran]

We don't actually have a position on the parts of the bill that amend the Criminal Code or the Canadian Human Rights Act, because they don't apply to us. The part of the bill that applies to social media platforms we have been supportive of, because it requires us to remove material that is already illegal and that we already remove expeditiously.

We are also supportive of Bill C-412, which is MP Rempel Garner's response to Bill C-63. We think both of those bills are good attempts to deal with harmful content online. We look forward to working with MP Rempel Garner and with Minister Virani on both those bills.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you for that.

The act provides that an order of Justin Trudeau's Orwellian censorship bureaucracy could be converted into an order of the Federal Court of Canada and therefore enforced like a court order.

Mr. Fernández, can you speak to the implications of that?

[Wifredo Fernández]

Whether it's information requests that come through lawful legal process or removal orders that come through lawful legal process, we have a process for those to be processed and evaluated by our teams.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Yes. Well, I would just observe that the effect of that provision would be to provide that a social media provider or persons affiliated with a platform like X could be subjected to severe fines or even imprisonment for contempt of a court order on the basis of refusing to take down a post that Justin Trudeau's bureaucrats deemed to be harmful content.

[Wifredo Fernández]

Our goal is to maximize free speech, but within the boundaries of the law in which we operate. That's what we do here in Canada.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Okay.

I'll go back to a question I asked at the end of my last round.

The Prime Minister's department was very quick to get in touch with Facebook when it identified an article that contained disinformation about Justin Trudeau, but during the 2021 election, the Prime Minister's department, the PCO, as far as Ms. Curran was aware, made no contact with Facebook in the face of a wave of disinformation by the Beijing regime directed at Kenny Chiu and other Conservative candidates to defeat them and to help re-elect Justin Trudeau.

To the other witnesses representing the other social media platforms, were you ever contacted by the Prime Minister's department, the PCO, during the 2021 election about Beijing's disinformation efforts?

I'll ask Mr. Fernández.

[Wifredo Fernández]

I personally was not, no.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

I don't mean you personally; I mean X.

[Wifredo Fernández]

I'm not sure. We would have to go back to our records and check.

Thank you.

[Steve de Eyre]

As I mentioned in my opening statement, TikTok worked with PCO to sign on to the declaration during the 2021 election, but I'm not aware of any specific escalations that came to TikTok during that period.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

You have about 30 seconds.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Ms. Patell, go ahead.

[Jeanette Patell]

I am not familiar with any requests that would have come to us in 2021 with regard to your query.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Were there any requests from the rapid response mechanism?

I'll start with Ms. Curran.

[Rachel Curran]

No, we did not receive any requests in 2021.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Fernández, I'll go to you next.

[Wifredo Fernández]

I'm not sure. We would have to go back and check.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. de Eyre, go ahead.