Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 24th, 2024

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

I can respond to that, Chair.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

—we'd like to see the motion in writing, because without knowing that these documents exist, to your point, Chair, I'm not really sure what the source of this is.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Okay.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Let's see what the request is, and then we can consider it, but we're not able to provide unanimous consent for the committee to do something that the committee doesn't have the power to do.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

I'll quote you on that later.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

That's an interesting point.

Can we deal with this later?

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Absolutely.

Chair, I do want to make a point here, because I feel that—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I'm starting your clock again, then, because you're making a point.

Go ahead.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Absolutely.

To respond to Mr. Barrett's concerns, I will read a tweet from X on May 3, 2024, that says:

X is proud to fund a lawsuit filed by Dr. Matthew Strauss, an Ontario critical care physician and professor, against his former employer, Queen's University.

After Dr. Strauss argued against wide COVID lockdowns and mandates on his X account...Queen's University...publicly ostracized him, retaliated against him, and ultimately forced him to resign because his opinions did not conform to the university's political orthodoxy.

X supports Dr. Strauss's efforts to vindicate his free speech rights without fear of unfair retaliation!

Knowing and understanding that this person was a candidate for a political party, I want to know why it is that a platform claiming they are protectors of free speech—given the study that I cited earlier—is interfering in the Canadian political democratic process.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Okay, your time's up.

I will give Mr. Fernández an opportunity to quickly respond to that, and then we'll circle back to the information you're asking for later.

[Wifredo Fernández]

Our company and its leadership have made clear that if there are people around the world whose employment has been affected by what they've said on the platform in exercising their free speech, we will support them by helping defend them. That is what that is linked to. I just want to make that point.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Ms. Khalid.

Mr. Villemure, you have the floor for six minutes.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here today.

I'm going to start by asking Ms. Curran my first question.

We've already had the opportunity to exchange views on this subject. A number of experts have told us that disinformation in Finland has been defeated, if you like. At least, it has been greatly affected by the fact that education has been provided. Secondly, the country has a very strong media. They are independent and free. As you know, in Canada, local media have been very affected by Facebook's decision not to sign up to the recent law. I see all the efforts Meta is making to counter disinformation, but, according to our specialists, one of the biggest recommendations is the presence of strong, free media, which you don't subscribe to.

I'd like to know where you stand on this issue.

[Rachel Curran]

Look, we've long been clear that the only way we could reasonably comply with the Online News Act is by ending news availability in Canada. That's not a decision we wanted to take. We would be happy to put news back up on our platforms if we were scoped out of the Online News Act or if that bill were repealed.

I should also point out that people in Canada can continue to access news online by going directly to news publishers' websites, downloading mobile news apps and subscribing to their preferred publishers. There's also a lot of credible information on our platforms, government websites, non-profit websites, politicians' pages and communications and charitable organizations' pages. All of that information is still available.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

As you know, the traditional media are used to being on Facebook. So it's their own fault, in my opinion.

The fact remains that one of the first suggestions is to allow strong, independent media to exist. You ask to be exempt from the new law. This is a very important point. I understand your point of view. That said, we are studying disinformation and we realize that your position indirectly encourages it. I'm not accusing you of facilitating disinformation, but people continue to get their information from Facebook instead of from official media sites.

[Rachel Curran]

Look, you know, we are actually complying with the Online News Act.

Our removal of news from our platforms was our compliance with that piece of legislation, and we are and were proud of the role we played to support a healthy and diverse news ecosystem.

We had a lot of private deals in place with publishers across Canada, which we had to terminate when the Online News Act came into force, and our free tools and services created pathways for local publishers to connect with their communities. We estimate that this generated more than $230 million in value for Canadian publishers every single year.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

[Rachel Curran]

Listen, MP Villemure, we would love to restore that value to Canadian publishers, including publishers in Quebec.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you very much, Ms. Curran.

Mr. Fernández, the social media business model is based on the number of clicks; that's no secret to anyone. The algorithm makes its own choices. Personally, I go to the platform X regularly, and it seems to me to be a hostile environment. I've noticed that brutality, banalities and other forms of falsehood generate more clicks than anything of public interest. You can't not know that.

In your opinion, how might we resolve the paradox between the need for clicks for revenue purposes and the hostile environment this currently creates? I have to say, every time I finish my visits to your platform, I get depressed.

[Wifredo Fernández]

X has a few different lines of business. We have an advertising business, but we also have a growing business around subscriptions. X Premium and X Premium+ give individual users a suite of tools and advanced analytics and so on that they're able to utilize.

That's a growing part of our business so that we become less reliant on traditional advertising. In fact, X Premium+ has no advertising, which is an advanced feature.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Fernández, some researchers testified before the committee. They said that X was the worst social media for disinformation.

What do you say to these researchers who unanimously asserted such a thing?

[Wifredo Fernández]

I've spoken about our development of Community Notes, which is a novel intervention when it comes to misleading information, and this really puts an incredible power in the hands of our users to add context to posts when they feel it would be helpful to have more context.

This is, I think, a first-in-industry type of product that really, as the research shows, helps combat disinformation, because people are less likely to share that content. That account is demonetized. They are not incentivized to share misleading information because they may receive Community Notes. Then those posts may be demonetized and people are more likely to delete those posts, so it's been an effective tool in that regard.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Villemure.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Mr. Green, you have six minutes.

Just to try to be fair to everyone on time, I have to keep tight timelines here. We've gone over on a couple of rounds of questioning, so I'm going to keep it tight.

Go ahead, Mr. Green, for six minutes.