Thank you so much for the question.
I can speak to the Russian state propaganda outlets. I don't want to call them media, because they aren't.
As Marcus said a few minutes ago, in the vast majority of democratic countries both in Europe and North America, these Kremlin propaganda outlets were taken off the air shortly after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In my view, that was way too late, because for years and years, these propaganda mouthpieces poisoned the minds of a lot of people in the free world, but I guess it's better late than never.
I want to make a point that these dictatorships and these propagandists for dictatorships very much like to engage in these hypocritical “arguments” about how this is against democracy and against freedom of speech: “Why are you denying us?” The same people who have destroyed any basic tenets of democracy in their own country, Russia, are trying to hide behind these tenets when they want to continue having access to audiences in the free world.
I want to remind members of this committee that it is established international case law that propagandists act as accomplices to crimes, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, that are being committed by the actual dictatorships. As members of this committee will know, Nazi propagandists were tried and sentenced at Nuremberg. As members of this committee also know, the leadership of the so-called radio Mille Collines was tried and sentenced for the Rwanda genocide by the international tribunal.
These people probably didn't kill anybody with their own hands, but you can kill with words as well. You can create an atmosphere in which thousands and thousands of people are being killed. I think it is way overdue, but absolutely right, that democratic countries like Canada shield themselves from the poisonous propaganda spewed by these totalitarian regimes, be they in Moscow, in Beijing, in Tehran or wherever else.