Evidence of meeting #114 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was elections.
A recording is available from Parliament.
6:05 p.m.
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
I believe so, although I don't have the numbers in front of me.
6:05 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I assume Facebook notified those Canadians that they had been affected?
6:05 p.m.
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Yes, sir, we did.
6:05 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
What is the recourse for those Canadians who had their data mined in this way, which we can say was certainly improper and probably illegal?
6:05 p.m.
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
I'm not exactly sure what terms to use that would be accurate, but I think it is absolutely an abuse of our terms and conditions and our app policy. It is obviously under investigation in Canada by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
6:05 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I want to turn to Twitter for a moment in terms of buying ads. I have your form here. We printed it for my sake.
Does a human at Twitter see my application to buy an ad?
6:05 p.m.
Director of Public Policy, Twitter - United States and Canada, Twitter Inc.
It depends on how much money you spend. If you're a political advertiser, though, we have to have a human look at your form.
6:05 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
How much do you have to spend? What is the cut-off before a human puts eyeballs on an application to put an ad on your site?
6:05 p.m.
Director of Public Policy, Twitter - United States and Canada, Twitter Inc.
A little more is involved than I can say in a headline, but essentially, if you're a political advertiser, you're going to have to fill out the form and get certified, and that's a very high-touch process that involves human—
6:05 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Sorry. Could we just define what a political advertiser is? I understand political parties, but how do you define it?
6:05 p.m.
Director of Public Policy, Twitter - United States and Canada, Twitter Inc.
For a political ad, we're starting from the point—and it's not the end point where we would like to end up—that a political ad is advertising that mentions a candidate.
The industry is aiming for—and we're working with government experts, with academia, with partners, and also with MediaSmarts in Canada—how you identify and actually action an issue. Where is the line between a political issue ad versus a company that wants to talk about women's empowerment or gay rights issues? They're important issues, but they may not be political.
6:10 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Does this bill allow you to understand what a political ad is?
6:10 p.m.
Director of Public Policy, Twitter - United States and Canada, Twitter Inc.
I think there is a degree of clarity in the language about what is and what is not.
In my conversations with Elections Canada, in January, I asked them, because I understood that it has been a standing law in Canada that indirectly advocating on behalf of a candidate is a very hard standard to apply.
6:10 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
How many users a day, approximately, do you have in Canada?
6:10 p.m.
Director of Public Policy, Twitter - United States and Canada, Twitter Inc.
We have 330 million monthly users worldwide. We'd have to get back to you, sir, on the exact number of users.
6:10 p.m.
Director of Public Policy, Twitter - United States and Canada, Twitter Inc.
I would say it would be at least that, yes. Canada is a very large market for us.
6:10 p.m.
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Daily, I don't have the stat, but monthly, it's 23 million.
6:10 p.m.
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Correct. That's unique individuals.
6:10 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Both of those numbers far exceed what we call traditional media—newspapers, print—and they even exceed the numbers for television.
We have a series of rules that we've developed over time for those traditional media outlets when it comes to political advertising. Do you think the same rules should be applied to social media networks through this legislation as are applied to other news outlets, which both of you are? You're certainly platforms for news. More Canadians get news from Facebook and Twitter than they do from any other series of websites.
6:10 p.m.
Director of Public Policy, Twitter - United States and Canada, Twitter Inc.
Speaking on behalf of Twitter, we do embrace the idea that our users should know who is paying for the advertising, especially when it comes in the political context.
In the conversations we've had, and in how we are communicating with governments around the world, we recognize that the online environment is different and that, for instance, Twitter is a character-limited platform. It used to be that we had 140 characters. Just recently it was bumped up to 280. Your standard political disclosure language is hard to squeeze in there.
The other complications are often very short videos.
6:10 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Here is my challenge. If anyone wants to see what hate speech looks like, I'd invite them to Jagmeet Singh's Twitter feed. Whenever he posts, you can just follow on down and give it about six or seven posts, and that's true for many diversity-seeking politicians in Canada.
You would never see that in the pages of The Globe and Mail or The New York Times in response to a story about a public figure, yet I can go on Facebook, or I can go on your site, and I just wonder why there is not equivalency in terms of the discourse and dialogue.
You guys have such powerful platforms. All of us around this table use them. We enjoy the exchange we can have with constituents, which is different from anything we've ever seen before. But the sheer volume of ads and conversations that are going through your sites on which there are no human eyes placed whatsoever....
We can narrowly define political ads if you want, but I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about the stuff Chris talked about. I'm talking about somebody posting false information about where you vote and can't vote, and just straight out lies, not even necessarily to push against one candidate, but just to disrupt people's faith in the process of democracy. That exists on both of your platforms. Up until this point, and I'd say up until the Cambridge Analytica scandal, most of your users were unaware of how dangerous this stuff is in the wrong hands.
I'm not sure that either company, and the many companies you own.... I'm looking at the size, particularly of Facebook with 2.1 billion monthly active users, and 1.5 billion daily mobile users. Messenger has 1.2 billion users. WhatsApp has 1.1. billion. Instagram has 700 million more.
CNN reports that you have 83 million fake profiles on Facebook right now, and I don't know if you even have the ability to do what we're asking under this legislation, and I think we actually need to do more than what we're asking under this legislation.
Again, should the rules apply that apply right now to current media in Canada, that we need to know the source of the ad and whether it was foreign or domestic, and should all of those ads be attainable somewhere for Canadians to put their eyes on?
I'll start with Twitter and then Facebook.
6:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Blake Richards
I'll have to ask that the answers be extremely brief because we are over time. You'll have to keep it very brief.