Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 28th, 2024

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

What is the timeline that you have as your goal to respond? Do you have one internally where you have received a message and you have a timeline that you've put in place for you to follow up?

[Patrick McDonell]

We try to get to our files as quickly as possible. If there's a threat there, we'll get to that file the same day. Often within minutes, we get to the file. Sometimes, with the co-operation of the police force of jurisdiction and the RCMP, we can act on the file the same day.

I had an example of that in recent memory where the file, the threat, came in against a member of Parliament in the morning, and the person was in custody out in western Canada by bedtime.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

I can tell you that your team has been amazing when I've had to reach out, so I do commend you for that.

The other major question I think that a lot of people online have is—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Ms. Ferreri, you have about 20 seconds.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

—bots, differentiating between a real person and a bot. What are you doing about that?

[Patrick McDonell]

Well, that's my open source intelligence team, and I would have to come back to you with an answer, because that's getting into technical information that I don't quite understand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thanks very much, Ms. Ferreri.

Next we have Ms. Damoff for five minutes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for the opportunity to sit in on the PROC committee today.

I want to follow up on the line of MP-to-MP harassment. When it was asked about social media, I think, Mr. Janse, that you said that's a separate matter or a separate subject, except my question is: What happens when an MP puts on social media something that directly drives harassment of an MP? They mention another MP specifically in social media, which in turn drives phone calls, emails, social media threats and misogyny.

I've been subject to that repeatedly, so I would argue that it's not a separate subject. I don't know how we deal with that, but I just wonder if you could talk about the impact of MPs' social media on other MPs.

[Eric Janse]

Thank you for that clarification, Ms. Damoff, and you're right. When I spoke about social media as separate, I meant members of the public, anonymous people, sending threats and the like, but you're right. Sometimes you have occasions where there are member-to-member exchanges on social media or what you're alluding to, a member does something that causes an impact on another member. It becomes a bit of a jurisdictional issue. For instance, the Speaker has jurisdiction in the chamber between interactions between members but has no jurisdiction over exchanges between members on social media.

Michel, do you want to add to that?

[Michel Bédard]

Currently, there are no House instruments that govern this relationship. The code of conduct on sexual harassment is limited to sexual harassment, as its title indicates, and the policy does not apply to member-to-member conduct.

Of course, if what is posted on social media reaches a certain threshold of criminal harassment, it will be subject to the Criminal Code. We haven't had any examples of such a matter.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I'm not talking about the actual MP and criminal harassment. I'm talking about an MP tweeting, for example, misinformation, often targeting another MP. The MP says Pam Damoff just compared every hunter in Canada to the Danforth shooter. What follows from that is the very large gun lobby sending much more than mean tweets, which is what they've called them. These have been threats and absolutely horrific messages to my office—phone calls from across Canada, which impact my staff.

What the MPs tweeted directly resulted in harassment of my staff and me. It's not the MP saying the criminal harassment. He's inciting other people to do so.

[Michel Bédard]

Currently, there is no House policy or code of conduct that will address such behaviour.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Do any other jurisdictions have policies with respect to MP-to-MP harassment?

[Carolyne Evangelidis]

Yes, there are nine around Canada that do. Internationally, as well, both the U.K. and Australia have MP-to-MP—

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Would you be able to share those policies with us?

[Carolyne Evangelidis]

Absolutely.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

I want to talk a bit about our staff, which Ms. Mathyssen brought up.

While there are resources available to them, I often hear people say to me, “Well, you don't have to look at your social media.” The problem is that somebody is looking at it. My office set up a whole subfolder in our inbox called “misogyny”.

In 20 seconds, could you talk about how this is impacting staff?

[Carolyne Evangelidis]

Yes. We encourage you to let us know.

As mentioned earlier, there are mental supports for staff and we want to make sure they feel secure themselves. I would encourage it for us. Pat also shares with me whenever there are instances of tweets that could harm the staff.

We're proactively reaching out as well to make sure they're okay.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thanks very much.

Ms. Gaudreau, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Here we go. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

With everything we are hearing, I think we can conclude that it is important and urgent to have a proposal and to strike a subcommittee to study what exists elsewhere and what has worked well. Then we will be able to take advantage of the catching up that some legislatures have done.

When the Sergeant-at-Arms tells us that online harassment has increased by 700% to 800%, that tells me that efforts must be made at the same rate. However, we understand very well that, here, we are unable to keep up. So let's use this opportunity, for the sake of our democracy and public safety.

When I meet people in my riding, not only do they ask me if I will keep going for a while, but they also want to know how I feel when I am called out. Honestly, when I talk to my 20-year-old children, they tell me that they will never go into politics. I also meet colleagues, elected at other levels of government, who have resigned because they were victims of harassment within their own organization. It's time for a proper review.

We could talk for hours and hours, but constructively, I think we really need to strike a subcommittee, work in collaboration with the Board of Internal Economy, and, starting in September, be able to make proposals and have them adopted by the end of 2024.

[Carolyne Evangelidis]

We will take your recommendations into account and we are ready to help you.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Excellent.

That's all for me, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Gaudreau.

Ms. Mathyssen, we will roll over your 30 seconds from the previous round, so you're at three minutes.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm interested in talking more about the parliamentary privilege divide. That is so key, that freedom of speech is so incredibly important in terms of our democracy. It is one of the bases of this place, this institution, but there have been limits placed upon that in previous...with the sexual harassment policy, member to member, so where are the boundaries? Where does parliamentary privilege end? Can you talk about the principles of how we would even decide upon that, the fine lines and your worries about that as well?