Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, committee, for the invitation. I also am being welcomed back. I was here in November for the foreign interference study. At that time, I talked about resilience and about information integrity, so I'm happy there's now a dedicated study looking specifically at that. I'm also happy to share my thoughts and research and understanding with the committee.
I direct the Media Ecosystem Observatory, Canada's largest entity that monitors the information space and the way information emerges, is digested and comes to shape the attitudes and behaviours of Canadians. For many years now, I and others in the information integrity space have been sounding the alarm. Most recently, this was sounded by Commissioner Hogue during the commission.
I want to talk a bit today about three things that I think folks have a sense of but I think really deserve attention in this study.
First, at this moment in Canada, we are operating in an information environment that is comparatively unregulated relative to many of our peer countries. We are operating in a situation where the platforms are not providing data access or base levels of accountability and visibility into what's going on. I have numerous examples I can speak to, moments where parliamentarians like you have asked platforms to provide even just a basic standard, a basic decent level of standard, of transparency around an information operation and around inauthentic activity, and have been met with silence.
Generally, both social and AI platforms are at a moment where they have been able to capture large parts of the market. They have been able to be very effective and serve the interests of Canadian democracy in some ways but also completely disregard others. While there have been several fits and starts in terms of legislative approaches and governance approaches, I really think we're at a moment where, when we look at other countries, we look at other jurisdictions and we look particularly at our European partners, we are lagging far behind. The time to act is far past. That absolutely needs to happen.
The second thing I want to talk about is the way in which AI will be restructuring the information environment. There is considerable change already occurring. About a month ago, we released a study looking at the way in which AI agents are ingesting and repackaging Canadian journalism. Increasingly, that is the way Canadians will be getting and receiving information about their communities and about what's going on in the world around them. There is some responsible, interesting and innovative behaviour in that space, but they are doing so in a way that is in their interest and not necessarily in the democratic interest. We're certainly keeping a very close eye and monitoring that. In that study in particular, I want to highlight that we identified some very clear exploitative behaviours, particularly vis-à-vis the French-language community in Canada and the underserving and under-referencing of French-language journalism.
The third thing I want to say is that we are in a moment when there will be massive change and a massive acceleration of change. I think we're all tired of change. We're all tired of how fast the information environment has been shifting over the last decade or two. Buckle up, because it's going to keep going. Very likely we're moving from a point where maybe many of your experiences with AI are through a chatbot type of interface. That's certainly the way many Canadians are now using it. We are very quickly moving into an agentic space, where individuals are tasking AI agents with seeking information and providing them with information. They are displaying very high levels of trust.
This is an opportunity. This is an exciting moment. We should think about how that can support our democracy, how that can support civic resilience, and how that can support information integrity, but there are also some dangers. This is also a fraught space. It will be yet another radical restructuring of our society and yet another radical restructuring of our information environment at a time when we are still playing catch-up.
I have two clear recommendations.
First, I think there has been a sense for a while in Canada that the information environment cannot be regulated and cannot be governed, for a variety of reasons. We need to disabuse ourselves of this notion. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit around data transparency, attribution, researcher access and basic levels of accountability. There's also some medium-hanging fruit if we talk about online harms. This is possible. This is urgent. This absolutely needs to happen.
The second is around civic resilience infrastructure, particularly in the information environment but also thinking a little more broadly. The major program in the space of the digital citizen initiative is sunsetting. There are other programs that are sunsetting at the moment, coming out of Heritage and other spaces. This is an opportunity to think about what we want to invest. I was heartened to see there's this $31.5-million investment in improved capability to protect our information environment from foreign adversaries, but the civic resilience side is lagging behind, and that absolutely needs to be a priority over the next year.
The last thing I'll say, if the chair will permit it, is that we have two very important moments. The Quebec election is coming up. The Alberta referendum is likely to occur at the end of the year. These are critical moments for our democracy. Information integrity is absolutely critical to those being successful democratic exercises.