Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This is the francophone part of the meeting. I suggest you practise your French.
Mr. Chair, I would like to thank the interpreters, who are here in person.
I can attest to the fact that I'm getting excellent interpretation. I thank them very much. I know it's not always easy when you don't have the text in front of you. I sincerely thank them. I can do that because I see them. I see their smiles and they see my expression. They will be able to interpret my remarks correctly.
Mr. Gunn, I agree with you that the environment our young people find themselves in lacks humanity. In addition, we don't instill critical thinking skills in our children to help them become good citizens. We raise children who believe everything they read. We know very well that their sources of information are limited to social media. However, at present, social media, by the way it is built, always suggests what we want to hear. It doesn't develop critical thinking and nuance in our children.
We see that even in adults today. As a member of Parliament, I get a lot of emails from people who tell me that they have read something, so it must be true. Critical thinking is disappearing, as is societal acceptance of nuance. That leads people to think that anyone who doesn't agree with them is against them.
It's hard today to have a healthy debate and formulate arguments for or against something. I find that social media is a cancer on our society, quite frankly, because it doesn't train humans in a way that develops their critical thinking skills.
I think mock election programs in schools were one tool. However, I think we need to go further in educating our children to help them develop a way to be good citizens while being very aware of the societal issues we face and the environment in which we live.
I agree with you 100%. Cities, provinces and the federal government must make an effort to fully understand that there are risks to limiting our children's ability to look at others with kindness. Being for or against means judging rather than accepting nuance. That, to me, is very concerning.
I agree with you, Mr. Bridgman, that there are things we can do at the federal level and that we're lagging behind when it comes to social media. It's not right, for example, for social media companies to decide to remove our local weeklies from their newsfeeds. Our local weeklies help us stay informed about what is happening locally, in our municipalities and in our communities.
That connection to our community has been severed by the fact that Meta, for example, refuses to share news. We tried to do something. I really admired Ms. Freeland for taking on Meta and telling it that it had to pay a levy so that we could better support and inform our communities. Now, the new government has decided to renege on that commitment to get Meta to pay its share.
What more could be done? I think Europe is much more forward thinking than we are in framing the power that the web giants have.
What can the state do, within its limits?