A baseline requirement for our democratic institutions to, I increasingly believe, reimagine what their functions are in our democratic society—not to be too bleak about it—requires them to understand the ecosystem in which they operate. They're doing so in a very limited way right now.
There are primarily research, journalistic and civil society organizations across the country trying very hard to understand a complex ecosystem, when they have limited resources and capacities. The resources are limited because Canada does not have the funding structure for this kind of work that exists in other countries, and operations are limited because the data needed to understand this ecosystem is largely controlled and hidden from view by the companies that have it.
We on the outside are relegated to a set of unsanctioned research methods, which are regularly being disrupted by companies that do not want us studying this ecosystem, and we have very limited capacity. This is not the baseline status we want if it's even directionally true that our journalistic, legal, university and government institutions are about to go through a fairly rapid transformation, which I personally believe they are.
Of all the things that need to happen to improve our civic resilience, and there are many.... I know this committee has heard from a wide range of amazing people working in this space and doing incredible things, but I do not know how we operate unless we have a baseline understanding of the environment in which Canadians receive information, while ensuring there's a baseline reliability in it. To me, this is a precondition for everything else, and I don't think we're doing that sufficiently right now.