Evidence of meeting #43 for Industry and Technology in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was meta.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Director, Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange
I would add to that.
It's about more than financial incentives not being there to align us. We currently have rules and regulations in place that prevent the sharing of meaningful information in a timely manner. If we cannot enable banks, telcos and social media platforms to share information in order to get ahead of the scams, we're just going to keep paying more money.
That's what we need out of this proposed strategy.
Liberal
Michael Ma Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
What seems to be stopping it? What particular legislation is preventing that?
Executive Director, Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange
Part of it is that a lot of organizations fear reprisal. Mr. Camfield mentioned this in his remarks. There is a need for safe harbour legislation so organizations can share information among themselves and not fear reprisal for doing so.
Part of it is due to rules around sharing—with whom, how, when, why and the length of time it takes for sharing that information. We have to wait days or weeks to share information, and the scammer moves on. These things are immediate. That's what we need to enable.
Liberal
Michael Ma Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
I believe you have all mentioned the timeliness of that. Do you feel it's adequate, at this point? Given that AI operates in the background, we should be able to detect it right away.
Mr. Shipley, I don't know if you....
Chief Executive Officer, Beauceron Security
I want to add this on timeliness. As we move to real-time payment systems that go beyond our traditional reconciliation, there's no getting the money back. It happens instantaneously.
My colleague's point about prevention is absolutely vital. We can't put the horse back in the barn once the fraud has already happened.
Executive Director, Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange
In terms of sharing information, if it is timely and meaningful, we will start to see patterns of activity very quickly. That's when we head towards prevention. We can stop the next person from being a victim.
Liberal
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette—Manawan, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My next questions are also for the representatives of Meta.
Your profits are astronomical, both globally and in Canada. Meta is a large corporation. It doesn't pay tax in Canada, thanks to its tax schemes and use of tax havens, among other things. You and the web giants [Technical difficulty—Editor] the Canadian government to suspend the digital services tax, which was supposed to make up for the tax you don't pay here. You refuse to allow news content to be shared because then you would have to pay royalties to the media. The media industry is in crisis, because all of the advertising is shifting to platforms like yours. Today, we're discussing fraud. You're making an effort to curb fraud, but it's still going on anyway.
Do you think Meta is a good corporate citizen?
Director, Public Policy, Meta Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
Listen, we pay all of our applicable taxes in Canada. That includes corporate income tax. It includes payroll taxes. We pay every tax levied by the Canadian government.
What we were not willing to sign up for was the framework outlined in the Online News Act, which would have required us to pay money to publishers for content they voluntarily placed on our platforms because they received a huge benefit. We estimated that it was about $300 million annually for sharing their content on our platforms. They benefited from distribution on our platforms. We think the value exchange flowed towards publishers, not towards Meta. We declined to pay publishers an additional sum for sharing material voluntarily on Facebook and Instagram.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette—Manawan, QC
I'm going to ask my question again.
Do you think Meta is a good corporate citizen?
Director, Public Policy, Meta Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
I'm sorry. I didn't hear that question.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette—Manawan, QC
Do you think Meta is a good corporate citizen in Canada?
Director, Public Policy, Meta Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
We really value our presence in Canada. We value our Canadian users. We value our interaction with the Canadian government on a range of issues.
Personally, as a Canadian citizen, I would love to see Canadian news content back on Facebook and Instagram. I used to follow Canadian news outlets on Facebook and get all my news from Facebook. I would love to see that content back on our platforms, and I'm hopeful we can reach a resolution there.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette—Manawan, QC
You say you pay taxes and follow the letter of the law, but the law allows American companies with subsidiaries in tax havens to use them to avoid paying taxes here.
How much income tax did you pay last year?
What percentage of your revenue did it represent?
Director, Public Policy, Meta Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
We have no tax shelters. We pay to Canada the taxes that are due to Canada, and we comply with all applicable Canadian tax authorities here. Whatever Canada imposes in terms of tax laws, Meta complies with.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette—Manawan, QC
I would humbly remind you that the digital services tax was implemented by the G20, at the behest of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, because, thanks to tax schemes, online platforms like yours aren't paying their fair share of taxes. I'm disappointed by what I just heard.
The U.K. Payment Systems Regulator released a report in late 2024 stating that, in 2023, your platforms in the U.K. were linked to 54% of push payment scam incidents.
Do you acknowledge that? Do you acknowledge that the same is true for all the countries where you have a presence, including Canada?
Do you acknowledge that that needs to be reduced? The majority of push payment scams are happening on your platforms.
Director, Public Policy, Meta Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
I can't speak to what's happening in the U.K. I can say that we pay all applicable taxes in Canada. I think when you're talking about the digital services tax, you're talking about an additional tax that the government wanted to levy on platforms like ours because they felt like we should be paying more tax than was outlined in Canadian law. That is a decision for the government, but we pay all taxes that are required in Canada currently.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette—Manawan, QC
I'm going to repeat my last question, the one about the U.K.
The report wasn't about the digital services tax. It was about scams. Their analysis found that 54% of push payment scam incidents were happening on Meta platforms. In other words, the majority of these scams were being carried out on your platforms.
Will you acknowledge that the same thing is happening here and that it's unacceptable?
Thank you very much.
Defence Lead, Security Policy, Meta Platforms Inc.
I would need to look at the very specifics of this to answer the specific nature of the question. Push payment fraud is a trend that we see pop up in scams, and we have to deal with that as well. It is against our policies, and we take it down when we find it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Thank you, Mr. Ste‑Marie.
Mr. Hoback, the floor is yours, sir, for five minutes.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Thank you, Chair.
I'd like to thank the committee for letting me participate today. I'm normally not a member of this committee, but it's really timely. Scams, online fraud and things like that are happening in my riding.
We just did a community event about online fraud. We worked with our local Affinity Credit Union, which brought in their banking specialists. We brought in the RCMP—or city police in this case. We limited the audience to 120 people. We could have had 300 people in that room talking about scams they faced either online or not online.
One big thing the police said is a limiting factor is getting information out to people of the existing scam that's going around the community at a point in time. For example, in Prince Albert, there was a scam going on where little Johnny, my grandson Johnny, got arrested because he did something. It was not bad, and it wasn't his fault, but someone had to pay his bail. They're knocking on the door and saying, “We're here to collect Johnny's bail money.” Seniors are very believing and trusting people, especially when somebody is dressed nicely and have a uniform. They're getting caught.
These 120 people were made aware of that scam, and they went to coffee row that week and talked about that scam with all their friends. Now everybody in Prince Albert knows the scam that was going around Prince Albert that week.
I'm curious. You talk about Meta taking down scams as you come across them. Do you do a proactive disclosure saying, “This is a scam” and put it out there so people can see what types of scams are out there?