Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all our witnesses for being here tonight. It is such an honour to hear from you. I know people have said this before this evening, but I recognize [Technical difficulty--Editor] to do the work that you do. Your bravery and your courageous commitment to truth and to journalism is recognized certainly by this committee.
I want to start with Ms. Ressa.
I've read the speech that you gave in October when you accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. It was incredibly moving, and very chilling, of course, in parts as well.
I want to quote from it. You put in your comments that:
Highly profitable micro-targeting operations are engineered to structurally undermine human will—a behaviour modification system in which we are Pavlov’s dogs....
You went on to say:
These destructive corporations have siphoned money away from news groups and now pose a foundational threat to markets and elections.
It's obviously extremely terrifying and something that I think we can all recognize is not restricted to the Philippines. It is not restricted to any one democracy or non-democracy in the world. We are all implicated by this and this impacts all of us.
You spoke today in your comments about the need for legislation, and I know it is hopefully something that will be coming forward. The government has brought forward legislation in this country and there is a push-back that we see in terms of attacks on human rights. Many members of the opposition have stood in the House and said that these laws that would control social media are wrong.
How do you get around that? How do you counter that argument so that we actually can have legislation in place that holds social media to account?