Public Safety Committee on March 3rd, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You'll have to wrap up, please. You have five seconds.

[Juan Benitez]

—and the....

I'll stop there.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I would like to move to Mr. Noormohamed.

Sir, you have a six-minute slot. The floor is yours.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Benitez. I very much appreciate your comments.

You've noted on a couple of occasions that your platform does not allow for campaigns that do anything to fund hate and so on and so forth, as per your terms of service. You said, “content that reflects or promotes behavior...to be an abuse of power or in support of hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorism, or intolerance of any kind relating to race, ethnicity, national origin”, etc.

You also noted that the fundraiser was created on January 14 and that on the 27th you processed a withdrawal of $1 million to the organizers. A lot of information that was in the public domain indicated that the organizers had ties to the yellow vest movement and the anti-Muslim Clarion Project, and had already by this point made substantial comments on the public record that would be cause for alarm, as per your own terms of service.

Knowing that this was already in the public domain, was it that your systems failed such that you allowed that million-dollar withdrawal to be made, was it the systems were not able to catch what happened, or was it that you did not deem that behaviour as being one of the many categories you articulated?

[Kim Wilford, General Counsel, GoFundMe]

Thank you for that question. If you don't mind, I'll provide the answer to this.

Mr. Chair, we would say in response that when the fundraiser was created on January 14, it complied with our terms of service. There was nothing in the diligence we did on the campaign organizer that suggested there were any issues. The campaign caught our attention because of the donation velocity. At that point, on the 15th, we reached out to the campaign organizer and started working with her to understand the distribution of those funds. We received a detailed letter of attestation from her that outlined a plan for how she would distribute any funds to truckers involved in the convoy. It also had her stating that registered charities chosen by her and verified by GoFundMe would receive any leftover amounts. We—

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Sorry. You said that you go through a diligence process. Surely your diligence involves doing some background research on the person who is the recipient of something like $1 million.

[Kim Wilford]

Mr. Chair, we did diligence on the campaign organizer when the campaign started. Our discussions with her at that time were constructive. As the situation changed, we reached out and received credible, consistent information from members of law enforcement and members of the mayor's office. We heard that there were issues around violence, harassment and damage.

At that point, we reassessed the campaign. We removed it from our platform on February 4 and refunded all the donors all amounts, plus transaction fees and any tips that we had received.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

I appreciate what you did do at that point. I guess my question for you is this: Had you known that the organizer had been previously linked to organizations or movements that had promoted “hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination...intolerance of any kind related to race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation”, etc., would you have allowed that person to set up a GoFundMe campaign?

[Kim Wilford]

If at the time of setting up the campaign, it had anything to do with the promotion of hate, violence, discrimination, harassment, etc., it would have been a violation of our terms of service and we would not have allowed it to continue.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

But that's not what I'm asking you. You said you do a diligence process on the individuals involved. If the individual had been involved in those activities prior to this, would they be allowed to set up a fundraiser on your platform?

[Juan Benitez]

Mr. Chair, if I may, I'd like to remind the committee that this group of fundraisers, and this fundraiser as a whole, was—and I believe we can all agree—an unprecedented event, in terms of the scale in which it evolved, the pace at which it evolved, the centralized nature of it and the complexity of the participants who were involved in the fundraiser.

When the fundraiser was created on our platform, as Ms. Wilford said, we were focused on KYC and understanding the fundraiser organizer herself—that individual. Over time, we began doing more extensive analyses on additional parties. It is sometimes not necessarily within our purview everything that anyone has ever commented on in social media and in their lives. Based on the information accessible to us at that time, in that portion of January, the fundraiser was within our terms of service. As a result, we deemed it—based on the information that Ms. Wilford also outlined—sufficient to be able to disburse those funds.

Of course, subsequent to that, things immediately and very rapidly changed. Communication changed. Information on the facts changed. The convoy itself changed. We responded to those changes, and we believe that was the appropriate action.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

What would you do differently now, knowing that your diligence failed to pick up on very clear, questionable, hateful comments, and other types of comments by one of the organizers of the fundraiser? Your platform allowed these individuals to set up these campaigns. If you were to look back now and think about what you might do differently, what would you change in your diligence process to prevent this from occurring in the future?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Sorry, you have just 15 seconds.

[Kim Wilford]

I would say that we're proud of how we handled this campaign. We believe all the actions we took were responsible and timely, and we made informed decisions, removing the campaign when it violated our terms of service.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I'll now turn to Ms. Michaud.

Ms. Michaud, you have a six-minute slot.

The floor is yours when you want to grab it.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for making the time to answer our questions. The problem is that we don't have answers to a good many questions.

Mr. Benitez, you just said it, yourself: this was an unprecedented fundraiser. It gives rise to a host of questions. Is there a legal void on the regulatory side? I'm referring to the connection between online crowdfunding campaigns and the rise of extremism.

That's what I want to get at with my questions. Crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe don't appear to be subject to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. That means you don't have to report suspicious transactions to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC.

Had you been subject to the act, would it not have been possible to raise a red flag as soon as concerns about the campaign began emerging?

You said you started taking a closer look at the campaign on day two given how much money had been raised in such a short period of time. Do you think it would be a good idea to use existing legislation to better oversee this type of funding?

[Juan Benitez]

I believe that question is directed to GoFundMe, so I will address it. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, we endeavour to have a posture at GoFundMe and processes, procedures and tools that we believe surpass the regulatory requirements we are under. Our decisioning on our platform is guided by the terms of service we have that documents what is permissible and what is not permissible on our platform. Our policies and procedures are designed to enforce these terms of service and are guided by them.

I would also remind the committee of what I mentioned in my opening remarks. We believe that there are multiple layers of framework here, and compliance. There are the investments that GoFundMe makes with our over 80 employees. Over 20% of our workforce is dedicated to policy monitoring, enforcement, financial crimes prevention, sanctions screening, etc. Then, of course, we work in partnership with our payment processing partners and their related obligations. Banks and card networks are ultimately involved in the final transactions. Across these three layers, there is significant participation and oversight by the different parties.

I'll stop there.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

My question is how do we draw the line. At what point do we draw the line to discontinue a fundraiser that is going awry? How do we determine that cause X is worthy, but that cause Y is less so?

Fundraising campaigns and crowdfunding platforms like yours have helped do a lot of good. We've seen a community rally together to help a family who lost their home in a fire, raising a significant amount of money. That's a good thing. At the outset, fundraising for a protest seems like a well-intentioned activity. If a Canadian feels strongly about a cause and chooses to protest, that's a good thing.

At what point do you raise the red flag when a protest that seemed worthy at the start quickly turns into an unlawful occupation linked to extremism? What tools do you have to say that, at this point, it's necessary to put an end to a fundraiser? What basis do you use to make that decision?

[Kim Wilford]

In response, I would say that GoFundMe has a very simple mission of helping people to help each other. We are proud of the fact that people come together on our platform to do good for one another, to help people meet their needs and realize their dreams. The platform helps people come together around the globe in situations like food insecurity, COVID, or even with the Ukraine tragedy right now. It's about people coming to help one another.

Campaigns come to our attention in a variety of ways. In this case, again, this campaign was within our terms of service when it was formed. It was the donation velocity that brought it to our attention and discussions were held with campaign organizers to ensure that we would have a safe distribution of funds in accordance with the campaign content that kept it on our radar.

Our teams were meeting daily and many times during the day to assess the rapidly changing facts and circumstances of this campaign. It was upon receipt of the real time, credible, and very consistent information that we were getting from members of law enforcement, members of the local government, and talking to individuals on the ground that we understood that the campaign had now crossed the line. It had now started to be something that was a violation of our terms of service.

Again, to be clear, we do not allow campaigns on our platform that promote any form of hate, violence, harassment, discrimination of any kind or any form of intolerance.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

I'm almost out of time, so I'm going to ask a more technical question, for the committee's benefit.

You said that, at a certain point, you had released $1 million, even though the campaign had likely raised more than that. How does that work? Have all the funds already been made available to the campaign organizer? How is it that you had the power to decide how much you were going to release to organizers?

[Kim Wilford]

We take our responsibility as an open platform very seriously. In this particular case, there was a lot of money raised and we were concerned about her ability to distribute to the number of individuals involved and then to identify registered charities that would be verified by us to be in good standing with the local charitable registries.

We were concerned that she could actually fulfill that promise that she had made in the campaign content. We were working with her, distributing an initial amount, initiating that $1 million through our payment processing partners on January 27, which she could then distribute to individuals in accordance with the letter of attestation she had signed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I now invite Mr. MacGregor to take the floor, for six minutes.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of our witnesses for being with us today, and helping to guide our committee through this issue.

My first question is for GoFundMe.

Was GoFundMe aware of the memorandum of understanding that was widely publicized in January?

Our country just went through a democratic election in September, but this memorandum of understanding was designed to form a partnership between leaders of the convoy protest and our unelected Governor General and unelected Senate, completely bypassing the House of Commons.

Was GoFundMe aware of the memorandum of understanding?

[Kim Wilford]

GoFundMe was not aware of this memorandum of understanding. We are an open non-partisan platform. All the campaigns on our platform must comply with our very clear terms of service. This campaign, when it was created, and our original diligence with the organizer, didn't reveal that there were any issues.