Public Safety Committee on March 3rd, 2022

[Juan Benitez]

I also want to take this opportunity to appreciate the fact that some of the committee members have acknowledged what good happens on the GoFundMe platform. We are very proud and humbled by that and appreciate our opportunity to help communities in need.

In this case—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

That's a happy note on which to end your time.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much. Sometimes the world works as it's supposed to.

Mr. MacGregor, you have a minute and a half. Good luck.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll turn to Ms. Carroll and Stripe.

Just help me walk through the timeline here, because GoFundMe announced that it was suspending the campaign on February 4, and that was after a well-publicized report from the Ottawa Police Service. On February 6, the City of Ottawa declared a local state of emergency, and by February 10, GiveSendGo had raised $8.4 million. That's four days after a local state of emergency, when there were widespread police reports that things were going south in Ottawa, and it took a court order from the Government of Ontario to essentially freeze those millions of dollars.

I think we all have a question here. How did Stripe allow this to go so far? Were you not aware of what was happening with these funds? Why did your internal mechanisms fail to address this?

[Katherine M. Carroll]

We were monitoring the situation in Ottawa and across Canada very carefully, working together with our platform customers, which included both GoFundMe and GiveSendGo. We were working very closely with GoFundMe, for example, on the course of action they articulated and their decision to pause those accounts and to execute on those refunds.

We were also watching, of course, all of the declarations by local authorities and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have 10 seconds, please.

[Katherine M. Carroll]

—the news about what was going on in Ottawa to see whether it rose to a level of promotion of violence for the campaigns. Our determination at that time was that it had not crossed that boundary.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you.

[Katherine M. Carroll]

We did, of course—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

We're down to our last two interventions. Do we have agreement that we can do three minutes each for these last two? Will that work?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Yes, Mr. Chiang, is three minutes okay with you?

Okay, let's go.

Mr. Shipley, the floor is yours.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

My questions will be mainly for Mr. Benitez.

Mr. Benitez, your statement raised some concerns for me over some of the issues that had taken place. I have your notes right here, and you mentioned that from February 2 through February 4, “We heard from local authorities.” Could you tell me exactly who you mean by local authorities in this paragraph, this statement?

[Kim Wilford]

Mr. Chair, in response, what we would say is that they were Mayor Watson and interim Police Chief Bell.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you.

I was here for those three weeks, as were most of my colleagues, albeit some could have been connecting remotely. That said, the reason I bring it up is that it's disconcerting to see in the very next sentence it mentions that “they”—again I'll use the word “they”, but we know now who “they” are—“shared reports of violence and threatening behaviour”.

Earlier, Ms. Wilford, you mentioned that there was “damage and destruction” happening. I'd like to know more about those reports. I ask this, Mr. Chair, because I'd like to know why.... We have asked the Ottawa police to attend and the OPP. Neither one of those groups has attended yet. Seeing this testimony today, I would like to point out that while of this was going on, we and our employees were all given briefings about attending work and walking to work, and nowhere did I see in any of the reports shared with us that there was violence, threatening behaviour and damage and destruction happening. Quite frankly, I encouraged—not encouraged, but I allowed my staff to still show up for work every day. I walked to work every day, as did most of my colleagues. We were given briefings on how to walk to work and how to walk into work.

This is a little disconcerting, so perhaps I could hear a little bit more on these shared reports.

I'd also like to perhaps hear, as a point of order from the chair or the clerk, as to why they have not attended yet and if they will be attending.

[Kim Wilford]

Mr. Chair, in response, what I would say is that I was not specifically part of the conversations with local law enforcement. I did speak to the mayor myself. We did hear reports of harassment, violence and damage occurring. Based on this credible information, we made informed decisions that this campaign no longer complied with our terms of service and we removed it from the platform.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Again, I'm not questioning what you're hearing. I wasn't in favour of the blockades. I believe they needed to move. Obviously, they were causing concern to residents and businesses down here, and I was always of the belief that they needed to move on. However, hearing about the violence specifically—and that word is very serious—and again when I was encouraging my staff....

Perhaps, on a point of order, we could hear from the clerk as to when we will be hearing from the Ottawa police and why they haven't shown up yet when specifically our motion asked them to be here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Mr. Shipley, I can answer that.

They were invited and they came back to us and said that because of the intensity of their operations at the moment, they could not appear now. That was the answer given to us.

Clerk, is that correct? Yes.

This is the last slot we have now. Mr. Chiang, you have three minutes. The floor is yours.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for appearing today and for all of the work you do.

My question is directed to Stripe. Given the weapons present at the crossing in Alberta and given the state of emergency we had happening here locally in Ottawa, what tools do you use to assess whether a transaction is suspicious and might be linked to violent extremism? How come you're not aware, with all the media reports going around about these occurrences in Canada, that you would still process these transactions?

[Katherine M. Carroll]

Maybe my colleague can speak to some of the compliance controls, but I would just note at the outset that, of course, once the Emergencies Act was invoked and restrictions were put in place by the government and when the court in Ontario imposed certain restrictions on activities, we were complying with those restrictions at the time.

Gerry, maybe you can speak to some of the other specific compliance controls.

[Gerald Tsai, Head of Compliance, Stripe]

Thank you for the question.

We do have a comprehensive compliance program, including a review of the fundraising platforms and the fundraisers. We collect information about them and monitor transactions coming into those programs and take a look for anti-money laundering type of behaviour, terrorism behaviour, as well as monitoring for sanctions.

In this situation, as my colleague has mentioned, we were also very carefully monitoring news reports about the situation. Stripe chose to suspend the accounts or comply with the order to suspend the accounts when the Ontario Superior Court issued its restraint order.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you so much for that.

What about crowdfunding platform clients? What risk assessment tools do you use in determining whether to provide services to a crowdfunding platform in light of what's going on?

[Gerald Tsai]

If the question is about the fundraisers themselves that are on the crowdfunding platform, we do carefully look at the fundraisers. We collect information about them and compare that to a variety of government lists and lists we get from our banking and other partners to identify parties that have been sanctioned, parties that have been placed there for fraud and other purposes.

In this case, we did not identify anyone that was on those lists at the time the fundraisers were set up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

That concludes this round and this first panel. I thank those who came to be witnesses. This is not particularly comfortable. In many cases, it's unprecedented. This is certainly not something you do every day.

On behalf of members of the committee, thank you for spending the last hour with us. It was very useful.

Colleagues, we will have a very short suspension to do a sound check for the next panel. I will see you in five minutes.