Public Safety Committee on Oct. 24th, 2024

[Nina Jankowicz]

I am not an expert on Canadian law, but I did take a look in preparation for the testimony to see what laws on influencers you had.

As I understand it, there are regulations governing what influencers do when they are doing product placement in the Competition Act.

In the Elections Act, as I understand it, folks are only required to disclose if they've been paid for content if it's coming from a political actor themselves. With something like Tenet Media, when you might want a disclosure asking where the money is coming from and to also encourage the influencers themselves to know their customer and who they're doing the bidding on behalf of—which the Americans, in the case of Tenet Media, did not do—essentially, there's a loophole there. It's just a media company, and they're paying them to create media, but they're creating political content.

What I would argue is that you might need to close that loophole by encouraging influencers who are creating political content to also have those sorts of disclosures if they're being paid by someone, and encouraging that “know your customer” behaviour that so many banks engage in.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Do you think social media companies will comply if the regulations are put on them?

[Nina Jankowicz]

They have done self-regulation when it comes to political advertising in the United States, but that's not flawless and, frankly, a lot of stuff falls through the cracks.

I actually think this should be on the influencers themselves. Just like when you're placing a political advertisement on TV, on radio or in print and you're required to say who paid for that political ad, the same should be true for content that's created and is seemingly authentic, individual-creator content being posted on social media.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Thank you.

I'll pass it on to Ms. O'Connell.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you all for being here. Your testimony has been really helpful, and we will not have enough time.

Following up on this, Ms. Jankowicz, part of the Tenet disinformation influencer indictment is that one of the things being claimed is that these so-called influencers didn't know they were being paid by Russia. I find that hard to believe. There should be some responsibility on that individual to know who's paying them if they have any integrity.

In terms of your specific recommendations around closing loopholes, how do we help manage that if, even if they disclose it's a political ad or it's being paid for, as you said in your testimony earlier, there was an intermediary for those payments? Do you have any advice on how we should address that?

[Nina Jankowicz]

There were two failings in our system. One was that we don't require influencers, just as you don't, to disclose when they're being paid to do political content. Also, the Foreign Agents Registration Act is extremely poorly enforced in the United States. The two individuals—Canadians, as it were—who were in charge of Tenet Media also did not disclose their connection, even though they knew they were working for the Russians. There are two problems there.

I have mixed feelings that we don't have time to get into about foreign agents-related legislation and whether it works or not, but here, again, encouraging them to know their customer would have at least said to these influencers, “Okay, you've been presented this very suspicious-looking CV from a man named Edward Gregorian, who has no online footprint. Perhaps you should do a little bit more digging.”

If it is incumbent on them to report that sort of thing, I think it's possible. These aren't dumb individuals; their spidey sense would have gone off and they should have said, “Perhaps I shouldn't take this $100,000 per YouTube video, because this guy doesn't seem totally legit.” That's the behaviour you want to encourage, and putting that on each individual influencer hopefully will encourage some more of that transparency.

You could also, as I understand it, look at expanding your foreign agents registration and, importantly, as we do not do this in the United States, actually make sure that those laws are enforced.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you.

If any of you have something you weren't able to say in your testimony, please submit it, because I have found everything that all three of you have presented really helpful.

In terms of building trust, if I have a little bit more time, people accuse government of censorship, etc. Would it be helpful for online content, if it's not just left up to the social media platforms themselves, to have civil society or a third party that perhaps governments can help support?

I don't know; I'm throwing it out there for legitimate questioning to help educate or dispel some myths. Would that be helpful in building some of that trust amongst the public?

[Nina Jankowicz]

I'll jump in, but I know Mr. Ling probably has some feelings on this as well.

I think empowering civil society to do things like information literacy building and trust building in their own communities is important, but not on behalf of the government. That will be viewed as tainted in some way.

Those information literacy programs are very important. In every country I've studied that has much more experience dealing with Russian disinformation than any country in the west, information literacy and resiliency are huge parts of the response. This is not a panacea, but it needs to be invested in now.

I know Canada has been investing in these things. I encourage you to continue doing that.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you.

Is there time for Mr. Ling's response?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Give a brief answer, sir.

[Justin Ling]

I'll be incredibly brief.

Creating hall monitors—maybe that's too cute—for information on social media probably won't deliver the results you want, and it will become a pariah for political actors, partisans and malign foreign actors to seize on.

As Ms. Jankowicz pointed out very well, you have to go after the technological amplification that helps distort the conversation. Botnets, for example, and malign and distorting algorithms are great conversation points and great places to start. Start creating consequences for platforms that don't clean up their act. That is going to be infinitely more effective in creating healthy domestic conversations that won't get polluted by money from the outside.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

Ms. Michaud, you have two minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Alexander, I want to go back to what you were saying to Mr. Motz earlier. He wanted to know whether Russia was continuing to interfere in Canada, because, in a way, it knows that nothing will be done. You were saying that maybe we should start by expelling diplomats and that this is the only language Russia understands.

I find that interesting, because when we are in international forums, parliamentary associations, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, for example, at every meeting, we wonder whether we are going to allow Russia and Belarus to be present at those meetings, because they are members of the OSCE.

Some countries are saying that we need to keep diplomacy alive. If there is no dialogue, we'll never agree, we'll never be able to find a solution together. Other countries are saying that, no, they shouldn't be at the table, because all they're doing is using this platform to spread disinformation.

You seem to be leaning towards the hard line, but I'd like you to tell us more about what should be done to make Canada look a little more robust and to show that we don't accept interference in our democratic institutions.

[Chris Alexander]

I think we need to be consistent on that. Russian diplomats, often spies, were expelled following the 2014 invasion, and even later. Even this government did that.

Why not do it after 2022, while Russia is at war with a European country, and not a small country? Ukraine is the largest country in Europe with a special relationship with Canada. I find it hard to understand why this isn't being done, especially since the majority of these so-called diplomats in Canada, in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal, are not diplomats interested in diplomacy.

They are officers of the various Russian intelligence agencies that have expanded under Vladimir Putin. These are people who consider themselves disinformation warriors. I think our services, as well as the U.S. services, don't necessarily understand that. I think they don't understand the extent to which Russia has mobilized its entire government to influence our debates through various information strategies. They don't necessarily use the old KGB or their foreign intelligence services. This is done by the Kremlin, often using private sector companies.

We understand what it is about. They are ambassadors, and they are former diplomats who now act as information warriors. We need action. Mr. Ling is right to suggest that we call it what it is. If it is interference, it must be acknowledged and stated publicly. What Russia is looking for in Canada and in other countries isn't diplomacy; it's the large-scale conventional war in Ukraine and the information war here.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm sorry, but I have to stop you there.

We go now to Mr. Julian for two and a half minutes, please.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to go back to you, Ms. Jankowicz, to answer the same question I asked Mr. Ling around approaches like the Psychological Defence Agency in Sweden and having a digital resilience strategy.

I also wanted to ask two additional questions.

One is this: To what extent does the manipulation of algorithms help to reinforce disinformation?

We have seen, with Elon Musk on X, algorithms that deliberately force people to read certain content, like pro-Trump content and his own tweets, and that suppress other content.

My final question is around the massive subsidy that the Canadian government provides to social media companies like Meta, Twitter and Google. We spend over a billion dollars a year in indirect subsidies.

Do you feel that it would be more appropriate for the government to demand more of these social media platforms when we're subsidizing them so extensively?

[Nina Jankowicz]

Absolutely. Thank you for these questions.

I am a big proponent of information literacy and building societal resilience. I think the Swedes, Finns, Estonians and Ukrainians have learned a ton about this in the past couple of years. They are all more resilient societies than any of our western societies because they are investing in teaching people how to navigate today's information environment. I have a lot of writing on this that I would be very happy to share with all of you. I'll do that after today's session.

In terms of algorithmic amplification, absolutely it is surfacing more disinformation. The more enraging that something is online, the more engaging it likely is. This is how the platforms make their money and keep us scrolling, viewing ads and coming back to their platforms time and time again. It's because of this emotional manipulation, and the algorithms are based on that. Having more transparency around the algorithms would build our ability to inoculate ourselves against it.

As for subsidies, absolutely, 100%, the government should not be subsidizing these multi-billion-dollar corporations. Instead, I am in favour of fining the platforms, especially if they are seen to have illegal or hateful content on them. Some schemes like this exist already in places like the United Kingdom with its Online Safety Act.

It has been a pleasure to be with you all today. Unfortunately, I have to sign off to go collect my son from the nursery.

Thank you for the opportunity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

That's actually serendipitous, because it's two seconds before the end of Mr. Julian's time. Thank you for your testimony.

Thank you to all the witnesses for your testimony.

I would invite all witnesses, if they wish, if they any follow-up testimony, to submit a brief to the committee. Any translation that's necessary will be undertaken by our noble clerk here.

Thank you all. That brings an end to this portion of the meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Alexander.

We will suspend as we go in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]