Public Safety Committee on March 31st, 2022

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Rogers, on your organization's website, there is a blog post from January 10 of this this year entitled “Happy 2022. Or is it? If you worried democracy itself was under attack in 2021, you may want to sit 2022 out.”

I don't have a lot of time, but could you maybe expand on that blog post relating to disinformation and its threat to democracy.

[Dr. Daniel J. Rogers]

Sure. There was also a question earlier about what is at stake here.

I would say exactly what my co-founder and I outlined in that blog post. What we're seeing is the convergence of all of the different specific narratives that we've been tracking into this larger anti-democratic and, frankly, anti-Enlightenment narrative, whether it's anti-science, anti-government. I think that's been apparent in the recent Ukraine conflict, for example, where we really see these anti-democratic narratives coming to the forefront.

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

Thank you very much. I'll end there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Ms. Dancho, we move now to you for two and a half minutes whenever you're ready.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Chair, were you talking to me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Yes. You have two and a half minutes.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Sorry. Thank you very much.

I really appreciated a lot of the testimony.

Mr. Gosselin, I found that much of of your testimony was quite compelling. In particular, you mentioned that—quoting the English translation of what you said—feelings of being marginalized influence extremism; for people who feel they no longer have a place in society, that can lead to radicalization. You mentioned that this needs to be dealt with seriously by legislators.

Is that a correct assessment of your position?

[Louis Audet Gosselin]

Yes, absolutely.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I was thinking about that in the context.... The convoy has been mentioned a number of times in terms of this study.

I'm wondering how that applies to how we've treated the unvaccinated. We've effectively cut them out of public life in many ways. Do you feel that is marginalizing those individuals? Does that fit the bill, and could that lead to the more extremist views we may be seeing?

[Louis Audet Gosselin]

This is a rather delicate issue, obviously, because there are public health issues at stake. Since it is an infectious disease, the personal choice of whether or not to be vaccinated, in these circumstances, has a significant effect on those around you and on society as a whole.

Indeed, in some of the debates, there was a sense that those who refused to be vaccinated, especially initially, were demonized and ridiculed. This contributed to radicalization in some cases. Since then, the public discourse has been adapted somewhat by talking about vaccine hesitancy and by trying to convince people to get vaccinated rather than repressing them.

Generally speaking, here in Canada, as elsewhere, this has been done pretty much everywhere. There have been times when the polarization has been a bit too much, it has contributed to radicalization in some cases.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

What are the best steps forward to bringing marginalized, and I don't want to get [Technical difficulty--Editor]. However, if we continue to marginalize a group of people—and this can apply to anything, not just the pandemic—and we continue to keep them out of society, would that not feed into the idea that you put forward about further radicalizing people?

[Louis Audet Gosselin]

Probably. We really recommend dialogue at all levels; in politics, but also at the community level.

So we recommend methods to continue to keep the dialogue open, even in the case of very strong disagreements about ideas.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Zuberi, I'll ask you to finish off this round.

You have two and a half minutes. The floor is yours, sir.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I'd like to go to Mr. Rogers.

You spoke about 250 social media accounts, if I'm correct, 73 sites, and many other aspects of the Internet that deal with radicalization and hate.

Do you think that social media companies have a role to play in this? If so, at this point in time, the algorithms are not manifest to legislators. Do you think it would be helpful if those algorithms did become manifest to legislators?

Could you comment on those two points, please?

[Dr. Daniel J. Rogers]

Yes. I think certainly they have a huge role to play.

In fact, if you think about why we are talking about this now when we weren't talking about this 20 years ago, it's not that radical people didn't exist, but that social media companies and their algorithmic amplification engines didn't exist. These are algorithms that can individually warp the realities—between Facebook, YouTube and TikTok—of well over half the world's population at this point, and I emphasize both the words “individually” and “warp”.

There's a lot of talk about algorithmic transparency, and I certainly think having more light shone on these algorithms would help the conversation along as to what we do about them. I also don't think it's particularly opaque what these algorithms are supposed to do, which is to drive engagement on these platforms at the cost of everything else. We don't need to look under the hood to know that's the goal.

These...as products, as I said, at the cost of everything else, is the key point. These companies have made historic amounts of money, achieved unprecedented market capitalization on these algorithms—these secret weapons of theirs—and have had to put no consideration into the negative consequences, the harms caused by these algorithms, due to these liability waivers. That's really where the focus is. Transparency will certainly help the conversation, but ultimately we need action.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.

As a very quick follow-up, you described basically the wild west of the Internet with respect to online hate. Do you think there needs to be some guidance from legislators around that?

[Dr. Daniel J. Rogers]

Do you mean do legislators have a role to play in this? Absolutely. I think that's where the most important levers are, frankly. It's become crystal clear that these companies aren't going to act of their own volition, and the role of legislators around the world is what's going to force a change.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

On behalf of members of the committee, I would like to thank the witnesses for some fascinating testimony over the last hour.

We appreciate your sacrifice of your time for the good of this committee. On behalf of all parliamentarians, thank you so much for your testimony today.

Colleagues, we will take a very short break to move in camera, where we will have most of an hour to finish some very important work. We will reconvene in two minutes.

[Proceedings continue in camera]