Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to all of our witnesses who are aiding our committee in this study.
Mr. Balgord, maybe I'll start with you. On the subject of Elon Musk, I was reading some of his tweets. In one that stuck out with me, he likened Twitter to sort of being the next iteration of the “public town square”, and how in this digital space it was important to protect people's abilities to voice their opinions and to enshrine free speech.
I guess the main issue with social media on a variety of platforms is that it allows users to cloak themselves in anonymity. For example, I can't just go out among the public and start shouting obscenities and directing hate speech against identifiable groups, because I'll be held liable. People will see who I am. I can be held to account for my actions. But the cloak of anonymity is very prevalent on many social media platforms. There have also been problems with fake accounts being set up, and with troll factories, bot farms and so on.
If social media companies to date have been wildly unsuccessful at tackling that problem, could you perhaps offer some comments on whether or not you foresee the role of the ombudsperson that you mentioned tackling that issue? Perhaps you could expand a bit more on that theme.