Thank you very much, Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to be here, and thank you for your service.
I'd also like to acknowledge the political staff who are in the room and thank them for their service and support.
Twitter's purpose is to serve the public conversation. People from around the world come together on Twitter in an open and free exchange of ideas and issues they care about. Twitter is committed to improving the collective health, openness and civility of public conversation on our platform. We do this work with the recognition that freedom of expression and safety are interconnected.
Twitter approaches issues such as terrorism, violent extremism and violent organizations through a combination of interventions, including the development and enforcement of our rules, product solutions and work with external partners such as government, civil society and academia.
For my opening remarks, I will focus on our work with partners and, in particular, the Government of Canada.
Twitter shares the Government of Canada's view that online safety is a shared responsibility. Digital service providers, governments, law enforcement, digital platforms, network service providers, non-government organizations and citizens all play an important role in protecting communities from harmful content online. Twitter is grateful for the Government of Canada's willingness to convene honest and sometimes difficult conversations through venues such as the Christchurch call to action and organizations such as Five Eyes.
Through our joint work on the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, commonly known as GIFCT, which my colleague Mr. Tessler referred to in his remarks, we have made real progress across a wide range of issues, including establishing GIFCT as an independent, non-government organization; building out GIFCT's resources and impact; forming the independent advisory committee and working groups; and implementing a step change on how we respond to crisis events around the world.
In Canada, the Anti-terrorism Act and the Criminal Code of Canada provide measures for the Government of Canada to identify and publicly list known terrorist and violent extremist organizations. Twitter carefully monitors the Government of Canada's list, as well as other lists from governments around the world. The last time that list was updated was on June 25, 2021. We also collaborate and co-operate with law enforcement entities when appropriate and in accordance with legal processes. I also want to acknowledge the regular and timely dialogue I have with officials across government working on domestic issues related to these files.
In addition to governments, Twitter partners with non-government organizations around the world to help inform our work and to counter online extremist content. For example, we partner closely with Tech Against Terrorism, the global NGO, to share information, knowledge and best practices. We recently participated alongside the Government of Canada in the Global Counterterrorism Forum's workshop to develop a tool kit to focus on countering racially motivated violent extremism.
Our approach is not stagnant. We aggressively fight online violent extremist activity and have invested heavily in technology and tools to enforce our policies. As the nature of these threats has changed, so has our approach to tackling this behaviour. As an open platform for free expression, Twitter has always sought to strike a balance between the enforcement of our own rules covering prohibited behaviour and the legitimate needs of law enforcement with the ability of people to express their views freely on Twitter, including views that people may disagree with or find offensive.
I would like to end my testimony with a quote from Canada's Global Affairs Minister, the Honourable Mélanie Joly, on March 2 of this year. She said:
More than ever, social media platforms are powerful tools of information. They play a key role in the health of democracies and global stability. Social media platforms play an important role in the fight against disinformation....
Twitter agrees.
I'm happy to answer any questions you might have on policies, policy enforcement, product solutions and the ways in which we're working to protect the safety of the conversation on Twitter.
Thank you.