Thank you for that.
Dr. Morin, maybe I'll turn to you. I was looking at the UNESCO chair's website. One of the sections on the website for your organization says, “one of the priority issues is the development of evidence-based research and the exchange of knowledge and best practices at the national and international levels.” I think a lot of that covers the role that social media has played in allowing extremist ideology to spread and find new members.
In our earlier meeting this week, we had representatives from Facebook and Twitter appear. Facebook in particular said that they have a lot of policies in their community standards that outline what is and is not allowed on their platforms. They said they were actively monitoring the Ottawa protests in the lead-up to the illegal occupation of Ottawa.
One thing that is quite evident is that Facebook allowed Pat King, one of the main organizers, to not only grow his online presence by tens of thousands during the convoy. He was also livestreaming himself and encouraging people to break the law. That strayed far beyond what I think is allowed on the platform.
Facebook has taken the time to try to explain that their policies do try to prevent this, but it's obviously not working. Do you have any thoughts on what kinds of government interventions we need? We've had suggestions about maybe setting up an ombudsperson. The main concern is that, if you clamp down too hard on the main platforms, you're going to spread it out to other alternative media sources. Do you have any thoughts on that?