Evidence of meeting #22 for Public Safety and National Security in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was content.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
Thank you.
Dr. Davies, do you think the government is doing enough tracking and analysis on extremism in Canada? If not, what more should we be doing?
Associate Director, Institute on Violence, Terrorism, and Security, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
I think we are not. Within the agencies that are tasked with doing this, there are simply not enough resources to deal with the broader picture. Many of our agencies are tasked with dealing with day-to-day threats or things that are imminent. In terms of analyzing data, the projection of long-term consequences or even potential threats coming down, we simply don't have enough resources dedicated to that. There are no central databases trying to track what kinds of events or who we are interested in.
There are attempts that are ongoing, and there is some—
Associate Director, Institute on Violence, Terrorism, and Security, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
—really good work being done right now by Stats Canada.
More could be done. We're moving in the direction, but there's more to go.
Liberal
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for being with us today. I took a lot of notes on what they are telling us.
Mr. McAleer, in your opening remarks, you mentioned that you had travelled to Austria and New Zealand, among other places, as part of your deradicalization efforts.
During these trips, did you notice any practices or measures that Canada could learn from to prevent the radicalization of certain groups and recruitment?
Author and Co-founder, Life After Hate, As an Individual
Absolutely. As we try to get exit programs—those are programs to help rehabilitate and get people to leave these groups behind.... These groups are fairly new in North America. They've been running for 20 years in Europe.
I would point you to the Radicalisation Awareness Network, RAN, which is part of the EU. It's an EU body which studies that and looks at youth, schools, prisons and rehabilitation in open settings. It's a vast source of information and best practices that we could learn from.
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. McAleer.
Professor Bailey, I'd like to come back to the “incel” movement that was mentioned earlier and the disproportionate impact that online hate messages can have on women and some marginalized communities. It's particularly women who are targeted.
Are we currently doing enough to address online hate? I know that the Standing Committee on the Status of Women has looked at this issue.
Some feminist groups are calling for online hate legislation. They believe that such legislation could be a tool to fight these misogynistic movements.
What are your thoughts on that?
Prof. Jane Bailey
The recommendations I've made to this committee are also recommendations I've made with respect to discussions around online harms and the online harms bill. I think the short answer is that we don't do enough to address systemic misogyny and other intersecting forms of oppressions in this country. I think that is clear. It leaves women, from particular communities especially, exposed to not just online hate but also offline hate and violence.
I really commend the idea.... Dr. Davies' note is certainly consistent with the research that we've done with young people. To any extent that any of us have any inclination of thinking that offline and online are segregated spaces, that is just absolutely not the world that young people in particular are living in. I think in a COVID era, and even now, post-COVID, the same is true for adults.
I think we have to be doing a lot of thinking around violence underlying systems of oppressions generally, and not trying to focus on online as if it's somehow disconnected from the rest of the problems that we already have in the world. There is way more to be done, absolutely.
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
Thank you very much, Professor Bailey.
Dr. Davies, you spoke during your opening remarks about the occupation of downtown Ottawa. In an article published last year on radicalization, you also stated that the pandemic had created a perfect storm for radicalization. Ultimately, what happened in Ottawa is probably directly related to that.
Can you clarify what you meant by “perfect storm for radicalization” and explain the link to the pandemic?
What action do you think the government could take to address this issue?
Associate Director, Institute on Violence, Terrorism, and Security, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
Thank you very much for reading my article. I'm so excited.
By “perfect storm”, what I was thinking of was that the far right has always had significant mechanisms or been oriented towards weaponizing any kind of opportunity: Never let a good opportunity go to waste. I'm sorry to speak about the pandemic in those terms, but that was exactly what happened. With more eyes in front of computers and a more captive audience, the pandemic itself made it so that the right—
Associate Director, Institute on Violence, Terrorism, and Security, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
—was able to key in on a variety of issues that it always does, including the fear of government, etc.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Jim Carr
Thank you very much.
Mr. MacGregor, the six-minute slot has come to you. Go ahead whenever you're ready.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Wonderful, thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of our witnesses for joining us today and helping guide our committee through this important study.
Dr. Davies, I would like to start with you if I can.
You've provided some cautions in how Canada responds to this problem. You mentioned that we can't be relying on social media platforms to be doing the heavy lifting on their own. That's become very apparent. We had both Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook, and representatives from Twitter here. With Facebook in particular, they were trying to stress how many employees they have who are combing through posts on a daily basis looking for this stuff and that they have, in their opinion, a very robust “terms of service”. But when it came to the convoy that made its way to Ottawa, which then turned into an illegal occupation, we still had a situation where one of the lead organizers, Pat King, was live-streaming himself on Facebook, spreading all of this vitriol and very concerning messages, and still Facebook did not engage and shut him down.
I know that there are dangers with deplatforming, that it has consequences, but that's the major struggle that we have as policy-makers. What kind of system should we be setting up? We've had other witnesses recommend that we set up some kind of an office of an ombudsperson who has those investigative powers, who can see the social media algorithms, who's making sure that those companies are, in fact, following their terms of service.
Ultimately, if you were to be a member of this committee, what would you like to see as a solid recommendation coming out of our report, in how we ensure that social media platforms are governing themselves accordingly and that there is transparency and accountability to the Canadian public?
Associate Director, Institute on Violence, Terrorism, and Security, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
To rephrase a little bit, my concern is that we are even thinking in terms of what it is that we expect of them, beyond simply following—as you put it—their terms of service. If we look at this from the perspective of the extreme right, all of these attempts essentially feed their narrative. We are essentially providing them with the fuel that they need. Every attempt to try to deplatform or to identify content that needs to be shut down actually allows them to say, see, look, they're afraid of us. They don't want these ideas out there.
It also raises questions about what the nature of discourse is in a democratic society.
Outside of the things that we can identify legally—you can't call for violence; there should be no advocacy of direct violence—in terms of your specific question, I think we have to have more of a tolerance. I know this is not going to be a popular opinion. I don't like the things that I read. I lived in this world of vitriol and absolutely toxic garbage, but unless it is crossing very definitive red lines in terms of what it's calling for in violence, I have grave concerns about our trying to legislate that. I have more concerns about requiring any of these social media platforms to start doing that.
I would also caution the committee that this can be interpreted by social media in a variety of ways. For example, from the far right, we have seen requests that their perceptions of extremism—for example, Black Lives Matter—should be deplatformed. I don't think anybody in this room would agree with that, but that is a real possibility if we start going down this road of who should and shouldn't be making decisions about what kinds of things we do and don't want to have access to.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you for that.
Mr. McAleer, do you want to add any thoughts on that subject? I also notice that you didn't really have enough time to finish your opening statement so is there anything that you wanted to conclude on, any specific points you wanted to give?
Author and Co-founder, Life After Hate, As an Individual
I was at the end anyway, but I would just reiterate that these responses need to be carefully thought out and nuanced. It's a whole-of-society response. We need to use a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. That's what I would add in.
Regarding social media companies, I've spent time in Silicon Valley, I've been to Facebook and met with Twitter and all of that, for a number of years, and it's a very difficult problem. If you move it off one platform, it doesn't disappear. It's not gone. It shows up on another platform. Each time, you push it down the line. Not all social media companies are based in Silicon Valley or Canada. For some of these platforms, the further down the line you go, it's two guys in Poland, it's their side hustle. They have zero ability to moderate.
Just because we can force it off one platform doesn't make it disappear. I think we have to be cognizant of that. It's like playing Whac-a-Mole.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Jim Carr
You have 10 seconds. You're giving them back. Thank you. Your generosity is appreciated.
Colleagues, we now move to the second round of questions.
I would invite Mr. Shipley to begin a five-minute round whenever he's ready.
Conservative
Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I'll start with Mr. McAleer. Thank you for being here today, sir.
I find your background and your story quite fascinating. I would imagine that you, as a former member of a white supremacist group, would have extensive knowledge of how they generate the capital necessary to maintain an organization.
Could you elaborate on some of the knowledge you have in that field?
Author and Co-founder, Life After Hate, As an Individual
It's changed quite a bit since then. With the anonymity of the Internet, the ability to raise money is very different. When I was involved, there wasn't a great deal of money. If you were going to be involved in it, it was a good way to go broke.
Having said that, I think that with cryptocurrency and these different platforms, and the anonymity or perception of anonymity, social media creates communities of everything—good or bad. Once you can find a community, you can raise money and raise donations.
It was much more difficult to find and build those communities 20 or 30 years ago.
Conservative
Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Thank you.
That's actually a nice segue into my second question about communities and the sense of belonging. You touched on that theme a little bit today. I'm intrigued by that, so I'd like to touch on it a bit more.
I think you mentioned that a lot of people who get involved in these groups are looking for a sense of belonging or community, as we just talked about. Do you feel that any government policies from any level could push people more towards extremism, if they feel like they're being pushed out of day-to-day society and if they feel they're not belonging in a certain group?
Author and Co-founder, Life After Hate, As an Individual
Certainly. Around the world, globalization has alienated people. These policies are happening at a very high level.
It's very much possible for different programs to further alienate people. There are always unintended consequences. What are the unintended consequences? I think it's very possible for governments to increase that sense of alienation, if that's the question you're asking.
Conservative
Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
I believe you touched on how you've personally helped over 700 people leave hate. Thank you for that. That's tremendous work.