Status of Women Committee on Nov. 14th, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Go ahead, Ms. Damoff.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I echo what Karen said. There's currently housing strategy consultation going on—not through the committee, but Minister Duclos is doing it—and I know that a number of my colleagues and I'm sure a number of yours as well have been ensuring that the shelter aspect, especially transitional housing, is included in that consultation. I think we've just voted to do the economic empowerment next, so we would basically be overturning that motion and saying we're not going to do that next.

It's a really important issue and I don't think that we shouldn't look at it. It actually falls under Minister Duclos' mandate with support from Status of Women, so I think we should let that process flow through and then see where we are once that's come out and where we are with this study. Then we can revisit it if we need to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Is there any further discussion on the motion?

(Motion negatived)

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Is there any other committee business?

Go ahead, Ms. Harder.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I put forward a motion with regard to a study, and I've been advised that instead of having an entirely new study, we should just add it to our present study. It was with regard to particular online and social media applications, specifically algorithms.

That topic came up in a lot of our discussions when we were studying cyber-violence, so I'm wondering if the committee would find it suitable to add three meetings to this present study to look specifically at the use of algorithms within social media and media contexts.

I can read the motion to you, but honestly, that's much more concise.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Go ahead, Ms. Damoff.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

You're absolutely right, and we all agree that algorithms came up in particular with.... It's a concept that I don't totally understand, but it certainly is an important one.

The question I have for our analysts is in terms of timing. I know you were hoping to get some direction and take this off in January. Maybe we don't need three meetings. It could be that we need two or.... Do we have time in there to include this portion?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

There are three meetings.

The analyst wants to say something.

[Laura Munn-Rivard, Committee Researcher]

Just to clarify, we've been requested to provide a summary of evidence before the break. If you were to add this, the new information would mean that it would not be possible to get that translated in time. What we could do then is either provide a summary of evidence after the break or skip the summary of evidence and just go straight to the draft report. That would mean, though, that you would be giving your guidance for the report without any real documentation in front of you. However, you've all listened to most of the testimony, so we could do that step instead.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Go ahead, Mr. Fraser.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I would find the summary of evidence very helpful. This has been a massive study, and I don't want to lose it.

Rachael, do you have an idea of which witnesses or how many witnesses we would need? Also, would even adding one meeting skewer the possibility that we're going to get a summary of evidence before the break?

Maybe Rachael could go first, and then we could come back to our analyst.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I did a little preliminary research on witnesses we might want to call to the table, which is why I framed it as three meetings. Could we cut back? Sure. Maybe together we could decide what is most pertinent.

I'll give you some of my suggestions. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada could be one. The CRTC is definitely one that we want to hear from. We may want to hear from Internet service providers, but it would be more important, I would say, to hear from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, BuzzFeed, Google, and so on, because they are the ones implementing these algorithms that many would argue are facilitating violence against women.

Then there's a member of Parliament in France and another one in Israel who have passed bills that relate but are not exactly the same, so I would be willing to give them up. They passed bills with regard to putting a minimum BMI on the weight of models, in other words, in relation to media images of girls. I'd be willing to give those up, because they don't exactly relate. Then there's also the director of the Children's Digital Media Center who could also be helpful to hear from.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

This may inform your answer, but is it possible to get a summary of the evidence for everything except for this piece before the break? Is that something the committee would entertain?

[Laura Munn-Rivard]

If you look at the parliamentary calendar, you see at this point we've committed to getting a summary of evidence to you to look at before the meeting on December 5, and on December 5 to get your guidance for the study. We could try pushing it to December 7. We'll still be sitting at that point, and that would give room for one additional meeting if we wanted to try to cram witnesses in. The other challenge, of course, is getting the witnesses on short notice.

You could get the summary of evidence without those portions, and then that portion could be added to the report at the end, of course.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Mr. Serré.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

This is very important, and I'd be concerned about having just two or three meetings. We already tried with Facebook earlier, and they said no. They don't want to be a witness, so that's something we'll have to address.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We can entice them with cookies.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

No, there's a reason they don't want to come.

I'm torn because it is so important, but having just two or three sessions, and probably a further recommendation after, I guess we could do that, but we have to really select the witnesses so that we are concise on what we want the outcome to be. This is the first of other steps, so I would like to make sure that we think about the witnesses we're going to bring in who will be a complement to the study we've done now, and then other witnesses would be something we would do later on.

We need to look at this in a broader perspective if we want to change the laws, if we want to change the ISPs, and we can't just bring in one ISP. It's not going to work. It's going to be a study that's going to have no...but it could be phase one of others.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Ms. Damoff.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Some of it Marc has already touched on. When we invited Facebook, they said no, and they're not going to change and they are Instagram, so it's the same company. Twitter has already been asked to appear, and are coming, so we can certainly ask them about that when they're here.

Personally, I would prefer to hear from people who actually can explain algorithms and how they work and what they are and what the federal government can do, if anything, around that as opposed to the people who are running these sites.

If there are experts out there—and I can't tell you right now who they are—who can explain what it is, and if there's anything a federal government can even do to regulate it.... We could very well find out that there isn't.

I don't know, but I think as opposed to bringing in all the people who are providing, like Instagram and BuzzFeed, I would much rather have some experts come in, whether that's in a department—I'm not sure that it is—or whether it's academics, but someone in the country who can speak to that and give us some guidance. I think that would cover what we're looking for, which is how we deal with these algorithms and what we can do to rein it in.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Ms. Harder.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

That's an excellent point, and certainly, I would be happy to go in that direction with our witness list.

I have one recommendation. Within our government at the federal level, there's a spectrum, information technologies and telecommunications division. I have a contact person there who I think we could bring forward to talk a bit about that, but we definitely could apply our energies and find further witnesses, experts, in that area. Yes, I certainly would agree.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Ms. Malcolmson.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

My interest is also in making sure that we are able to wrap this study up in time, that we do get a summary of evidence, and that we give the analyst the full month of January to do the report writing. I think at the subcommittee level we already discussed extending the study in order to add Twitter, because they had said no, and then they said yes. We created some extra room already. I think we were also going to give them the question that Ms. Harder had proposed so that they were ready, or maybe we're recommending that Ms. Harder feed directly to them to give them advance notice of the depth of questions that she'd be asking.

To me, if it's possible to add another day of testimony, and especially if we can get someone who can talk from a layperson's perspective about what this means and whether it is regulatable by the federal government, then I would support that, but not if it throws off the ultimate goal of making sure we protect time for the analyst to do work while Parliament is not in session.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Are you then proposing to amend the motion to just one session extra to talk to algorithms?