Evidence of meeting #37 for Status of Women in the 42nd 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.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Jane Bailey  Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Matthew Johnson  Director of Education, MediaSmarts
Sandra Robinson  Instructor, Carleton University, As an Individual
Corinne Charette  Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Spectrum, Information Technologies and Telecommunications, Department of Industry

3:55 p.m.

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

Excellent. Thank you.

Jane, do you have anything to add?

3:55 p.m.

Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

3:55 p.m.

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

I'll carry on.

Those are of my some major concerns when we're looking at these algorithms: what is it that we can be doing better?

When it comes to the education of our youth, we know that there are tips if you go to MediaSmarts and things of that sort. What other efforts are we making? Can you talk of any education systems—any school boards or anything like that—that are implementing these things in their courses? What's being done by Canadians to educate their youth, other than within the family, because sometimes, as well, the family has no idea.

3:55 p.m.

Director of Education, MediaSmarts

Matthew Johnson

There is an increased presence of digital literacy in curricula across the country. One of the things we do is keep track of provincial and territorial curricula, partly to make sure our resources match those curricula so that teachers can use them without taking time away from what they need to be teaching. We are seeing an increase. British Columbia, for instance, now has a full digital literacy curriculum. We're seeing a lot more digital literacy in the health and social science curriculum in Ontario.

It's a work in progress. It's going to be a while before digital literacy is in the place that media literacy is in, where it's formally in the curriculum of every province and territory, but we're certainly seeing an improvement. Obviously, we're working to make it easier for teachers and the school boards to get digital literacy into the classroom, and to do so from kindergarten all the way up to grade 12, because we know that in many cases we need to start teaching about these issues as soon as kids are using the Internet.

3:55 p.m.

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

Absolutely.

Thank you very much.

3:55 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

We'll go to Ms. Malcolmson for seven minutes.

3:55 p.m.

NDP

Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses. It's good to see you back again.

It was last June, at the very beginning of our study, when we talked with you, Ms. Bailey. I'm glad you're here again.

Just last month, the United Nations committee to end discrimination against women issued its report on Canada. The report comes out every five years, and it's a good opportunity for us to touch in. One of the items that the committee noted was this concern, and I'll quote:

The repeal of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which provided a civil remedy to victims of cyber violence, and the enactment of the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act (2015), which penalizes the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, but fails to cover all situations that were previously covered by section 13 of the...Human Rights Act.

The recommendation from the committee in paragraph 25(g) is that the federal government:

Review and amend legislation in order to provide an adequate civil remedy to victims of cyber violence and reintroduce section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Do either of you, in your professional experience, have any advice for the committee on a recommendation that we might reinforce in that area?

3:55 p.m.

Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Jane Bailey

On the repeal of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act under the prior government, I testified before the Senate about that. It came, I would say, at the most ironic time in history. It was a time when everyone was talking about the impact of online hate and harassment. Canada was uniquely placed in having a federal human rights provision that allowed for a tribunal rather than a court to respond to online hate and harassment as a human rights issue, hate and harassment that's identity based. We were uniquely and proudly situated in Canada to have had that remedy.

Right at the time, I would have said, when the remedy had its most meaning, when most experts were saying the way to respond to this was not going to be primarily through criminal law remedies but through a human rights approach, Canada chose to repeal section 13. I think that was an unfortunate decision. It hobbled Canada's ability to deal effectively with online hate and harassment and to offer a variety of responses. Also, it's not just that. It's the symbolic recognition that what's underlying these attacks is harassment, discrimination, and prejudice based on identity.

To me, the reinstatement of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act would make a lot of sense at this time, because, with all due respect, it made no sense to repeal it at the time that it was repealed.

In terms of civil remedies, I think one of the more interesting civil remedies that I've looked at recently is in Manitoba, where they are using the body that runs Cybertip to assist those whose intimate images are posted online and to get the images taken down in a quick way. I think that's a very sort of meaningful support mechanism. It's one of the number one issues for those who are victims of non-consensual distribution: to get the image down as quickly as possible.

None of that is to negate the criminal law provision, but these things do something different. I think having a panoply of different legal responses that suit different people in different situations and their abilities and needs makes a lot of sense.

4 p.m.

NDP

Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC

Thank you.

Mr. Johnson.

4 p.m.

Director of Education, MediaSmarts

Matthew Johnson

As an educational organization, MediaSmarts doesn't take a position on legislation unless it's directly relevant to our educational mission, but as part of our mission, we do educate adults and youth about their legal rights and the remedies available to them should they choose to use them, and the ways in which they can act positively, particularly online in relation to media. I can say that section 13, when it was still in existence, was certainly a big part of our materials on how to deal with online hate. There's certainly nothing like it in existence today that we've been able to replace in terms of those materials.

4 p.m.

NDP

Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC

If it were restored, it would be a remedy that you would return to recommending to your clients?

December 5th, 2016 / 4 p.m.

Director of Education, MediaSmarts

Matthew Johnson

We certainly would make them aware of it. We don't necessarily recommend, but as I said, we certainly would make sure that all of our resources featured it, because it would be another tool that could be used for dealing with hate material on the Internet or other media.

4 p.m.

NDP

Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC

Thanks.

There's only a minute left, so from the MediaSmarts side, I imagine that, like other organizations we've been hearing from, as we've raised awareness about the need to speak out and ask for help, your organization is increasingly being asked for help. Do you have sufficient operating funding to accommodate the requests and the needs that are coming your way? A corollary of this is that we don't want to ask people to ask for help and then have the door closed when they get there.

4 p.m.

Director of Education, MediaSmarts

Matthew Johnson

We don't really have stable operating funding. We certainly get tremendous support from a lot of sources, from our sponsors, but I'm not going to list them all, because it would use up the time we have. When it comes to things like online hate, it's very difficult for us to find the time to put into it or funding for it. Our most recent project on that was in 2011. It can be very difficult for us to deal with issues that come up, even when they're urgent, when there isn't specific funding tied to those.

4 p.m.

NDP

Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC

Thank you for your work.

4 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

We'll now go to Ms. Damoff for seven minutes.

4 p.m.

Liberal

Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON

Thank you very much.

I can't thank you enough for coming back. You gave us outstanding testimony when you were here before, and you've done so again, so I want to thank you both for the work you're doing and for the information you've shared.

The term “algorithm” kept coming up. It's still a little hard to believe. The chair and I were looking at each other as you were describing a few things and saying that it's a little hard to believe what's going on when we are on the Internet.

You've talked about the EU bringing in some data privacy legislation. I'm wondering about that. So many of these companies are global companies. For example, we had Twitter here, and their head office is in the United States but they operate globally. It's the same for Facebook. A lot of these companies are global companies. Because these companies are global, does bringing in legislation in Canada actually have any impact on what they're doing?

4:05 p.m.

Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Jane Bailey

That's an interesting question. It's a point for obfuscation, I think, that corporations like to use: multiple jurisdictions, hard to keep track.... Yes, agreed, but when you are doing business in a particular jurisdiction, you have to expect to abide by the laws in that jurisdiction.

In some ways, I think, it's one of the reasons why the EU approach is so impressive. That approach has been very much to say that they have a set of values, and that they are not against development and innovation, obviously, but they have a set of values, and they have directives and legislation that you're required to comply with. You can tell them that it's expensive and complicated, and that you don't like it, but at the end of the day, that is where the buck stops.

4:05 p.m.

Liberal

Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON

If I can give you an example, though, you were talking about the fake news sites, with a lot of it originating in Macedonia. If you had another country messing with the algorithms and it's happening in Canada, would our legislation have any impact on that?

4:05 p.m.

Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Jane Bailey

It's hard to say. It would depend on how you drafted the legislation.

4:05 p.m.

Liberal

Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON

Let's say that it was like the EU legislation.

4:05 p.m.

Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Jane Bailey

We can look at “the right to be forgotten” in the EU. An example is the Google case in Spain, where Google was upset that EU law was applying to their situation, because they didn't think their presence in Spain was sufficient to justify the application of that particular directive.

In brief, the case was about whether they could order Google to delete a particular outcome from its search engine, so that if you searched for a particular person, this story would not surface in the Google search, on the premise that most of us get our information from Google searches, and even if it's still out there on a website somewhere, our access to it is relatively limited if it doesn't come up in the first one or two pages of a Google search. They were ordered to remove this from their search, so that when someone searched for this individual, the story about a prior proceeding wouldn't come up. The idea was that if you don't want to do this broadly, you need to figure out how to do it so that residents in Spain or in the EU don't have access to this material, because this person is entitled, under EU law, to not have other people in the EU getting access to this on their search engines.

It can be done.

4:05 p.m.

Liberal

Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON

Okay.

4:05 p.m.

Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Jane Bailey

On the other question about a different kind of algorithmic sort, I think my answer would be that I'm not sure. It would depend on what was happening. That isn't to say that it's not complicated. It's just to say that sometimes it's the first thing that gets put on the table, and I think there is a corporate interest in its being the first thing that gets put on the table.

4:05 p.m.

Liberal

Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON

One of the things—you brought this up the last time you appeared before us—is the importance of digital literacy. You've mentioned it again today. Some of that is obviously falling within provincial jurisdiction. What can the federal government to in order to promote digital literacy? Do you have any suggestions?