Public Safety committee  Across all of our campaigns and activities on our platform, yes, we have frequent engagements with local and federal law authorities. In this case, what you just summarized was correct for this campaign.

Public Safety committee  Our interaction was with the local law enforcement and local authorities. We did not receive outreach from the federal government.

Public Safety committee  We saw the statements on public media and social media from the local law enforcement and local authorities. Based on that, we began direct outreach to them to ensure that we were fully apprised of the facts and circumstances on the ground and the real-time information that was developing around the “freedom convoy”.

Public Safety committee  Mr. Chair, we do extensive analysis on the activities that are happening on our platform. In fact, as it is our goal to be the most trusted platform in social fundraising, we actually believe that we operate in such screenings above and beyond what the regulatory climate requires of us.

Public Safety committee  That's correct. If we were aware that there was something like that occurring, those folks are not welcome to participate on our platform and those activities would have been prohibited and we would have filtered that out. Any content that we believe is in violation of our terms of service is removed from our platform, whether that's a fundraiser or whether we believe it is an inappropriate donation.

Public Safety committee  Yes. Thank you for the question. Mr. Chair, as I mentioned in my opening comments, our records here at GoFundMe show that 88% of donated funds to the “freedom convoy” campaign originated in Canada, and 86% of the donors were from Canada. That information is based on the best information we have available to ourselves based on hard data, and also in consultation with the information we're able to gather in partnership with our payment processing partners.

Public Safety committee  —and the.... I'll stop there.

Public Safety committee  Mr. Chair, as I mentioned in my opening statement, the funds are not held by GoFundMe. Donations to campaigns are processed by our payment processing partners. They are stored in accounts related to our campaigns that are managed by those payment processing partners. They are the ones who are disbursing funds in consultation with us to the recipients of the campaigns.

Public Safety committee  Mr. Chair, I'd like to begin by reiterating that we were very fortunate and very happy to be engaged with local law enforcement and local authorities as we were understanding the facts and circumstance of what was happening on the ground in Ottawa. This was very influential in our decision-making in assessing how to assess the “freedom convoy” campaign relative to our terms of service.

Public Safety committee  We were not specifically reached out to by the Government of Canada.

Public Safety committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It is our pleasure to join you all today to discuss important matters related to the “freedom convoy” fundraiser and social fundraising in Canada. My name is Juan Benitez, and I am the president of GoFundMe. I am joined my Kim Wilford, GoFundMe's general counsel.