Public Safety committee  We can test that hypothesis. The gilets jaunes movement in France was directly driven by Facebook changing its algorithm after complaints that not enough voice was given to local views and local media. Facebook sort of cautioned about “be careful what you wish for”, and what we got was an overemphasis of local views, which then drove some of the local grievances and what people ended up seeing.

Public Safety committee  Germany has legislation that requires a significant amount of material to be removed proactively by social media companies.

Public Safety committee  That, hon. member, is an excellent question. I believe that the testimony given by the CSIS director to some extent corroborated the fact that for 20 years, the focus has been entirely on aspects of terrorism, violence and religious extremism. We lost sight of the fact that there is a wide range of extremist ideologies that are a challenge to our society.

Public Safety committee  Canada is an interesting outlier compared with countries such as France, the U.K. and even the U.S., in that we don't have a problem of mass radicalization per se among any particular identifiable community. I think it is important for Canada to ask itself what we have done right.

Public Safety committee  I'm not sure it necessarily contributes to radicalization, but it certainly contributes to people holding, in some cases, more nationalistic views for economic protectionism. That is what the electoral data in continental Europe around such groups suggests. If we want to avoid a swing to the right amongst certain electoral groups, we're certainly well served by equitable economic policies under the circumstances that you described.

Public Safety committee  Do you mean deprivation as in material deprivation? I just want to clarify what you mean by deprived.

Public Safety committee  I think the challenge with deprivation is that it's the catch-all explanation for just about anything and everything that ails our society. I think that, yes, deprivation is a significant intervening variable, but of course there are many individuals who are materially or otherwise deprived in our society who do not harbour extremist thoughts and do not engage in extremist action.

Public Safety committee  If we look at the January 6 storming of the U.S. Congress and analyze the people who were engaged in that, it turns out many were middle class. Many did not suffer deprivation. Yes, while it is one intervening variable that I think can drive extremism, it would be a mistake to chalk it up as a causal variable.

Public Safety committee  Certainly perception plays a huge role any time someone acquires or sympathizes with extremist views, let alone with extremist action. That is certainly one of the challenges of, I think, the last 20 years. Many people in the middle class fear that they might be losing some of their privileges.

Public Safety committee  Thank you for having invited me to appear here today. I'll be happy to answer your questions in both official languages, but I'll be delivering my address in English. While violent extremism in Canada is a marginal phenomenon, situations arising out of IMVE garner a lot of public attention, followed by political commitments and opportunities, such as these committee meetings, to move on certain policies.

National Defence committee  I can provide some material to the committee. I would encourage you to engage Brigadier-General Brodie, Major-General Bernard, as well as the military personnel generation hierarchy, because those are the people who are ultimately responsible for the entire HR system. I think those people are doing yeoman's work here and could certainly benefit from the sort of attention you are heaping on these policies, because they're ultimately in charge of making these components work for the Canadian Armed Forces.

National Defence committee  Understand what the requirements are to be able to deliver for the government's expectations. I believe we don't currently have the right balance between accountability and transparency processes, on the one hand, and politicians who keep saying that they will deliver for the military, that they will deliver the people, that they will deliver the kit.

National Defence committee  Well, certainly on the equipment side, one of my German friends likes to say that the Germans have boats that don't float, planes that don't fly and tanks that don't roll anywhere. I would say that we have some rather similar problems on the equipment side. Interestingly, we have similar sorts of challenges on the staffing side, but the German staffing organization is much more agile than the Canadian one, in part because much of the German Bundeswehr runs on a defence agency rather than civil service employment model.

National Defence committee  Mr. Spengemann, that's a great question, but actually, I'm not sure the Canadian Armed Forces needs more consultants to tell them what problems they have and what challenges they have. They know full well what those challenges are. What they don't currently have is the internal civilian and military staffing to be able to address all of these challenges.

National Defence committee  To the best that I'm aware, with the numbers that are available—you'd need to check with the military personnel generation group—the policy has not had an impact on recruitment. It appears that interest propensity is as it was before. The impact it had on attrition was relatively minor in the grand scheme of things.