Foreign Affairs committee  We need to be very sure we're not inadvertently creating loopholes that will be exploited by these Russian oligarchs and others who are targeted by those sanctions.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you for that question. Certainly the revenue of social media companies relies on the number of eyeballs that fall onto any piece of content, and they want to make sure that their users remain on their platforms as long as possible so they can expose them to advertising.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think we do some things well. I think we do other things not so well. I couldn't give you a specific number, but I think we should be looking to Finland, which is doing a good job. I think we should be looking to Sweden—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If we take Finland, Sweden, the Baltic states, and Taiwan, which are doing this and have been doing this well for a long time, if they are the baseline, if they are the 10, then I think maybe we're on the way to approaching a seven.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I completely agree with you. Social media is clearly being exploited to connect with and divide these communities, to influence them in various ways. I think there is a really big problem there. On how we address it, I don't think we've even really started discussing that on a na

Procedure and House Affairs committee  To address your introductory remark about certain politicians posing with members of the convoy protest in Ottawa, having elected officials pose with these people or supporting people who may have legitimate grievances is not disinformation. That's part of our democratic processe

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If you'd let me get to that, I will. Minister Freeland has been targeted since 2017 because of her involvement when she became the Minister of Foreign Affairs. As soon as she became Minister of Foreign Affairs, overnight a campaign appeared. We know from various reports by Cana

Procedure and House Affairs committee  This is a very important issue, though.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's a very good question. I should add that we do try, and our impact is largely in the media and in mainstream media when they report on the reports that we have. You shouldn't take that from our Facebook views. I think the problem is quite far gone at this point. I don't th

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's a great question. It deserves its own study, I think. We need to be working with local media and smaller media organizations that speak to these groups to ensure they get the good information, the facts and the truth. We've been reading reports about how smaller media o

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. The Russian government exploits those grievances, and it aggravates them. That is exactly how it operates. I should remind you, though, that it has been doing this for quite some time. Just about a year and a half ago, we did a study of over 100 Twitter accounts

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'll quickly give a few of my thoughts. I strongly believe that exposing these efforts, analyzing them and explaining them is incredibly important. That's the work we do at DisinfoWatch. I think the government should expand the initiative it's already taken with the critical ele

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much for that question. Absolutely, Russia does not sleep. Russia has been engaging in disinformation and influence operations for a very long time—nearly a century. Joseph Stalin began creating deep fakes, if you will, by doctoring photographs, already in the 193

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not sure how much has changed within the protocol or whether the thresholds have changed. I have no information about that. The threat certainly has evolved. That's what has changed since 2019. In 2019, we believed that the threat to our democracy was exclusively targeting

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, thank you for that question. We, DisinfoWatch, did try to inform the public when these efforts were brought to our attention in early September. We took the time to look at the information we received. We tried to process it. We couldn't necessarily trace it directly to t