Information & Ethics committee  I think we had good coverage. I think it's just to emphasize that when we talk about foreign interference, it comes in different shapes and forms. From my perspective, it's the impact of influencers online and politicians who have platforms. They are often the largest disinformation spreaders, but it just happens sometimes that it may align with state interests of another country.

Information & Ethics committee  I think it's good parenting advice. In my work, I focus more on the adult population—18 plus—so I probably wouldn't be able to get into more detail on that. My only concern is that the supervising adult might not be able to figure out whether something is malicious or not. I think there is a responsibility for those stores you're referring to to vet the platforms they host.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. It's just about parents. We're assuming they're knowledgeable adults, so it goes to my point about not putting too much emphasis on individual responsibilities. Platforms have to play their part. Kids may have second devices.

Information & Ethics committee  First of all, I don't have the capacity to independently verify where the data is, in fact, stored, so that's a public statement. Knowing how interconnected online systems are, we would want to see some kind of audit of where it actually goes. We talked about AI, and I'll explain why that's relevant.

Information & Ethics committee  This is a tricky question, because for any start-up the research used potentially will lead to business use cases. We don't know whether that dataset collected under the research umbrella would then be carried forward for other projects that are money-making for them. I think we have to imply similar principles.

Information & Ethics committee  The safest is to disconnect from social media and the Internet, but it's not an option, as we discussed. Seriously, we really have to consider whether a messaging app is using encryption and the type of encryption that platforms don't actually have access to. That's something that should be spelled out in any messaging app.

Information & Ethics committee  I heard that testimony. I think the reference was something with an unacceptable level of risk in that recommendation, and that's all we know at this point. I hope the next witness will be able to give you a bit more insight. In the public domain, we don't have that any more than what we just said, so—

Information & Ethics committee  If the recommendation is with regard to user data privacy, we should treat all social media platforms equally, large or small, and then we'd have to audit them in the same way. That would be my advice. On banning one platform, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, unless there's clear evidence of some malicious acts by state actors through back doors....

Information & Ethics committee  We have individual education and what individual Canadians can do. We have to talk about what age group we're discussing. Earlier, I heard in this committee that the focus is on the underage population, which is a quite important and vulnerable group. However, sometimes we overlook older adults and other age groups.

Information & Ethics committee  In terms of service, the initiative I referred to is called Terms of Service; Didn't Read, ToS;DR. Essentially it's been around for 10 years. It's volunteer-run. It's supported by non-profits. There are essentially some legal and technology experts who are trying to deconstruct each platform's terms of service, and they created a rubric.

Information & Ethics committee  The question is a bit broad, but I'll try to contextualize it. When we're talking specifically about generative AI tools, the concern for me, from the data privacy perspective, would be Canadians going to websites like ChatGPT. They will tag their private and personal information into the window without realizing that they are actually consenting to that data being used for future training.

Information & Ethics committee  There will be more automation. I wonder sometimes to what extent, though. It's already writing emails for us. It's creating websites for us. There will be potential push-back. People will want to have some authentic interactions. That's probably more of a futuristic outlook. I don't know whether you want me to continue on that line of thinking.

Information & Ethics committee  The first thing, of course, is to know whether Canadian data is being used to train generative AI applications, period. That will be number one. The second is that when Canadians see content coming through social media platforms or other online news, they need to be able to differentiate between whether it's created by AI or it's not.

Information & Ethics committee  Some of the privacy legislation tools you're considering may be effective in terms of making sure Canadians can request that their data be removed from some of those services. That could be quite effective. The other aspects I referred to earlier, in my opening remarks.... It's about creating a repository and code of conduct for this information, in particular.

Information & Ethics committee  It's not a secret. There are a number of different data-harvesting companies that would be sharing this type of information. There is also the whole dark web that would be collecting and sharing the information that was leaked or hacked through different repositories. Unfortunately, that's the environment we're living in.