Information & Ethics committee  Thanks for the question, and thanks for the shout-out to Christelle, who is a wonderful member of our team, as well. I hope she is invited one day to this committee or to INDU on AI. To answer your question, yes. Joe and I and another colleague, Yuan, wrote a paper that looked at the data storage practices in cross-border data transfers of social media platforms, which is called “Home Ice Advantage”, and we appreciated the shout-out to that report a few meetings ago, as well.

Information & Ethics committee  I can start. I certainly don't think it would be harmful, but I think the logistics around age verification are tricky. I probably don't have time to get into all that right now, but I think, in principle, yes. I might even suggest going further, since we're talking about trans-border data storage, which is to say that you could ban the transfer of minors' data to countries with insufficient equivalent protection, if you wanted to, as well.

Information & Ethics committee  I honestly echo a lot of what was just said. I think there's an ability to build on...and maybe I'll speak specifically with respect to online harm legislation. Germany was the first mover and basically created a 24-hour takedown regime. The outcome was an over-censorship response from many of the large platforms.

Information & Ethics committee  I see a role for a digital regulator. Currently, there's the idea of having an AI data regulator in Bill C-27, but it's an ISED department official. This, I think, is unacceptable, especially given that the minister will have the competing roles of championing the economic benefits of AI and regulating its risks.

Information & Ethics committee  Sure. I'm happy to. Joe, feel free to jump in here. We do an annual survey of a representative group of Canadians to track, basically, Canadians' experiences online with harmful content or illegal experiences. At a high level, we start with hate speech: 40% of Canadians say they see hate speech at least monthly, and about 10% of Canadians say they have personally been targeted by online hate speech.

Information & Ethics committee  I would add that I agree with the premise of your question, that we are falling behind in some respects, though I think we have, as Dr. Laidlaw put it, second-mover advantage to learn from some of the lessons and some of the flawed legislation or approaches that have been passed in allied jurisdictions.

Information & Ethics committee  In our annual survey of online harms, we found that Canadians have very low trust in social media platforms, both to keep their data secure and to act in the best interests of the public, ranking well below other technology companies and other organizations of a variety of types.

Information & Ethics committee  Thanks very much. Thanks for the invitation to share our perspectives on this important issue. Good evening. I'm Sam Andrey, and I'm the managing director of The Dais, a policy think tank at Toronto Metropolitan University. We work to develop the people and ideas that we need to advance an inclusive and innovative economy, education system and democracy for Canada.