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Results: 1 - 15 of 35
View Francesco Sorbara Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Minister.
I have a follow-up question on what we are seeing in terms of some content that is being posted online and its negative impact on various communities.
With that, communities across Canada are extremely worried about the rise of Islamophobia, hate speech online, as you just mentioned, towards our indigenous communities, and other forms of prejudice that have only intensified during this pandemic. We've all seen that words can lead to violence.
As parliamentarians, we recognize that we all have a duty to lead by example; that is to say, to engage in respectful dialogues, to be open to debates of ideas and to hear the positions of Canadians in order to work for a society where everyone is free to flourish with dignity.
Minister, can you tell us more about what our government is doing to fight the promotion of hatred and violence online?
Thank you.
View Kamal Khera Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here, but more importantly, for all the work you do.
Dr. Perry, I want to start off with you, and I want to talk about online hate.
I know you've teamed up with Facebook Canada to address instances of online hate. It is a topic that we've certainly discussed in committee. You have declared that online platforms have been a gift to alt-right groups known for spreading conspiracy theories via video clips.
Could you maybe expand a little bit on your findings and efforts in this area? How do we address promoting hatred on mainstream channels, as well as on underground networks, such as Parler and Gab?
View Pam Damoff Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Chair.
I'd like to thank all of our witnesses for being here today, especially on such short notice. Your testimony is very valuable to us.
My first question is for CSIS.
You mentioned online hatred and the prevalence of “echo chambers of hate”, whereby mobilization to violence can occur quite rapidly. The National Firearms Association is a group that shares offensive images online and has shared tweets that have been sympathetic to groups alleged to have IMVE affiliation. In one of them, the tweet said, “If the police will not protect you during a violent riot, you will have to protect yourself and others”.
I have personally been the subject of their comments. Recently, this committee voted to condemn remarks made by the group that discussed guillotining parliamentarians who support gun control, describing what is happening in Canada as “tyranny”.
My question for you is straightforward. We've seen far too many examples where language is later masked as jokes and then turned into real-world violence, either by those making the remarks or those following. I'm just wondering; what impact do these kinds of comments have on individuals who may be radicalized by them and should we be calling it out for what it is?
View Pam Damoff Profile
Lib. (ON)
It does, sort of.
I'm going to turn to the RCMP, in a similar vein. There has been rampant growth of this type of content online, and you remarked that you were gravely concerned with extremist views that are first fostered online and can lead to and have led to actual physical violence. Our colleague at CSIS listed a number of cases that did result in injury and death.
Who is being targeted? Do you see this being race- and gender-based hatred? Are you seeing it tied to these anti-mask rallies, where we're seeing neo-Nazi flags being flown?
View Kristina Michaud Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you very much.
We know that extremist groups rely heavily on social networks and platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and other platforms that have even been banned, to recruit people and to misinform and radicalize them. Some people believe that shutting down certain platforms would not be beneficial because it would send people to private networks on the Internet.
Even if it's not on these private networks and it's on the platforms that we know and access every day, how can the government and the RCMP intervene to detect this kind of violent extremism, whether it's violent speech or video sharing?
Should there be collaboration with the private companies that own these platforms, or could the government and RCMP intervene directly?
View Damien Kurek Profile
CPC (AB)
I appreciate that. It deals with such interconnected and complex issues.
I've noted that it's common to make mention of far-right groups rather than calling them what they are: hate groups. Certainly as I've watched Conservative and Liberal and other political parties' blogs and whatnot, you see the comments. There's hate coming from all sides, and it is absolutely tragic.
Is there any distinction, from your experience, between hate groups and the groups the report calls “ideologically motivated violent extremists”? Is there a differentiation?
View Darren Fisher Profile
Lib. (NS)
How about online hate legislation like we see in Australia? Do you see the benefit of taking action against this type of online violence before it has real world implications?
View Emmanuella Lambropoulos Profile
Lib. (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much, Mr. McGuinty and team, for being here with us today to answer our questions, and thanks for the work that you do on this committee to protect Canadians.
My question is about the spike in online hate and online hate groups. I can't help but notice the concern that people have with Bill C-10 and people's belief that it would infringe on their basic rights to express themselves and freedom of expression, which obviously our government has said it wouldn't do. Because this is the current fear, I'm wondering how our government could go forward. What would you recommend or what ways that could you see our government going forward with legislation to stop people who organize hatred online and push that kind of an agenda on social media and online?
In what ways can we limit the ability of these groups to have a negative influence on Canadians?
View Martin Champoux Profile
BQ (QC)
View Martin Champoux Profile
2021-03-29 11:28
I will interpret that response as a no. So I have to conclude that you don't have any francophone moderators in Quebec. It was a simple question that you could have answered with yes or no, but you are telling me that you do not want to disclose this information. That's all right.
Mr. Chan, you remember the sad events in Christchurch. I was asking you if you control the content that goes out on your platform, because we're discussing what information Facebook allows, and you have some control over what is broadcast on your platform. For 17 minutes, the Christchurch killer broadcast his actions live on the Facebook platform.
Do you think you could have stopped that broadcast at that time?
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I just have some quick questions for the witnesses on some of the online hate regulations.
Mr. Chan, in your last appearance before the committee, you stated that Facebook supports legislation that sets standards to prohibit hateful content online and that the current self-regulation of platforms is not sustainable.
Do you agree that the government's delay in introducing legislation is exacerbating the spread of hateful content online?
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
Do you think the government should provide for sufficiently strong monetary and criminal penalties to encourage platforms to act quickly to remove hateful content?
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
Maybe just from your own perspective, even though you have [Technical difficulty—Editor] make sense for there to be strong monetary and criminal penalties, if social media platforms don't take off hateful comment in a timely manner?
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
I'm assuming that's a yes, and that you also agree that there would be a reason for us to be able to use judicial and financial penalties to hold Facebook to account if it were not taking down hateful content in a timely manner.
View Anthony Housefather Profile
Lib. (QC)
I understand and appreciate that, Mr. Chan, but your CEO, before Congress, committed not to establishing Spanish-speaking moderators but increasing the number of Spanish-speaking moderators in the United States, so he disclosed that there were Spanish-speaking moderators in the United States.
I don't understand how we cannot know if there are French-speaking moderators in Canada. We're not asking who they are or where they are. I would request that you get back to the committee in writing if you are able to disclose whether there are or are not French-speaking moderators in Canada.
Let me move to another question.
You said that all Facebook policies are published, and I appreciate that. However, you have guidelines that you give to the content moderators that are not published. The Guardian, on March 23, [Technical difficulty—Editor] moderators, and noted that it spelled out differentiations between protections for private and public individuals.
In Quebec, several mayors have said they will not run in the next election because they have received threats on social media.
[Technical difficulty—Editor] that, given that people in Quebec now are not running for re-election because of social media, I'm a bit concerned that the guidelines seem to specify that private individuals cannot be targeted with calls for death on Facebook, but public figures simply cannot be purposely exposed to such calls.
Therefore, it would be interpreted that it is legitimate under Facebook's harassment policies to call for the death of a public figure as long as the user does not tag them in the post. Are these reports about these policies accurate in terms of the guidelines being given to moderators?
View Marci Ien Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Marci Ien Profile
2021-03-29 12:11
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. You're doing an excellent job today.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here.
Mr. Chan, I want to start with you and focus on hate speech, if I might, for a bit. We have seen what has happened with anti-Asian hate. A lot of it was born on social media and ramped up because of that. It has been reported that per capita there is more anti-Asian hate and there are more incidents thereof in Canada, in fact, than in the United States.
I'm just wondering, with regard to Facebook and how you run things, whether anything has changed. Have you ramped up efforts to curb that kind of hate?
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