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Results: 1 - 15 of 46
View Jean Yip Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you very much, everyone, for taking the time to give your important testimony.
My question is directed to Mr. Chu. It must be very hard not to be able to speak to your parents. In your opening statement, you mentioned how simply retweeting can land you into trouble. How are people in Hong Kong now using social media to express their views?
Samuel M. Chu
View Samuel M. Chu Profile
Samuel M. Chu
2020-08-13 13:42
We obviously saw it in the Houston Rockets case, where the general manager retweeted something and China literally shut down basketball for a time for the whole country.
In my case, and to your question, people in Hong Kong are still engaging, but I think there have already been signs that they are being tracked. The four young activists who were arrested about three weeks ago were specifically picked up, arrested and charged for social media posting. That is the same charge that Agnes Chow, another prominent leader who was arrested on Monday, is being targeted for. They are saying that she used social media as a way of engaging in inciting secession and calling for foreign influence.
View Peter Fragiskatos Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you very much, Chair.
I have a question about issues relating to what Mr. Wong brought up.
Mr. Wong, thank you very much for being a voice for youth.
My question relates to social media. Social media has provided—and not just with respect to Hong Kong, though we are focusing on Hong Kong—a space for democratic activism. To what extent is it fair to say that the national security law completely upends the opportunity for activists, in particular youth activists, to engage in issues around democracy?
Davin Wong
View Davin Wong Profile
Davin Wong
2020-08-11 12:18
As this committee may have been aware, Telegram, an instant-messaging application, has been one of the major channels of communication with Hong Kong young people especially. The police force a few months ago actually confiscated a few channels on Telegram. I would say that even without the national security law, social media are not a safe space for young protesters in Hong Kong. What I think we should be concerned about is how this overreaching jurisdiction provided by the national security law may have further threatened this kind of communication in Hong Kong and outside of Hong Kong as well.
Bernard Racicot
View Bernard Racicot Profile
Bernard Racicot
2020-07-20 14:19
Good afternoon.
My name is Bernard Racicot and I am the coordinator at the Maison des jeunes des Basses-Laurentides. Unfortunately, Ms. Manon Coursol cannot attend this meeting because she is on holiday. She sends her apologies.
The Maison des jeunes des Basses-Laurentides is first and foremost a gathering place for young people, mainly aged 12 to 17, from the greater Sainte-Thérèse region. They come here to spend quality time and are accompanied by the team of counsellors who give them a warm welcome. This place must be safe, lively, motivating and dynamic. We also want it to be a place in their image.
The Maison des jeunes is also a meeting place for a community that cares about young people, their experiences and their opinions, where ideas emerge, where discussions are lively, sometimes very lively even, and where awareness, problem-solving and prevention projects take shape. As a partner in the community, the Maison des jeunes is involved, in its own way, in concerted action plans with the municipality, public safety, the various levels of government, the health and social services centre and other community partners. We work as a team.
Our mandate is to be a privileged gathering place so that teenagers who come to see us experience the most harmonious transition possible into adulthood. We accompany them through the various stages of their lives. During the summer period, we are present through community work in various targeted locations in the municipality where some young people are about to adopt risky behaviours.
As I said earlier, our clientele is made up of young people aged 12 to 17 who live in the Sainte-Thérèse and Lower Laurentians region. First of all, they come out of curiosity. All the young people who come to see us do so of their own free will. Second, they come because they find a place in their image. We also want to identify with them.
Customers are not excluded on the basis of their age, but rather on the basis of their behaviour. We will make sure that young people behave in a respectful and community oriented manner at the Maison des jeunes. They must respect themselves, respect others, and respect the ethics and values of the Maison des jeunes.
Our mission is to foster the development of self-esteem by offering presence and active listening, by providing individual and group interventions, by leading young people to experience success—this last point is very important—by helping them to adopt values related to respect and autonomy, and by developing their social skills so that they can live with others, despite their differences, without experiencing rejection.
Our interventions take the form of promotional activities. We include all young people in our awareness and referral activities. Social intervention encourages the development of ties with young people to enable them to communicate, exchange, open up and feel important and reassured. Educational intervention helps develop social, academic, cultural and athletic skills. Broadly speaking, this is what we do at the Maison des jeunes.
We organize several activities. I'm a music teacher, so music activities are more part of my role as a counsellor. We want to put young people in a context of success by organizing events with them where they will be put in the spotlight, producing studio recordings or concerts. This is a flagship activity at the Maison des jeunes.
We also have activities where young people learn to cook with what we have at the Maison des jeunes. For example, in the "pimp your food" activity, we try to see what we can do with a box of Kraft Dinner to make it better. We also do theatre and improvisation. We teach young people to develop their response mechanisms, respect for others and speech, as well as their ability to live as a team. We also organize sports activities and games. All this is aimed at building a relationship with young people.
Our young people feel marginalized. There is a lot of poverty in our community, in Sainte-Thérèse, but also a lot of anxiety. Our activities are therefore aimed at reaching young people in their community.
Our grants come mainly from the City of Sainte-Thérèse and the governments of Canada and Quebec. Our fundraising activities are very important. The events we organize, such as music concerts, allow us to raise a lot of funds.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected us in several ways. We had to close our doors on March 16. Since we are a youth centre, we had to stay closed. We were not able to carry out any activities until mid-May. So we organized meetings with young people on social networks—Messenger, Instagram and Zoom. It became very popular and it allowed us to communicate with youth where they were. We found out on social networks that young people who were taking courses on Zoom or through other means were very unmotivated and isolated. It was hard to reach them.
The crisis related to COVID-19 also forced us to cancel several concerts and fundraising activities. On May 8, we had planned a fundraising event, a lobster night, which usually raises between $30,000 and $40,000 in donations. We had to cancel that event. It was quite difficult for young people to accept that, because it's an opportunity for them to speak publicly and to highlight what we do.
In addition, we had to cancel concerts this summer, as well as the activity at Camp Péniel, which is very important. It was a three-day stay in the country. That too was very difficult for them to accept.
We resumed our activities on June 1, but unfortunately, we could not open the Maison des jeunes. All our activities take place outside, in the courtyard. We bought a garden pavilion to welcome young people, even when it rains and it is very hot. The young people come to see us in the courtyard, but we can unfortunately only accommodate 10 at a time.
We also go to the village of Sainte-Thérèse to try to reach out to young people. We announce our activities on social networks.
The strength of the Maison des jeunes is to be creative in its ways of reaching young people. Our watchword this summer is to adapt to the situation. Because of the pandemic, that is what we do every day. We take one step forward and two steps back. Our strength as a community organization is our ability to adapt.
Thank you for listening to me.
I'm ready to answer your questions, if there's time.
Charles Burton
View Charles Burton Profile
Charles Burton
2020-06-08 11:10
I would like to speak to the aspect of your study on determining whether Canada should place a temporary moratorium on acquisitions from state-owned enterprises of authoritarian countries. My area of expertise is China, so I'll talk about Chinese state-owned enterprises in this regard.
I had a look at the Investment Canada Act, and I see that the definition of “state-owned enterprise” is “an entity that is controlled or influenced, directly or indirectly, by a government or agency” or by “an individual who is acting under the direction of a government or agency” or “who is acting under the influence, directly or indirectly, of such a government or agency”.
In this regard I would point out that pursuant to the requirements of the company law of the People's Republic of China, a Chinese Communist Party committee led by its party secretary is required to be at the top of the management pyramid of People's Republic of China enterprises. According to our definition, while, for example, the firm Huawei does not self-identify as a People's Republic of China state enterprise, it is without question ultimately directed by Huawei’s Chinese Communist Party branch general secretary, Zhou Daiqi, who is required under party discipline to comply with direction from Beijing. This discipline would apply to all the party members of Huawei, including the CEO, Ren Zhengfei. I would say that Huawei and indeed all enterprises from China meet the Canadian definition of state-owned enterprise for the purposes of the Investment Canada Act.
Just to supplement that, I would point out that the career paths of leaders in major Chinese state enterprises are determined by the Chinese Communist Party central committee's organization department. Typically a leader in a state enterprise may be transferred by the party to work as a governor or party secretary of a province, and then back to a senior role in another PRC state business entity.
I would very much agree with the government’s recent policy statement on foreign investment review and COVID-19 that “Some investments into Canada by state-owned enterprises may be motivated by non-commercial imperatives that could harm Canada's economic or national security interests, a risk that is amplified in the current context.”
I think it's clear that there is a strong integration of Chinese state enterprises into the political and strategic goals of China’s Communist Party state. I note that Prime Minister Trudeau’s former senior policy adviser for global affairs and defence, Roland Paris, indicated in an article last week that the PRC “uses state-directed firms and targeted economic rewards and punishments to gain political leverage over other countries.” This seems to be a generally accepted view.
We have seen this applied with regard to China’s arbitrary violation of canola seed contracts with Canadian enterprises. There are many other examples that I would be happy to outline in the question period if asked.
Furthermore, looking at this aspect of the enterprises not being like corporate entities in democratic countries, if you look at the PRC's much touted belt and road initiative to restructure global infrastructure in China’s favour, many of the belt and road projects funded by China are in fact money losers, but serve the People's Republic of China's geostrategic interests all the same, and we see this phenomenon of “debt trap diplomacy” in which China has acquired ports in repayment for high levels of debt incurred by these money-losing unfeasible projects.
This is going on not just in the development world. PRC-associated companies’ acquisition of Chinese-language news media here in Canada and PRC-controlled social media applications such as WeChat actually enforce the People's Republic of China Communist Party’s propaganda department censorship norms over communications taking place on the soil of Canada. WeChat is censored out of Beijing even though the communications may occur entirely in Canada, say, between an MP and constituents via this app. I find this highly disturbing and a threat to our democracy.
Ultimately, I believe we should apply the principle of reciprocity in our assessment of Chinese state investment in Canada. For example, the Government of China forbids foreign firms from acquiring Chinese mines and other natural resources, under the Chinese constitution, on Chinese national security grounds. The same would apply for high-tech acquisitions in telecommunications. This is not reciprocal here in Canada. They're able to acquire things in Canada that we would not be able to acquire in China.
Let me conclude by suggesting that the principles of reciprocity and fairness are what our trade and investment policies should reflect. We need to stand up for the international rules-based order by our actions and not just by our rhetoric.
Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions and challenges later on in this event.
View Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Profile
Lib. (ON)
Because I have only a few minutes left, can you give our committee an update on your efforts to take Facebook to court?
Daniel Therrien
View Daniel Therrien Profile
Daniel Therrien
2020-05-29 14:39
Yes, I'll have to be careful, obviously, because we are before the Federal Court on this issue.
After completing the investigation report in spring 2019, we took the matter to the Federal Court of Canada in early 2020. We basically asked the Federal Court to order Facebook to comply with our recommendations.
As you know, under the current legislation, we don't have the power to require Facebook to accept our recommendations. That's why we took our request to the Federal Court in early 2020.
Facebook decided to file a motion to quash our request in Federal Court. Our request that the Federal Court order Facebook to comply with our recommendations and Facebook's motion to quash our efforts are therefore currently before the court.
View Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Bryant, you were speaking to the importance of freedom of speech. Of course, truth is important too. When it comes to social media companies, which are private actors that certainly have every right to downgrade content that is inaccurate and false and to highlight reliable sources, would you take any issue with broadcasting standards councils and other things like that, which would focus on and support truth and standards in the dissemination of information?
Michael Bryant
View Michael Bryant Profile
Hon. Michael Bryant
2020-05-29 16:18
I'm all for truth, if that's what you're asking. Our concern is primarily with censorship.
View Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Profile
Lib. (ON)
I do note, of course, if you say something false and it harms another person's reputation, of course you are restricted in saying that. So we do have censorship in a significant way in all sorts of contexts. Would you be opposed to the idea of social media councils in terms of the ethics of the information they are effectively pushing forward, as algorithms are replacing editors?
Michael Bryant
View Michael Bryant Profile
Hon. Michael Bryant
2020-05-29 16:19
I would need to know more about it. We're the CCLA, so we have the luxury of being able to be hardline on free speech, which you don't have pragmatically. I think I'd better leave it at that.
View Irek Kusmierczyk Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you very much.
I know that connecting with the next generation is also absolutely important, and connecting with young people as well on the work of the Auditor General is important.
Will we see the AG's work on Instagram any time soon?
Karen Hogan
View Karen Hogan Profile
Karen Hogan
2020-05-29 12:52
I am sure someone in our office is screaming. I don't know what they would tell me or if it's yes or no, but I'll look into that. How does that sound?
View Annie Koutrakis Profile
Lib. (QC)
View Annie Koutrakis Profile
2020-05-19 18:37
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My question is for you, Mr. Greenspon. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional news media had experienced declining revenues, with many publications being seriously downsized or closing altogether. This has clearly affected the ability to carry out the informed journalism that is essential to the functioning of our democracy. I'm sure you will agree with that.
COVID-19 has accelerated the negative impact on the news media at a time when we need objective, fact-based journalism to keep citizens well informed. At the same time, some people use social media to spread disinformation. What actions or roles should the federal government take to address the spread of this disinformation around COVID-19 and other serious policy issues?
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