Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much. I served with Mr. Krishnamurthy on the expert advisory group. This is something we grappled with quite a lot. Of course, major platforms like Facebook and so on have many employees and can easily staff up, but we often see these harms, particularly now with generative AI lowering the barrier to entry, that could be a couple of individuals who create complete havoc or very small firms.

Canadian Heritage committee  We didn't specifically discuss generative AI that much within our group, but I think that within Bill C-63 there's certainly at least an attention to the question of deepfakes. I think there's a concept of a duty to act responsibly that's certainly capacious enough to be able to deal with these kinds of updates.

Canadian Heritage committee  Bill C-63 is a step in the right direction to address a problem that, tragically, is swiftly worsening. I'm looking forward to your questions.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to appear virtually before you to discuss this important topic. I'm a professor and Canada research chair at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. I direct the centre for the study of democratic institutions, where we research platforms and media.

Justice committee  Yes. Let me give a couple of examples because it obviously has a broad range. Part of it has to do with the funding and architecture that Professor Emon already talked about, so I'll flag that as something that's a continual problem. The structures of funding we have in place right now make it hard to do a lot of the work that we're describing.

Justice committee  Thank you so much. I actually testified before the international grand committee and was there to hear those hearings, so I'm very much in tune with that. One part of the puzzle is that international coordination, of which Canada is a key part as a co-chair. That committee has done a really good job of bringing together MPs from 14 different countries that represent over 400 million people, and still Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg did not appear.

Justice committee  Yes. I will make four points very quickly. The first, in terms of liability, is the question of what USMCA will allow. There is a question mark over whether the CDA, Communications Decency Act, section 230, is embedded within the USMCA, which could potentially make it hard for Canada to deal with liability.

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for the invitation to appear before you today. It is frankly disturbing that we live in a world where online hate is rising, where what Whitney Phillips has called “the oxygen of amplification” has elevated extremist views and where in several cases online hate speech has directly led to offline violence, so I very much welcome the committee's careful consideration of how Canada can address these troubling developments.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the distinguished members of the international grand committee for the kind invitation to speak before you today. It's really an honour to support international co-operation in this form. In my work, I wear two hats. I'm a historian and I analyze policy.