Hate groups need legislative stops on fundraising, security committee hears

Extremist groups are able to propagate their message and raise funds because Canada does not have legislation that prevents it, the House Committee on Public Safety and National Security was told on Thursday. Further hindering lawmakers is that many of the fundraising platforms are located in the United States and are not subject to Canadian laws. “It’s not just the propagandists who are profiting from this, it’s the companies themselves so we need to create some disincentives for them not be able to make the kind of money they’re making from hateful content, from extremist content. It’s not a simple solution but I think it’s where the conversation needs to go,” Jessica Davis, president of Insight Threat Intelligence told MPs. “Compounding this problem is the fact that we have no laws against extremist financing and few laws that can be used to prevent individuals from profiting from that hateful content,” she stated. Her fellow panelist Aurélie Campana of Laval University maintained that the problem of hate speech online can be addressed through regulation of social media. Efforts must be made to stem the spread of hateful ideology. “Some individuals do emerge as influencers and they’ve used that position to fund themselves and finance other movements,” Campana said. “Those individuals are able to circulate from one platform to another and they do warrant our attention.” On Wednesday, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez announced an expert advisory group on online safety that would assist his department in the developing on legislation aimed at combatting online hate. "Canadians should be able to express themselves freely and openly without fear of harm online. We conducted a consultation last year and released the What We Heard Report earlier this year. It’s clear that harmful online content is a serious problem, but there is no consensus on how to address it. We’re asking the expert advisory group to go back to the drawing board," Rodriguez said in a Wednesday release. "We need to address this problem openly and transparently as a society. I’m grateful to the experts who will dedicate their time and experience in the next few months to helping us tackle this complex issue. It’s too important to not get right.” The advisory panel, made up of 12 people from across academia and the advocacy sector, will hold nine workshops and consult with stakeholders to discuss how to contruct the legislation. Daniel Rogers of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) pointed out that the groups fundraise through the sale of shirts, caps and other paraphernalia. This not only enriches them but allows them to spread their message and for fellow believers to connect. He used the example of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington, D.C. of how radicals employed social media to propagate their message. It is difficult to prosecute such groups because many have charity status in the United States. Another panelist, Louis Audet Gosselin of the Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence, echoed that view. “Crowdfunding, in addition to the sale of merchandise, is this kind of movement’s go-to source of funding which monetizes individual memberships and engages forcefully in online mobilization,” Gosselin said. Rogers advocated a carrot-and-stick approach, offering incentives as well as penalties to platforms that host hate speech. “One is better definitions and that’s a place where I think industry has a lot of trouble. In the U.S. you have unfortunately where a lot of these groups have charity designation and you’re asking commercial companies to go against official government designation. So having better definitions and stronger enforcement around those definitions,” he said. “And I think the other area is liability. Platforms currently enjoy a blanket and a historical waiver in the United States and if that could change, that would be the stick side of things.” Both the politicians and the panelists talked about the recent Freedom Convoy in Ottawa as an illustration of extremist opinions being hyped through social media. Gosselin said that while American groups have fomented a response in Canada, the Canadian action spurred similar protests around the world. Rogers warned against viewing the tech platforms as solely interested in the money they could raise. “Certainly financial considerations are part of it although I guess one of the lessons I’ve learned in the last few years of doing this work is that it’s only a part of it,” he stated. “I imagine the amount of money that GoFundMe made off that convoy is not very much and so it probably goes more deeply to the culture of the tech industry of being relatively anti-regulation, pro-free speech and there’s a sort of cultural headwind toward taking action.” Freedom of speech was also a topic Davis raised. “This gets into a tricky situation in terms of freedom of expression and allowing people to say what they will online,” she said. “But I think we might be on firmer ground if we look to restrict the ability of individuals to raise funds from hateful comment.” Gosselin said disinformation further extenuates radicalization. Rogers was asked how he defines the term. “We spend a lot of time at the GDI looking through how we define the problem,” he stated. “I think so many of the mainstream or common definitions of disinformation give a false dichotomy of true or false. People say disinformation is intentionally lying on the internet but I would say that simplistic definition does not pass what I like to call the Santa Claus test." "If it was really about someone lying on the internet, we would be clamoring to deplatform every mention of Santa Claus and we’re not doing that," Gosselin said. "So we look at disinformation through the lens of what we call adversarial narrative conflict. Anytime someone’s peddling a misleading narrative either implicitly or explicitly often using cherry-picked elements of the truth combined with falsehoods.” The problem of radicalization is not new, he noted. But extremists of past decades did not have access to social media companies and their algorithms. –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

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