NDP MP Charlie Angus expects Zuckerberg to appear in committee next week in London

NDP Member of Parliament Charlie Angus says if Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg does not show up to testify in the United Kingdom next week, then it “sends a wrong message,” and expects for the CEO to show up at the meeting.

Angus said laughing during a November 20th, 2018 phone interview that the parliamentarians will have to “cross or burn that bridge when we get to it” if Zuckerberg decides not to show up to the meeting on November 27th, 2018.

Angus, who is the vice-chair of the House Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, said that he will be travelling with the committee’s chair Conservative MP Bob Zimmer, and other vice-chair Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith later this week to take part in the first-ever joint country committee meeting.

The committee will also be holding an in-camera meeting (closed to the public and media) on November 21th, 2018, during which Angus said the committee plans to finalize the report on its study on Cambridge Analytica. Angus was not able to say what some of the committee’s recommendations were.

The committee has met 22 times non-consecutively since April 2018.

On October 31st, 2018, a joint request was made by the government of the U.K. and Canada, who both summoned Zuckerberg to testify on issues surrounding the Cambridge Analytica scandal — the firm that helped with U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign by harvesting data from millions of Facebook users.

As Chair of the Access to Information, Privacy & Ethics Committee in Canada am working with my counterpart in the UK MP @DamianCollins to call on @Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear before an International Grand Committee on disinformation and ‘fake news’ Nov 27, 2018. #ETHI pic.twitter.com/8iOlXZVpoV

— Bob Zimmer MP (@bobzimmermp) October 31, 2018

“I along with my counterpart in the U.K. Damien Collins, wrote a letter to Mark Zuckerberg asking him to appear before our international grand committee in London…We’ve already asked him in Canada twice and he’s chosen not to appear,” Zimmer said in a Twitter video posted on October 31st, 2018. “We want to hear from Mark Zuckerberg directly, his response to the data breach in Canada and the U.K. and also the response to how they’re going to handle fake news in the future.”

Zimmer said in the video that he was “deeply concerned” about the effects of Facebook on “our democracies

Facebook put out a statement since then indicating that they will not send Zuckerberg and never have done so to appear and testify in committee. Facebook indicated it would only send senior representatives to confront lawmakers, which Angus said was not acceptable.

“The fact that…a massive corporation who has lobbied the Canadian government, who looks for breaks from the Canadian government shows disrespect to the Canadian Parliament, I think that to me sends a wrong message for corporate leaders,” Angus said. “We are hoping Mr. Zuckerberg will come and we expect he will come and we will deal with what comes out of the decision when we get to the U.K.”

He also noted that he wasn’t sure where the committee would be after the Tuesday meeting, but that the committee chairs would be “asking a series of questions hopefully to Mr. Zuckerberg based on what we felt came out of the testimony that we heard.”

He added that it was time for Facebook to “show some level of coherent understanding of their social responsibilities” and be present to answer questions or else it might be time to “start looking at various jurisdictions at legislating and…maybe treating them as a utility.”

Since the initial joint proposal, many other countries have asked to also sign onto the proposal for Zuckerberg to appear in front of the committee including, Singapore, Australia, Argentina, Ireland, Brazil, and Latvia, Angus said.

He added that the joint U.K.-Canada committee drafted a second letter with other countries that was sent to Zuckerberg on November 16th, 2018

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