Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 26th, 2019

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

In Bill C-76 there was a tightening based on the recommendations from the former CEO of Elections Canada to tighten the language surrounding false statements made against candidates. The previous clause in the Elections Act was too vague and unenforceable. We tightened it up, so it would be based on statements you could prove or disprove.

For example, if someone accused candidate X of having a criminal record, that's something you could prove or disprove. The mechanism, with regard to our elections legislation, is a complaint filed with the Commissioner of Canada Elections to which it would then respond.

The resources to the commissioner have been increased. Another very important element of this is that the commissioner has been both moved back into Elections Canada, but also empowered to initiate and lay charges as well as compel testimony. The powers have been strengthened, so the commissioner can be more effective in applying our legislation.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

One of your pillars is enhancing citizen preparedness, because the more education citizens have, the more robust the system will be. There will be less ambiguity. You mentioned something in your opening comments about creating a digital citizen initiative.

Can you give us a little background on what that is?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

One of the pieces of advice that is probably the best that I've heard, but also the most relevant, is that when we're talking about cyber-threats to our democracy, ultimately, the target is the citizen. Around the world, our counterparts have highlighted the fact that a resilient citizenry is the best tool with regard to fighting back against misinformation campaigns.

We announced $7 million for our digital citizenship initiative that will provide funding to civil society organizations in the realms of digital media and civic literacy. This is an extraordinarily important initiative. Over the past couple of years, particularly with the 2016 U.S. elections, it was a bit of a wake-up call to western democracies that we were taking our democracy a little bit for granted. It's important to ensure we continue to talk about democracy and democratic values in our own country, otherwise we could stand the chance of losing them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Saini.

Ms. Kusie.

[Stephanie Kusie, Calgary Midnapore, CPC]

Minister, it's always lovely to see you. I love that necklace by the way. It's just beautiful.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

[Stephanie Kusie]

Also, I want to say that I really enjoyed your speech yesterday at the AI event. It was very informal. I think you should go with that format more, even when you come to committees. You do it so well. I wanted to compliment you on that.

You talked a lot about vulnerabilities. That was a major theme for you. Of course, as the opposition, we very much take seriously our responsibility to hold the government to account, in terms of safeguarding the election. I would say that at almost every step, we feel as though the government has failed, and not gone far enough in taking the steps required to safeguard the election.

I would use examples from Bill C-76.

The social platform registry, the most basic of information, in my opinion, didn't perhaps go far enough, in terms of protecting Canadians, and providing information, as well as data management.

My colleague made mention of the foreign interference aspect. I've said this several times before. We, as the official opposition, put forward over 200 amendments. Many of them were rejected. As I have said previously, I feel very strongly that what we came out with in Bill C-76 was a slap on the hand for foreign interference. You know, “This is bad. You shouldn't do this,” rather than legislating specific mechanisms, such as segregated bank accounts, which would make foreign interference impossible, from a monetary perspective.

More relevant to what my colleague, the Honourable Peter Kent, mentioned, is the funding outside of the writ and pre-writ periods, which is really still open season. It is, as we've come to see, severely affecting other parts of our democracy, including both immigration and—something very dear to my heart, as an Albertan—pipeline approval.

That's just the beginning. I certainly won't go into our positions, in terms of the vulnerabilities created by non-resident voting, voter identification cards and the changes to vouching in Bill C-76. This is something you've said is very important to you and the government. Yet we see that the steps to absolutely go to the furthest length possible to protect these electoral processes are not being taken. It was touched upon yesterday. My colleague, Mr. Saini, mentioned it briefly in his questioning earlier. It was mentioned by a former member of the Liberal government and the Liberal cabinet, someone I have much respect for and who is a former colleague of mine from foreign affairs, Allan Rock. It was in regard to, again, the management of social media platforms.

Of course, we are always looking for a balance in society. As I stated in my testimony at PROC last week, we have to rely on these corporations, with the objective to maximize shareholder value, to take it upon themselves to self-regulate. I understand that opens up questions such as free speech, etc. Hee did mention a concern that perhaps more than nudging needs to take place. My concern is also with your response, or what seemed to be your response. I'll give you the opportunity to address that. You seem to want to put it upon PROC to do a study, giving you coverage: if you decide to take action with legislation, you can say, “Well, the committee did a study, and this is what they told me.”

I'm asking you if you are ready and willing, in regard to the social media platform, to make the hard decisions and take the hard actions, not six months from now, but now, please.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Kusie. I do understand that you actually put a motion forward at PROC to study this issue.

[Stephanie Kusie]

I did.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Yes, so that committee would make that decision.

One thing I want to clarify, because this is the second time you've mentioned it, is in Bill C-76 third parties are now required to have separate bank accounts so they can account for all the money coming in. I think that was a really important issue to put forward, particularly to account for where money is coming from.

With regard to the vulnerabilities that I mentioned yesterday and often on this topic, you can pull those directly from the CSE report on cyber-threats to our democracy. They highlight very clearly that the principal threats with regard to cyber-interference are with regard to people mostly: politicians, political parties and the media, any time there is human interaction. As often is the case, those individuals and actors on the one hand may not be practising what is called good cyber-hygiene two-factor authentication and ensure they're protecting their accounts as well as possible, but also with regard to being susceptible to influence strategies and campaigns. When talking about those vulnerabilities, those are the ones I was referring to.

With regard to Bill C-76, on the whole I'm quite proud of the legislation because I think its primary objective is to ensure that all Canadians have the possibility to vote. I think that was really important in extending vouching for our most vulnerable Canadians, in ensuring that the voter information card can be used to establish residency, which we know, for example, for single senior women, is often a barrier to voting because they don't have those pieces of residence information.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, we're past time.

Next up, for five minutes, is Mr. Erskine-Smith.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you for being here, Minister.

Our committee has recommended imposing a duty on social media platforms to remove manifestly illegal content in a timely fashion, including hate speech, harassment and disinformation, or risk monetary sanctions. I want to read a comment. This was in response to a media article about the hate and threats from the yellow vest movement. Interestingly, I think if they knew that the yellow vest movement in France was calling for a wealth tax, minimum wage, maybe they wouldn't associate with the yellow vest movement so much here in Canada, but they called Mr. Trudeau a “traitor to our country” who deserves to be “hung for treasonous crimes”. That's posted on Facebook; that was left on Facebook; Facebook doesn't take it down, so should we expect social media companies to act or should we require them to act?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

I should clarify that my expectations have to fall within the electoral context at this point as I'm Minister of Democratic Institutions. However, that being said, I think we are moving in a direction where we need to require social media companies to act. That is outside the scope of my specific mandate right now, but I think that when we have very clear evidence that they are contravening laws here in Canada, they should be acting responsibly in that manner.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I appreciate that. So within your mandate, we have Bill C-76, which rightfully creates a registry of ads, both in the writ and pre-writ periods. Is there any confidence in the conversations you've had with Facebook and others that they will ensure that database is as accessible as possible, with journalists in mind specifically?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

I have had that assurance from Facebook. I know all the social media companies are also looking to speak with Elections Canada to get clarification because Elections Canada ultimately will interpret the law and determine how that is, but my understanding is that they're trying to make that accessible and available to Canadians.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

With respect to Bill C-76, the focus is on transparency of advertising and that's really important, but there was an interesting comment when Mr. Zimmer and I were in Washington last July for a round table. Senator Warner said when they started looking into this issue, advertising was their main focus and that turned out to be the tip of the iceberg. The hijacking of the algorithms themselves was the real problem, whether it's the Internet Research Agency troll farms, or some other organizations'. How do you see the steps that your office has taken as a solution to that problem?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

I've read Senator Warner's report as well. It's very interesting in this space, and probably one of the better reports I've read.

I tend to see the steps we've taken as steps to address the problems we've identified so far, understanding that this is an evolving field and that our understanding of the issue continues to grow.

In terms of full disclosure, as the minister responsible for this portfolio, I will say that when I came into it, I was thinking about hack and leak attempts. Over the course of the past two years, our understanding of the issue has changed dramatically. Right now, as an international community but also here in Canada, we are trying to understand the depth and breadth of the issue and come up with solutions that will attack the core of the problem. That's where I thank the committee for doing the work you've done, because it's really important in informing next steps.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

You mentioned hacks. I read the CSE's threat assessment report. I understand there might be a new one forthcoming, but I read the last one. It said that the electoral system has great integrity, and that it was not so worried about Elections Canada or the voting system being hacked, but that it's the political actors who are the great weakness in this. We've seen MPs and senators already hacked, as far as it goes.

Therefore, when I look at $7 million for a digital citizenship initiative and I think of $7 million spent across the country, how are we actually going to educate Canadians between now and October? Wouldn't that $7 million for training and education purposes actually be better allocated to educating politicians, political staff, volunteers and riding associations, and to making sure I get the training that I, my staff and my volunteers need to make sure we prevent our accounts from being hacked?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

There is an issue of parliamentary privilege with that, in terms of the fact that Parliament gets to decide what information you choose to use and not use. In the announcement, we put out a series of infographics and educational tools that I invite any parliamentarian or Canadian to use and look at in order to see how best to protect themselves.

The cyber centre of the CSE, which André can speak to a bit afterward, is stood up but will be available for parliamentarians, as well as politicians and their political entities, should they choose to use it, and we will be reinforcing the “get cyber safe” campaign as well, so we all have a bit of ownership and responsibility to make sure we are demonstrating leadership in this area.

That being said, you can practise the very best cyber-hygiene out there and still be a victim of a hack.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you.

Just for the room, we have three more questioners to ask questions. We started a bit late; hopefully that's not a problem for the minister.

We're going to go to Mr. Gourde for five minutes.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here, Minister.

Canadians will no doubt be very concerned by what we have heard about the digital threats Facebook generates. What we heard during the latest election in Unites States could certainly also happen in Canada.

It is difficult to deal with or report this infamous advertising and fake news published on Facebook, and it takes so much time. A new advertisement on Facebook can make the headlines for 24 or 48 hours, even if it is completely false, regardless of the party being attacked. Afterwards, it will be declared as false, but the news has already spread throughout the public or has already swept its way into Canadians' minds. If that happens repeatedly, we may well have a task force saying that it is wrong to do that, but it will not be enough.

How will it be publicly announced that those are fake news or false allegations in the media, such as Facebook?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

As I said, I don't think it is the government's role to decide which news is fake and which is real. That is a 21st century problem. We are living in a media world where news travels very quickly. I think that traditional media also play a role in ensuring not to report fake news. In addition, of course, politicians have a platform to say what they think. Owners of digital platforms also have a responsibility to ensure the platforms are not manipulated.

I am an eternal optimist, but I'm also a realist, and I want to point out that, during the United States presidential election, those in charge of digital platforms did not to try to disclose that type of manipulation and activities. At least, they are doing it now and are trying to avoid that kind of abuse. Of course, that is insufficient. They could do more, but at least people are more aware of that type of misinformation. As I already said, this is not the solution, but one of the things that could be done would be to educate Canadians about those threats, so that they can make informed decisions when they watch the news, be it real or fake.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Is it the role of Elections Canada to undertake a public awareness campaign at the beginning of the election campaign to educate Canadians about that reality, to tell them to be especially careful about it and to report it if they hear fake news or feel wronged by what is happening in social media?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

That is an excellent question. Since Elections Canada is an independent government organization, that may be a question for the chief electoral officer. However, I can say that, in Bill C-76, we have given back the power to the chief electoral officer to inform Canadians on elections. If that is something that interests him, he could talk to Canadians about it.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

It is clear that the next election will be crucial. In this new media environment, we will all follow things closely, at least as a legislator and political players. Should we prepare to take action following the 2019 election?