Evidence of meeting #114 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was news.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Associate Professor of Journalism, Media School, UQAM, As an Individual
You won't find Facebook sending reporters to Moosejaw or Rimouski.
The news media need to be protected. I'm pleased about the renewal of the Canada Media Fund and the importance being assigned to financial support for our media. We don't want them to disappear in the short, medium or long term.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
I fully agree. We believe that support for local media is very important.
You spoke just now about news avoidance. Those media that were using Facebook as their main avenue of dissemination have been cut off from its network. Is Facebook's decision to block news contributing to news avoidance?
Associate Professor of Journalism, Media School, UQAM, As an Individual
Yes, definitely. Action of that kind has to be considered bad corporate citizenship. It's unacceptable for news to be blocked in Canada. We are the only G-7 country without access to news that reports events like forest fires in the Northwest Territories. The U.S. elections will be held in early November, and the next general election in Canada will probably be next year. This blocking is indeed becoming a major problem for Canadian society as a whole.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Can we expect to see deep fakes used in the U.S. and other elections?
Associate Professor of Journalism, Media School, UQAM, As an Individual
Yes, definitely. The media are often required to be transparent about the tools they use. Most of the media now have a charter under which they are required to indicate whether artificial intelligence software has been used. So the media are being transparent, but full transparency from the social networks about their algorithms should also be required.
The good news is that there are agreements on the role of the media and fact-checking among the major international press agencies like the Canadian Press, Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press. So videos can be streamed in only a few minutes or a few hours. But the future looks bleak, because there will certainly be deep fakes during the next federal election.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Villemure.
Thank you, Mr. White.
Mr. Green, you have six minutes. Go ahead, please.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you very much.
I would like to try to the best of my ability to get through this round and allow each of the guests to be able to answer, because it is ultimately our responsibility to get back some good recommendations, and while they were put forward in the opening remarks, I wanted the opportunity for our guests to be able to expand on them.
Could you provide examples of best practices in other jurisdictions of countering disinformation, misinformation and malinformation in the work of parliamentarians?
We can go from Mr. White over. The order of operations doesn't matter here.
Executive Director, MediaSmarts
I'll start.
I can't speak specifically to the work of parliamentarians per se, because we haven't researched that. We have looked at society writ large, all citizens, and we have made the assumption that parliamentarians are citizens as well; hence, what is valuable to citizens will be valuable to parliamentarians and their staff as well.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Has there been any reflection or conversation around the use of these tools by political parties?
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
You're using your information to inform the public, but I'm wondering if, in your studies or areas of interest, you have given consideration to the way political parties could potentially use these tools and tactics to further exacerbate some of the divisions and social upheaval that we're seeing.
Executive Director, MediaSmarts
We have not done that work, no.
Just to clarify—
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
That's okay. I'll go on to Mr. White on the topic of best practices.
Associate Professor of Journalism, Media School, UQAM, As an Individual
I would recommend that you look at the leadership of the European Union and the strength of 28 or 29 countries that are heavily funding media literacy programs and programs against disinformation. Look at their website and all of the conferences they have held in the past few years. The EU is the place to look at and to explore yourself.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Are you finding, in your studies, that the recommendations, policies or laws put in place have yielded any kind of discernible result? Is there a way to track the effectiveness of it?
Associate Professor of Journalism, Media School, UQAM, As an Individual
They are able to in France. They have been doing so for years and have imposed major fines on Meta and Google for lack of respect for privacy or other issues—even the push for royalties for news media organizations across the EU. Yes, they have a leadership position in all of those fields.
Executive Director, MediaSmarts
There is evidence from other nations that support such strategies that the strategies are working. It was mentioned earlier this morning.
Finland is an excellent example. They have been doing this work for quite a long time. They have adopted an approach that is about educating all ages, from day care to seniors homes. They are very focused on building the capacity of their citizens to recognize and identify a misinformation or disinformation process. They have excellent evaluation and research that is showing they are much more resilient, as was mentioned earlier this morning, against any efforts to try to influence citizens with misinformation or disinformation. They're much more competent, capable and empowered.
We did a research study with funding from the Government of Canada. We talked to seven or eight different countries about the initiatives they have undertaken. We're happy to make that research and report available to you folks. Absolutely, the EU is doing wonderful work. Finland, Latvia, Australia and the U.K. have made phenomenal progress in the past four to five years.
Canada was a leader in media literacy. We have a fabulous tradition. We would love to see that continue. We're a little behind, but we have every opportunity to catch up and surpass, because we have amazing people in our country who are phenomenal experts in this area.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I'll share this with you with a bit of humility—I think somebody mentioned something about one's own intellectual honesty.
There have been moments where I may have retweeted something that wasn't 100% factually correct and that caused concern or perhaps harm in communities. If you recognize this, of course, you want to delete it. You want to address it in a way that addresses the harm that was caused.
I'm wondering, Ms. Hill, whether you could provide consideration in your future work, perhaps, to helping us, as parliamentarians, create resources to ensure we're not spreading misinformation, disinformation and malinformation.
Ms. Hill and Mr. White, as well, could you also perhaps reflect on ways in which we can raise our accountability in public discourse in order to make sure the things we're talking about are, indeed, factual? Could you perhaps provide some ethical guidelines on ways, as elected officials with national platforms, we can hold ourselves to a higher level of accountability and ethical standard when it comes to this? In populist moments—I won't even say whether they're left or right populist moments—when information spreads like wildfire, I would hope our committee could come forth in a non-partisan way with some recommendations that help reflect this.
Is that something you're willing to help with, Ms. Hill and Mr. White?
Associate Professor of Journalism, Media School, UQAM, As an Individual
We can, with pleasure, absolutely.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Green.
We're going to the next round of two and a half minutes each, because there is a bit of committee business I need to take care of. We're done at 1:05 on the clock.
Mr. Kurek, you have two and a half minutes. Go ahead.