Thank you very much.
Dear honourable MPs and committee members, thank you for the invitation to address the committee and talk about the impact of disinformation on the work of parliamentarians. I will rely here on my previous academic research on the topic.
I think there are different internal and external challenges.
First, in connection to internal challenges, there is no doubt that Canadian politicians need to be continuously and factually informed about many national and international events and issues. The belief and spread of disinformation could create a serious obstacle in understanding these events. The result could ultimately influence democracy in a negative way.
It's important here to develop adequate verification skills and methods that largely rely on scientific consensus and collective intelligence about various issues. This is a fluid issue, because such consensus could change with time, depending on the emerging empirical evidence. Parliamentarians have to feel more comfortable navigating uncertainty.
Of course, there need to be thorough efforts to find factual pieces of information by examining different and alternative credible sources, assessing a variety of angles and reading beyond the news reports themselves. This verification needs to be done even if the information comes from Canada's allies, such as the Five Eyes.
The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq is just one example of how disinformation about Iraq's alleged link to al Qaeda or possession of weapons of mass destruction led to disastrous outcomes, not only to this country's infrastructure but also to millions of people.
More importantly, disinformation today has become a highly politicized and weaponized issue. Media literacy is not the magic key to counter it. This is because some very media-literate political actors have themselves a vested interest in spreading disinformation to serve their own political agenda.
In addition, there are external challenges when it comes to disinformation targeting parliamentarians. In my research about foreign actors targeting Canada on social media, for example, I found ample evidence of many foreign states' disinformation campaigns that were especially directed at Canadian politicians.
For example, the Saudi actors were slightly more active and negative, followed by Russian, Iranian and Chinese actors, when it comes to targeting parliamentarians. As for the overall amount of disinformation targeting Canadians in general, the Russian actors were more interested in spreading disinformation, followed by Iran, China and Saudi Arabia.
Ideologically, Russian-affiliated actors continuously attacked Mr. Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party, focusing specifically on MPs from Muslim backgrounds. These actors mostly aligned themselves with the far right in Canada in terms of attacking minorities, especially Muslims and, to a lesser degree, LGBT communities.
As for Iranian actors, they focused their attacks on the Conservative Party, as well as Canadian MPs from Iranian origins who are critical of the regime.
The Saudi and Chinese trolls also attacked Mr. Trudeau, mainly due to the presence and activities of some critical human rights activists in Canada.
Other actors that are involved in spreading disinformation and that often target Canadians in general include extremist groups and wealthy elites, some of whom employ front groups and organizations to cause confusion about how we perceive reality.
For example, the oil and gas industry and the vaping industry in Canada are active in doing so.
The polarized public can also be part of these information activities. In my research, I often saw that they target the intersectional identities of racialized Canadian politicians, especially from minority backgrounds.
To mitigate the problem with disinformation, I suggest creating a non-partisan fact-checking initiative at the House of Commons, consisting of a variety of experts. The initiative needs to exclusively focus on fact-checking the evidence provided that is making different claims, rather than assessing opinions.
Thank you very much.