Thanks very much, Chair.
I want to share with the committee an example of real-life disinformation, and it's been propagated by Ms. Khalid and her colleagues: disinformation while talking about disinformation. I'm going to share a Canadian Press story from August 28, 2024. It deals exactly with some of the contents of the motion and what Ms. Khalid talked about before.
It reads:
There is no evidence that indicates the federal Conservatives were behind a bot network on social media that praised a Pierre Poilievre rally, a new study has found.
The Canadian Digital Media Research Network launched an investigation after hundreds of X accounts posted about the Conservative leader's July rally in Kirkland Lake, Ont., all using the same language with phrases like “buzzing with energy” and “as a northern Ontarian.”
The fact that the posts were so similar immediately raised questions about who was behind the network of bots, with the NDP and Liberals pointing the finger at the Conservatives.
The Conservative Party denied having any involvement.
Results from the investigation were published on Wednesday.
“Despite this significant speculation and associated accusations, we find no evidence that indicates a political party or foreign entity employed this bot network for political purposes,” said Aengus Bridgman, Director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory and a contributor of the report.
Instead, the researchers said they believe it was an amateur experimenting with a bot pipeline by sourcing content from news stories, and the Poilievre event was caught in the mix. The rally had been reported on in mainstream media in the days leading up to the mass posts.
“This is not done with intent to manipulate, it's with intent to experiment,” Bridgman said.
Very few Canadians saw original bot posts and the report said their impact was considered to be insignificant, but Bridgman said the narrative about the bots was “hijacked”.
The followup conversation about the posts ended up getting millions of views on X, and millions more through amplification by media, the report shows.
Many of those posts attacked the Conservative party and Poilievre for attempting to mislead Canadians about his popularity.
It also says:
Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen, too, pointed the finger at the Tories, claiming without evidence that the Conservative Party of Canada purchased the bots on social media.
...Ultimately, nearly half of the Canadians who heard about the bots believed a political party was to blame, with a vast majority of them thinking it was the actions of the Conservatives....
Bridgman described the political discourse around the bot campaign as “toxic” and said it should serve as a lesson for future Canadian elections.
Also, this quote is really important:
“The finger-pointing without evidence is actually quite destructive and leans into the hyper-partisan, hyper-polarized information ecosystem that we find ourselves in today in Canada....
Here we have the Liberal MPs who are talking about disinformation actually propagating it. They actually spread disinformation. The false claim they made was disproven by experts, and the report went on to say that it's only because of their disinformation campaign that the effect of these bots was amplified—hook, line and sinker.
Ms. Khalid has said that she wants to put partisan politics aside, but they've put them in the shop window. They've put them to the forefront. We heard her say we're better than this. No, they're actually not. They are actually called out for spreading disinformation.
Let me tell you that I have a few minor amendments to the motion, but we think this is an excellent study. We think it's terrific. I think there are some great witnesses who are listed in this Canadian Press report.
We think the impact of foreign interference in our democracy is troubling. We think that, irrespective of the country, any foreign meddling in our democracy is unacceptable. That's why we've had to drag the Liberals, kicking and screaming, to implement legislation like Bill C-70 on foreign interference or a foreign agent registry. My goodness, it was worse than pulling teeth to try to get the Liberals to do it.
Also, like in many such cases, we needed the FBI to tell Canadians what these Liberals deny and, actually, the public safety minister, a minister in Trudeau's Liberal government, lied about Beijing-operated Chinese police stations in Canada. He lied about it.
Again, that's disinformation—