Information & Ethics Committee on Sept. 26th, 2024

[Timothy Caulfield]

I am fortunate to have received most of my research grants, the largest research grants, under the Harper government—and by far, by the way. I suppose I should have disclosed that also.

I endeavour, when I write pieces about the politics of misinformation, to make it very clear that misinformation happens historically and contextually across the ideological divide. I do my best to represent exactly what the research says. I think it's very important to understand the role of politics and ideology in the spread of misinformation right now. It isn't easy to hear that stuff. I do try as much as possible to not be partisan about this, but this is a very important topic. We have to be open-minded about the role of politics.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Sousa, you have five minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses. I appreciate the clarification in terms of funding to universities from various governments and how important it is to maintain science and research on an ongoing basis in order to stay ahead of the curve.

I say that with all due respect, because when I was in the Baltics last year, I visited Estonia and Latvia. I saw from discussions with them, and with American and Canadian forces dealing in NATO in those countries, the high degree of cyber-threats and cybersecurity, the relevance of ensuring that we are on top of misinformation appropriately, and the targeted effects from, in this case, the Russian government and the Chinese government playing a role in western society. I was very encouraged by the reactions or the defence measures being taken, but I was also extremely concerned by the degree to which it exists now in Canada as well.

Professor Caulfield, are there lessons learned from other countries that are leading the way, especially given the high degree of hostilities that are now before us?

[Timothy Caulfield]

I think there are lessons to be learned. I'll just draw on one that I think is more politically palatable and politically neutral, which is the teaching of critical thinking skills and media literacy.

This is a strategy that can be content-neutral, because what we'd be doing is giving our citizens the tools to discern and cut through the noise themselves. A very good example of that is Finland, where they teach critical thinking skills extremely early, as early as kindergarten. It's hard to study this well, because there are so many relevant variables, like the quality of the education system, socio-economics, etc., but there have at least been some studies that have shown the strategy adopted by Finland has made them particularly resilient to the spread of misinformation.

One of the reasons they've adopted that strategy and are ahead of the curve compared to us, to touch on your comment, is their proximity to Russia and the role that Russian misinformation has played in their lives. I think that is a very telling lesson and something we can build on here in Canada.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you for that. I do tend to worry about the degree of...that the public is almost being callous and is disregarding these activities of misinformation and lies being propagated by elected officials, no less—or the exaggerations of truth, to put it that way—and is seeing them as being somewhat acceptable.

Ms. Lalancette, do you feel that elected officials are, in fact, promoting misinformation and, especially in the preambles of their questions, prejudging the situation and creating some of the threat that exists in misinformation?

[Mireille Lalancette]

Yes, for sure.

I'm thinking here of situations where politicians make comments and add a lengthy preamble to the various issues, including bias, attacks and criticism of an individual or their personality, for example. In this context, they're not discussing political issues, but rather engaging in a battle of personalities by stating half-truths or partial truths. It's the principle of negative political communication. The information is never completely false, but it's used out of context.

Perhaps we should think about a way of naming things, create a code of conduct for the National Assembly of Quebec, the House of Commons or elsewhere, that would encourage people to address people's projects or ideas and their viability rather than engaging in personal attacks. This would keep people from spreading half-truths and falsely or negatively conveying information.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Professor.

Professor Caulfield, do you agree that name-calling or allegations of wrongdoing by certain officials in the House toward other officials actually lessens the degree of integrity in the political discourse and, worse, creates threats and dangers in the system?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I'm trying to stay on time, so give us a short answer, please.

[Timothy Caulfield]

Yes, I do, and there's evidence to back this up, as my colleague noted. There's no doubt that this kind of polarized discourse heightens tension.

By the way, it also makes it very difficult for those of us who are trying to do research when we have our integrity questioned and our reputations smeared.

Again, there is evidence that this is one of the strategies used by those pushing misinformation to delegitimize voices that are trying to counter misinformation, and unfortunately it's very effective.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you.

Mr. Villemure, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

As was just pointed out, I only have two and a half minutes, so I'll be fairly quick.

I'd like to thank the two witnesses for being with us.

Mr. Caulfield, I regret that your integrity was attacked. That's just wrong.

Ms. Lalancette, if you had three recommendations to submit to us in a bullet list, what would they be?

In addition, if you have any comments to submit to us in writing, I invite you to do so.

I would then ask Mr. Caulfield to answer the same question.

[Mireille Lalancette]

First, we need to regulate what goes on in the House of Commons so that no falsehoods can be uttered there.

Then, with regard to the public, as my colleague was saying, we need to run awareness campaigns to increase people's knowledge of the media.

Finally, we need to regulate digital social media platforms so that they are accountable for what is said on them. In the U.S., there's the issue of freedom of expression, but this can be defined differently in Canada. My colleague, who specializes in law, can explain it even better than I can.

Be that as it may, those are my three recommendations, which affect elected officials, citizens and media companies respectively.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Caulfield, I'd like to hear your three recommendations, please.

[Timothy Caulfield]

Very briefly, I agree we need strong national support for critical thinking and media literacy courses that are available to all Canadians and in all of our school systems.

I think we need to support independent, trustworthy fact-checking, debunking and pre-bunking entities that are doing those in an independent, positive way.

Yes, I think we should consider, at the national level, a target of regulation. I'm actually a very strong supporter of freedom of expression, so I think this has to be done very cautiously and in a very targeted manner—for example, around elections and hate speech. However, I also think this is something else that needs to be in the tool kit.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Lalancette, I'm turning to you again, briefly.

As you know, there are fewer and fewer philosophy courses in Quebec. And yet, this afternoon, two of you have said that we need to increase critical thinking. How are we going to do that?

[Mireille Lalancette]

I think it can be done in different ways. It can be done in schools, but also elsewhere, in other organizations. We could also provide funding for programs that address these issues. At Radio-Canada, for example, there's already a program called Les décrypteurs, that deals with disinformation. Working on these issues, making them fun and interesting for the population at large, could be a way for traditional media to regain legitimacy.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Villemure.

Mr. Green, go ahead for two and a half minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank Mr. Cooper for providing a textbook example of a growing anti-intellectualism, one that seeks to attack the expertise of subject matter experts.

I want to allow Mr. Caulfield to comment from a public health perspective.

How can parliamentarians better identify and counter misinformation and disinformation of the kind we witnessed here today, especially during times of crisis, in order to protect trust in science-based policy decisions?

[Timothy Caulfield]

Well, I think we need to try to respectfully counter misinformation with the body of evidence.

There's a very interesting growing literature. There's been some interesting research done in both the United States and Europe that talks about representing what the scientific consensus actually says on a topic. That also goes to explaining what the scientific consensus is. Science is hard. It's messy. It's always contested. That's healthy. However, there's often a body of evidence that policy-makers and politicians can turn to.

I think part of the critical thinking skills we need to impart to Canadian citizens is understanding the scientific process—what the scientific process is, how science is done, how science is funded, and how that funding is obtained and used in order to maintain that trust.

Look, the funding process is not perfect. In fact, my forthcoming book talks about all the problems with how science is done and the knowledge production crisis we have. We need to make trustworthy science and have trustworthy sources of facts. We also need to have collegial discussions about how relevant those facts are to our policies.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

In the time remaining—I have close to a minute left—could you elaborate on pre-bunking? You started to talk about this. You talked about “belief speaking” and how that's different from evidence-based decision-making.

What is a pre-bunking approach, and how can parliamentarians implement this strategy to proactively address misinformation and disinformation in their communications with constituents, particularly during election periods?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

You have about 30 seconds.

[Timothy Caulfield]

There's a lot of fascinating research on pre-bunking by people like Gordon Pennycook, Sander van der Linden and others that shows that if you highlight to people what misinformation might look like and what kinds of strategies might be used to push it—such as relying on an anecdote instead of the body of evidence—they'll be prepared to see it. If you do that, they're less likely to spread the misinformation or internalize it.

We can hopefully figure out ways to do that at scale. However, it's also something you can remind yourself to do, and remind your friends and family to do.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Chair, quickly, before you dismiss the witnesses—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I'm not. I have two and a half minutes and then two and a half minutes to go, Mr. Green.