Evidence of meeting #132 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 interference.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
You're teaching children how to navigate, I think you described it as, digital pollution. There's definitely lots of pollution online. Thinking critically and being able to discern what's real and what's not become more and more challenging all the time.
What is one tangible recommendation you could make for us to include in this report? What do you think could improve digital media literacy of children across Canada?
Director of Education, CIVIX
I think there needs to be an investigation into the kinds of resources that are effective, based in evidence and can be made.... As I mentioned before, we understand that education is more of a provincial responsibility. However, in terms of being able to make a recommendation, some tools have been shown to be effective. Understand what those are and make them known, not just to students but also to Canadians more widely.
There are effective digital media literacy strategies out there that can be learned. I think that would be something concrete the committee could pursue.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Give me an understanding of the uniformity of material being delivered across Canada in the space of civic literacy and digital media literacy. Is there any standard across provinces and territories? If so, what is it? If not, is there even consistency within each province on the material being delivered across school boards?
Director of Education, CIVIX
With regard to the different provinces, it's common to find, in curricula, requirements that digital media literacy or source evaluation be taught in some capacity. Provinces are able to make recommendations or list possible resources, but they do not mandate the use of any particular resource. That is to say, you might find different digital media literacy education happening across provinces and territories.
There is no unified, consistent mandate to use some resources and not others.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
What do you think is the most important way that your organization will protect its credibility going forward? What steps are in place, whether it's for board selection or for screening funding sources, to ensure that, as an organization that's charged itself with these important educational initiatives, you are ensuring that you remain credible and unimpeachable in a very murky landscape of information providers?
Director of Education, CIVIX
I'm sorry; could you rephrase the question in terms of credibility? I missed the first part of that question.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Really, I was just looking at what you're doing to protect your credibility, whether it's with the selection of individuals to your board or screening funding sources, based on the murky information landscape that's out there. How are you protecting your credibility as a source for teaching people?
Conservative
Director of Education, CIVIX
Very quickly, as I mentioned, we are a charity, so we are very transparent about all of our funding sources. That is, I think, one way that we maintain credibility.
Conservative
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Thank you very much, Chair.
I'd like to thank all of the witnesses for being here, but I want to particularly turn my attention to a story that came out in the last month, which I'm sure the witnesses are familiar with. It is the story about Tenet Media. There is a connection to my home province of Quebec in that there were two people in our West Island locality, Lauren Chen and someone else, who were named in a U.S. indictment. They are alleged to have been spreading misinformation. It could have been that they were, as I think the technical term goes, "useful idiots", but it could be that they were very knowingly doing what they were doing. I don't know, but let's talk about what was going on there.
According to the U.S. indictment:
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, RT was sanctioned, dropped by distributors, and ultimately forced to cease formal operations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.
That's a very big market right there.
The indictment continued:
In response, RT created, in the words of its editor-in-chief, an "entire empire of covert projects" designed to shape public opinion in "Western audiences."
The indictment goes on to allege that Tenet Media is one of RT's covert projects.
How does the RT empire of covert projects hurt Ukrainian Canadians? I'm asking that of Madam Kartasheva.
Director, Russian Canadian Democratic Alliance
I feel that asking that question of Ukrainian Canadians would be better, as I am a representative of Russian society in Canada, but I feel that Russian propaganda in general is hurting everyone. Specifically, if we're talking about Ukrainians in Canada, I was talking with one of the directors of the UCC, who was telling me that, after the war and because of Russian propaganda, they've seen a horrendous increase in hate crimes against Ukrainians, whether it will be insults or just some symbols outside universities or just on the street.
We know that there are a lot more Ukrainians now in Canada, because when the war started, Canada opened its doors to them. I imagine that, for them, it's got to be very traumatizing to come from the war and see these hateful symbols around them. In my understanding, Canada doesn't do enough to protect them or even react to these crimes.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Thank you very much for that answer and, in fact, for enlarging the question.
I want to point out that my riding of Châteauguay—Lacolle, which will soon be named Châteauguay—Les Jardins-de-Napierville has a wonderful agricultural region. We go right out to the American border.
We have a large number of Russian speakers of mixed Russian-Ukrainian heritage. We were very proud, even the small city of Châteauguay of 50,000 people, to be able to receive over 100 Ukrainian families who were displaced after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It was all hands on deck and a wonderful community project. Indeed, the group has since been disbanded insofar as the Ukrainians have completely integrated, are working and are looking after themselves and their families, although the friendships are forever. It has very much sensitized our community to this disinformation, misinformation and how harmful it can be. How can we best fight back?
Director, Russian Canadian Democratic Alliance
Well, it's a very important question, and I guess that's why we are all gathered here. There has to be some kind of independent body that will investigate these kinds of disinformation and provide recommendations on how to react to that or maybe even, sometimes, enforcing some solutions to that. Obviously, it is a very complex issue, and the problem concerns not just, for example, media like Russia Today. The strategy of Russian propaganda is very complex: It includes social media; different “experts” who do interviews on different media, including normal and respected media; and different professors. It is a very complex issue that has to be treated on all of these levels, and that's why I was proposing this independent body that will coordinate this activity, because if everyone is solving the issues, no one is solving the issues. There has to be one body that's monitoring all that.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Thank you for that.
Thank you for the work that you're doing in sensitizing Canadians that, indeed, there are Russians here in Canada who are actively fighting for democracy, even at their own risk. I appreciate the work you are doing. Do you know of any other RT projects that are seeking to influence western audiences?
Director, Russian Canadian Democratic Alliance
I am not familiar with the RT on that level because, personally, it just pains my brain to watch what they show and whatever they're doing. However, I know their strategies are very complex and, as I said, they do it on multiple levels. I'm familiar with it because they do, honestly, pretty similar things in Russia as well, with the goal of spreading disinformation and doubt amongst people so as to not trust each other, the government or anyone, and so—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you. It's okay, Maria. It's fine.
I'm sorry, but we're almost 45 seconds over there.
Mr. Trudel, you may go ahead for six minutes.
Bloc
Denis Trudel Bloc Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Tworek, disinformation, AI, social media, and how to counter disinformation and misinformation give rise to very serious issues.
This year, a think tank within Employment and Social Development Canada released a report listing the top 35 global disruptions we currently face. Disinformation is the biggest one facing the world today, according to the report.
Do you agree with that, Ms. Tworek?
Professor, History and Public Policy, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
What I would say is that it underlies so many other threats. Whether those are questions around war, climate change, etc., we see that disinformation is a part of all of those problems, so that's how I tend to think about it. What we also see is that abuse and harassment are a key part of disinformation. We never know quite who it's going to strike, depending on the issue. I see it as an underlying foundation, and that's why I think it's such an existential threat.
Bloc
Denis Trudel Bloc Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
When you think about it, AI is somewhat terrifying. It can duplicate my face and voice, and make me say just about anything on social media. That's pretty awful.
How do we deal with that phenomenon? What can we do legislatively to prevent problematic situations during the next election campaign? Say there's a video in which I'm supposedly singing the praises of the Conservative Party of Canada's agenda and it's going around social media.
Professor, History and Public Policy, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
What we say in our report is that this is obviously something that has to be taken on in multiple dimensions. There are the companies that are themselves thinking about things like watermarking to see whether something is AI-generated or not, so ensuring something like that is implemented.... We need the kinds of programs like civics, not just for schools but also for those who are not of school age, and we also need to think about different kinds of regulations. We have a whole host of recommendations within that report, and I'm happy to share the report with the committee so that you can delve into those. However, I think that the clear bottom line is there's no one responsible party here. We need a range of different measures to deal with this.
Bloc
Denis Trudel Bloc Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
You said in your opening statement that AI had been used during election campaigns in other countries.
What happened exactly, and how did they detect that the content was AI-generated, not genuine political content?
Professor, History and Public Policy, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
In some cases, for example, in Slovakia, there was a deepfake audio. The person themself obviously said that it was a deepfake. We've seen some in India as well.
It's always very difficult to identify if this changes someone's mind or not, but we have these kinds of singular examples that we point out in the report from countries all around the world to show this kind of generative AI is at least being used.
For now, we don't find a lot of evidence that it's persuasive. That's why I say we need to get ahead of the problem before it becomes something that we can't really get a grip on.
Bloc
Denis Trudel Bloc Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
In the countries you've studied, did the attack or threat come from a foreign country or from other political parties domestically?