Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm calling the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 134 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(h) and the motion adopted by the committee on Tuesday, February 13, 2024, the committee is resuming its study of the impact of disinformation and misinformation on the work of parliamentarians.

I would like to welcome the witnesses we have with us for the first hour of the meeting. Both are participating by video conference.

I would like to welcome, first of all, Mr. Jacob Suelzle, who is a correctional officer federally.

Mr. Michael Wagner is online with us today. He's a professor and William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mr. Suelzle, you'll have up to five minutes for your opening statement, followed by Mr. Wagner.

I apologize for the delay. We've had some speeches in the House that have precipitated this delay.

Go ahead, please, Mr. Suelzle.

[Jacob Suelzle, Correctional Officer, Federal, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I was asked here today to speak about my experience with misinformation from Correctional Service Canada. I am and have been a correctional officer with the CSC since 2007. This opportunity gives me a chance to address issues I've experienced and observed, and which are experienced by correctional officers all over the country who are not able to speak or to draw attention to these issues because of fear of retribution and punishment.

It is widely known amongst correctional officers that the message of the state of our penitentiaries, as represented by Correctional Service Canada, is a very inaccurate representation of what is happening in our prisons. Violence in our prisons is one of the most pressing issues faced by correctional officers. The levels of violence within a prison are at a level I've never seen in my career. The violence against correctional officers is at a level I never would have assumed it could or would ever be allowed to get to. I classify this as a measure of misinformation because the issue is so discarded by the service. Officers are often ridiculed by management for reporting assaults, and are often coerced to not document or write reports regarding these assaults.

Correctional officers understand that working in Canada's federal prisons comes with inherent risks, but the injuries they incur are widely discredited through many means, not the least of which is the general Correctional Service Canada's refusal to allow assaults and threats against correctional officers to be documented and reported through occupational health and safety procedures. Incidents that are documented seldom result in any change in routine or procedure that would alter the likelihood of these happening again.

Correctional officers struggle against the service while trying to recover from injuries sustained at work. They are pressured to suck it up, to grow up, to not report and to not miss work after an injury or an incident. It is a general cliché that rings true within prison that someone has to die before a safety concern regarding protection from inmates is actioned. Life-threatening incidents and murders are the generally accepted threshold for taking a situation seriously. Why do I classify this as misinformation? Because a picture is painted by the CSC that does not take this reality into account, and by doing so further belittles the struggles of those on the front line in prison.

An initiative like the needle exchange program is an easy example of a response to a very inaccurately presented problem within prisons. Canada's prisons are filled with drugs. Correctional officers across the country will unanimously agree that the only change in the amount of narcotics in prison year after year is the increase. Substances that were seldom seen are now so prevalent that they draw little to no attention when confiscated. Officers have become proficient in administering naloxone to overdosing inmates, sometimes multiple times a shift. Needles within Canada's prisons have always been a rare piece of contraband to find. They were, generally, crudely made and ineffective. Probably for this reason, drugs within prison are very seldom used intravenously. In prisons, drugs are smoked or snorted. The introduction of the prison needle exchange program has and is introducing an injection drug problem that did not exist in our prisons. The service's rhetoric that this is a harm reduction measure is actually creating a new problem that we on the front lines had never had to deal with.

Besides the introduction of injecting drugs in prison, we are also presenting weapons to a violent inmate population and creating an economy for these needles to be used and distributed through the populations. The use of medium and maximum security inmates unsupervised outside of a perimeter fence, and the terms used to get around policies that would not allow these to happen, are standard practice. Terms like “perimeter work clearance”, “on-site TAs”—temporary absences—or “positions of trust” are often used at sites for inmates who are not eligible for forms of release into the community or away from security measures. Inmates in these positions often introduce contraband into the institution, most commonly in the forms of drugs and cell phones. Memos are often written, directing officers to not perform regular search procedures on these inmates once they return to the institution, because of their positions of trust or exempt status. Inmates on perimeter exception are constantly using these opportunities to visit community restaurants, coffee shops like Starbucks, etc., and, of course, to introduce contraband and participate in other security compromising activities, including escapes.

It is demoralizing and insulting to frontline correctional officers to see the organization they work for misrepresent their workplace and the dangers they face, and further contribute to those dangers by not properly responding to issues, fostering a culture that does not allow accurate reporting and minimizing the physical and mental injuries often incurred in this environment.

That's my opening statement.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Suelzle.

I go to Mr. Wagner. Mr. Wagner, you have up to five minutes to address the committee. Go ahead, sir.

[Michael Wagner, Professor and William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea, University of Wisconsin-Madison, As an Individual]

Thank you and good afternoon.

I'm happy to offer some general thoughts about misinformation and misinformation correction before answering your questions to the best of my knowledge and experience.

My name is Michael W. Wagner. I have a Ph.D. in political science from Indiana University. I'm the William T. Evjue distinguished chair for the Wisconsin Idea, and a professor in the school of journalism and mass communication, where I direct the center for communication and civic renewal at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It's well established that Russia's Internet Research Agency, or IRA, operated thousands of Twitter accounts, posing as individuals, to weigh in on political discussions on social media in the United States and other countries, including Canada. Beyond driving some social media conversations witnessed and engaged with by users of social media platforms like Twitter—now called X—these IRA accounts also found their way into legitimate news coverage, being quoted as examples of the person on the street, further amplifying IRA messages about issues like support for Russia's war with Ukraine. This greatly amplifies the reach of its messages, as more people consume legitimate news sources than use social media to learn about and discuss politics. It also increases the likelihood that lawmakers could be affected by IRA posts, as research also demonstrates that parliamentarians use legitimate news sources as a way to read public opinion—something lawmakers can then choose to use in their own decision-making calculus about how to represent their constituents.

In terms of another aspect of misinformation online, it's useful to think about what factors are most associated with inaccurate content going viral and spreading widely and quickly. Posts with more emotional resonance are more likely to get shared online. Posts published at times that people are habitually more likely to be on social media make things go viral as well. Perhaps most importantly, key influencers in politics and the news media sharing or spreading that information are often critical amplifiers to virality.

In terms of misinformation correction, fact checks can work to help people come to believe things that are verifiably true. Labelling stories as a fact check tends to motivate audiences to think about the accuracy of information, while they're consuming it. People willing to admit what they don't know are also more likely to benefit from fact checks. However, fact checks come at a cost, the cost of people believing that the fact checkers are biased, which could affect long-term, trusting relationships the audience has with more legitimate news sources.

Another promising strategy to correct misinformation on social media is the use of a strategy called "observed correction". Rather than engaging with the person making a misinformation or disinformation claim, simply correcting the claim without focusing on the person and linking to the accurate information is useful. Research shows that observational correction occurs when seeing misinformation shared by others being debunked on social media. It reduces misperceptions or beliefs in misinformation among the audiences witnessing the exchange, even if it doesn't affect the opinion of the person who created the false post to begin with. This strategy is shown to be more effective in some circumstances than pre-bunking misinformation, and there's some evidence that logic-based interventions perform better than fact-based interventions as well.

I'm happy to answer questions about these factors or other factors related to misinformation and the health of democracies.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Okay. Thank you both for being under time. That will allow for more questions.

We have six-minute rounds, starting with each party.

I'm going to begin with Mr. Caputo.

Mr. Caputo, you have six minutes. Go ahead.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Professor Wagner and Mr. Suelzle, for being here. I appreciate it.

There's no disrespect meant to you, Professor Wagner, but I am going to focus my questions on the other witness. That's not to deny your qualifications or insight in any way, shape or form.

Mr. Suelzle, to be clear here, you're representing yourself. You're not representing your union or anything like that. Is that correct?

[Jacob Suelzle]

That's correct.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I'm going to run a few scenarios by you. Before we do that, what I'd like to delve into is the culture of Correctional Service Canada.

Correctional Service Canada reports to parliamentarians through the Minister of Justice and is accountable. In fact, we have the commissioner appear at committees. When we're talking about misinformation and disinformation, particularly as it relates to parliamentarians, in my view, this is actually quite germane.

Would you say that CSC has what I would call—these are my words—a culture of secrecy? What would you say about that?

[Jacob Suelzle]

I think that would be a fair statement to make.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Can you elaborate on what you've seen, generally? We don't want you to breach confidentiality, or anything like that. However, how does the culture of secrecy manifest itself, and what are the consequences?

[Jacob Suelzle]

My experience has been that the service is inclined to answer questions to the bare minimum, in order to not expose themselves to anything that would portray them in a way counter to how they want to be looked at by parliamentarians and the public.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

How do they want to be looked at, in your view, by parliamentarians and the public?

[Jacob Suelzle]

In my view, they want to be regarded as progressive. I think they would very much prefer, to be honest, to be left out of any spotlight they can. Certainly, it's to be viewed as a progressive organization at the forefront of changing the perception of corrections.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

How does CSC deal with anything negative?

[Jacob Suelzle]

In my experience, they don't, or they quickly clamp down on those who are drawing attention to any negativity.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

In those situations, when we in Parliament are trying to evaluate how well our correctional system is operating—this is just a comment—it seems as if we don't get the unvarnished truth.

Now, I'm not going to ask you to comment on this specific scenario. I did some work and produced a video on it. Correctional Service Canada put out a press release after somebody escaped. The release said the person escaped from “institutional property”. The person was in medium security. For those who don't know, that means two very large fences surround the institution. It's the same as maximum, in fact. It's very difficult to escape from. The service put out a bulletin saying he escaped from the grounds of medium security. That sounds fine. However, the information I had was that this person was actually allowed to be outside the fence. That was a pretty material omission, in my view. If you say that someone escaped from medium security, I picture them jumping over two razor-wire fences about 20 feet apart and 12 feet high. That's a pretty material omission. It's kind of like what we sometimes see in Parliament—telling half the truth. “It's true. He was on the grounds.”

Can you comment not specifically on this case but on whether this type of thing is a surprise, given your experience?

[Jacob Suelzle]

In my experience, that is absolutely no surprise. Those are more common than I think most people would ever believe.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

In that case, would the service be trying to...? I'm just inferring this. It doesn't want to say this person was actually outside the fence.

You don't have to answer that. I'm just saying that it seems they don't want to acknowledge that this person was outside the perimeter fence and simply walked away. Yet, parliamentarians and the public get a half-truth.

I also exposed Paul Bernardo's situation. I said to the public, very clearly, that I came “eye to eye” with that offender. CSC came out and was quoted as saying that I had no interactions with that inmate. Yet, I hadn't said I had any interaction. They framed it as though I was lying about it.

Does that type of reaction from CSC surprise you, given your experience?

[Jacob Suelzle]

Based on my experience, it doesn't surprise me at all.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Jail has an underground economy.

Is that correct?

[Jacob Suelzle]

Yes.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

There's value in drugs, weapons, information and cellphones. Everything has value.

Is that right?

[Jacob Suelzle]

That's correct. We phrase it this way: “It's what makes jail go round”—that underground economy.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I have—

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

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order.

I'm having a bit of trouble seeing the connection with disinformation as it pertains to parliamentarians. I don't often bring this up, but it seems to me that we're completely off topic.