Evidence of meeting #134 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 political.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
When somebody is incarcerated, there's a perception that the person is put behind fences, especially in medium and maximum institutions, but people still perceive "minimum", which in fact has no fences, as being behind fences.
There are times when people have work clearances or are unofficially escorted out of jails, in your experience, contrary to policy. Is that ever communicated?
Correctional Officer, Federal, As an Individual
Absolutely. That happens on a daily basis, I would suggest, in most institutions across the country.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Without breaching any confidentiality or anything like that, can you describe a scenario that is common knowledge to somebody in your industry?
Correctional Officer, Federal, As an Individual
We have inmates serving life sentences who are not eligible for any forms of parole but are given fence clearance to work off site and out of perimeter during the business day.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Is that communicated to the public or to parliamentarians in annual reports or anything like that?
Correctional Officer, Federal, As an Individual
No, it's not communicated anywhere.
October 22nd, 2024 / 4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
It's close to it.
Thank you, Mr. Caputo.
Mrs. Shanahan, go ahead for five minutes.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Thank you very much, Chair.
I thank the witnesses for being here today.
Professor Wagner, I find the remarks you've made very interesting, as is the fact that you have been undertaking research in this area, which, we must admit, is fairly new.
I know that you co-wrote and published a paper in July 2024 entitled, “Slant, Extremity, and Diversity: How the Shape of News Use Explains Electoral Judgments and Confidence”. It introduces measures that capture individuals' partisan slant, partisan extremity and overall diversity of news media used to understand how people interact with contemporary news ecology.
One of the conclusions—and I don't pretend to have read this paper, but our analysts have, and I thank them for this question—of this paper is that a diverse news consumption style can moderate misinformation beliefs.
What do you mean by that? What is a "diverse news consumption style"?
Professor and William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea, University of Wisconsin-Madison, As an Individual
“A diverse news consumption style” is using a wide range of sources, some of which will oftentimes include sources that tend to favour a political ideology other than that of the individual of interest. That would be a liberal who also gets some news from conservative outlets or a conservative who also gets some news from liberal outlets. They also engage in a higher number of sources to learn from rather than a smaller number. So, it's the volume, the diversity, and then the slant, the direction, of the information from a political perspective.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
When you say “diversity”, you actually mean in points of view. I was wondering if it actually had to do with types of media, just knowing that watching television news, for example, is a very different experience from looking at Facebook news. Is that a diversity that's important?
Professor and William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea, University of Wisconsin-Madison, As an Individual
In that particular paper, we don't use social media. Social media aren't news sources. They don't produce news in the way that a journalist does. They share news, and a lot of what gets shared on social media is links to news. That particular paper is looking at news sources: print, broadcast, digital, radio, those kinds of sources. There's some evidence that different sources have different.... Broadcast news, broadcast television, tends to help those with less education learn more about politics, whereas newspapers and digital news tend to help folks with more education learn about politics. So, there are some differences in how people benefit from the different sources they might consume.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Professor, help me out here. When we think about different news sources and how they would have different points of view.... I consider myself a well-read person. I consume a lot of news. I would think that CNN, for example, is considered liberal. As for The Washington Post, I don't know. CTV I would have considered conservative, but now apparently it's liberal. How do we identify different news sources, or is it even useful to be identifying different news sources that way?
Professor and William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea, University of Wisconsin-Madison, As an Individual
It's a real challenge. Any way that anyone, including myself, makes those labels is open to criticism.
One strategy is to use what we did in that paper—a set of scores called the Faris scores that have an array of news sources based upon the ideological orientation of their users. That is one way to measure how liberal, conservative or centrist a source might be.
Another strategy would be to compare the kinds of sources that news organizations quote to the kinds of sources that lawmakers of different political parties quote, and look for correspondence between those. If a newspaper quoted sources that more Liberal parliamentarians refer to in speeches, that might be an example of that paper's being more liberal, and vice versa.
All of these, of course, have their problems. None of them are infallible.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Do you have a recommendation, before my time is over, for what you would consider the most well-balanced news sources or credible news sources?
Professor and William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea, University of Wisconsin-Madison, As an Individual
Often they are sources that are publicly sponsored. In the United States, it would be National Public Radio and public television, as an example, and the BBC is another. These are often high-quality news sources.
It's also the case, though, that any government-sponsored source does run the danger of bias that might favour the government, since they are signing the cheques.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
I'd like you to check out CBC/Radio-Canada here in Canada in your next study.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mrs. Shanahan.
M Villemure, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Wagner, I'll go back to you.
We live in a time when we've become used to living with fake news, when truthiness often replaces truth and when, as you said yourself, people believe that social media produce news, even though they don't. Isn't it too late to counter disinformation?
Professor and William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea, University of Wisconsin-Madison, As an Individual
I don't think it's too late. Among the fastest-growing legitimate news sources in the west are fact-checking news organizations. There is an audience for reporting that does more than just say, “Here's what our leaders said,” and asks, “Were these things verifiably accurate, and how do we know that or not?”
I don't think it's too late, but it's definitely an uphill battle.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
To your knowledge, are Canadian laws up to the task of countering disinformation?
Professor and William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea, University of Wisconsin-Madison, As an Individual
I am, sadly, not enough of an area expert to speak to that. I wish I could, but that's not my area of expertise.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
In that case, what broad measures would you recommend we take as soon as possible?
Professor and William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea, University of Wisconsin-Madison, As an Individual
It would have to do with information that's time-dependent, such as when there is a natural disaster and there's dis- or misinformation about the government response to it, or when there is an election and voting ends at a certain time and there's mis- or disinformation floating around. Things with a time deadline are probably the most important to engage in action about.