Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 7th, 2018

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Seidle, I'll start with you. I'll ask you to give me, rather than a rationale, just a number. You mentioned pre-writ spending limits, and you thought they were too generous. What should that number be?

[Dr. Leslie Seidle]

I don't have a figure to put in front of you today. I think it could be reduced by at least a third. I find there is a discrepancy between political parties and third parties; political parties have just 50% more room in the pre-writ period compared to third parties.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thank you, I appreciate the brevity as well.

In terms of the pre-writ spending limit period for the third parties, you have both made comments on that. Mr. Seidle, you made comments on that here. Samara, you've made comments on this as well in terms of third parties. I want to ask you both, and I guess I'll start with you, Mr. Morden. In Mr. Seidle's opening remarks, he mentioned that in the U.K., they have had pre-writ spending limits for about a year. In Ontario, they have pre-writ spending limits from about six months. Ours are essentially two months or less prior to the election.

Based on some of the comments that Samara has made in the past, there are certainly concerns about the money being spent pre-writ. You've even indicated that many third parties were actually spending a lot of money pre-writ, and then nothing, or essentially nothing, so they didn't have to register during the election. It shows they were just using the pre-writ period as a way around it. I wanted to get your thoughts on whether that “two months or less” period is enough, and if not, what time there should be for pre-writ spending limits.

Mr. Morden, and then Mr. Seidle.

[Michael Morden]

The short answer is that there's no period that wouldn't be a little bit arbitrary. I don't think it's entirely reasonable, but I would not be opposed to a compromise that extended the pre-writ period somewhat and found some middle ground between the way the law is drafted now and the Ontario provincial law, for example.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Seidle.

[Dr. Leslie Seidle]

I indicated that I'm comfortable with the duration of the present limits. There's an issue that needs to be borne in mind, which is that, if you were to extend it further backwards, you risk running into a parliamentary session. That was an issue when British Columbia tried to bring in some limits about 10 years ago. They said that could create a chill while the legislature was in session. In other words, members would be making speeches, talking to the media, but third parties would be prevented from undertaking any direct advertising during that period. I think that the drafting of the bill must have taken that into account.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but I have to, I guess.

You mention Ontario as one of your examples, when they have a six-month period. Do you see that as problematic, what they're doing in Ontario?

[Dr. Leslie Seidle]

I'm not aware that it's created huge problems in Ontario. Some of that will come out during the election. I haven't been following the Ontario—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Might it be good for us to hear from people who have been involved in the Ontario election and get their experiences from it before we make a final decision on what we do?

[Dr. Leslie Seidle]

Of course.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I apologize to the witnesses. This is not how we like to have conversations about such important bills as ones that affect our democracy.

Mr. Morden, you said this bill deserves time and close scrutiny. It's not the fault of anyone sitting around this table, but it's very unlikely this bill is going to get time and close scrutiny.

You support the bill broadly, but it's big. It's 350 pages. Do you think there's any notion of pushing forward some of the things that you support—say, the voter identification, the use of vouching—as a separate piece while these more complex things take longer—third party, misinformation, disinformation, social media, foreign influence, and some of the more complex things that have been introduced on top of the original bill that was introduced 18 months ago?

[Michael Morden]

I think it's a reasonable suggestion. I think ideally we would have taken on some of those elements and spent some time with.... In other words, each element, in part because they don't have a direct relationship to one another, has to be scrutinized in one shot. We had to limit our analysis precisely because we didn't have the capacity to go through the whole thing.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

We're having a shared experience then.

[Michael Morden]

I think we are, so I'm sympathetic. I would imagine most agree that ideally there would be more time to permit that scrutiny while also meeting the other prerogative of being ready for GE 2019.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Let me pass that to you, Mr. Seidle. There are many elements of this bill. You focused on one, which raises some interesting questions about what would be caught and what wouldn't be caught in terms of—not a loophole—simply phrasing of a question between a third party. I don't have the answer to that question. I'm not sure the government does either. In terms of this legislation, we're a couple of weeks from the end of the spring sitting of Parliament. We're still not out of committee. What would your advice be to the committee members in terms of getting this right, something that's obviously so important?

[Dr. Leslie Seidle]

I don't think the committee is being given sufficient time to study such an enormously complex bill. There are some areas in the bill that I haven't commented on, such as trying to prevent foreign funding of third parties and the whole area of trying to prevent hacking and interference in the actual vote. That's not an area of my expertise. This is a new public policy area. I've seen the list of witnesses for this week, and I don't see anybody I recognize as an expert on that area.

Yes, I think the amount of time you're being given isn't sufficient.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

The consideration, then, is that we've known about some things in this bill—the vouching and such have been at least public knowledge for some time—but there's a whole section of the bill that is brand new to us as parliamentarians. The committee is going to have to deliberate as to how we handle this and not make mistakes with something so delicate.

Thank you, Chair. I know we have to get to votes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

On the security part, we had CSE here this week.

There are 17 minutes left to vote, so we will come back as quickly as possible and we'll have a full committee at 11:00.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Good morning. Welcome back to the 113th meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

For our second panel today, we are pleased to be joined by Elizabeth Dubois, Assistant Professor, Department of Communications, University of Ottawa; Cara Zwibel, Director, Fundamental Freedoms Program, Canadian Civil Liberties Association; and Chris Roberts, National Director, Social and Economic Policy Department, Canadian Labour Congress.

Thank you all for being available for us today. Maybe we will start with Professor Dubois with your opening statement and then we'll just go along the table.

[Dr. Elizabeth Dubois, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Perfect. Thank you for having me. I am happy to be here, speaking on Bill C-76 today. As mentioned, I am a professor at the University of Ottawa, in the communication department, and my research focuses on how people access and share political information and specifically, the role of digital media, social media platforms, and search engines, for example, in that process. An example here is a report that Dr. Fenwick McKelvey, who is at Concordia University, and I wrote, which is the first, and I believe only, report on the state of political bots in Canada, which was part of the University of Oxford's computational propaganda project.

Today, I want to draw your attention to three key aspects of Bill C-76 in my opening remarks. They are computational approaches to voter suppression, technology and platform companies, and political party privacy policies.

First up, based on evidence from recent elections and referenda internationally, we know that individuals and groups are experimenting with computationally supported tactics for political communication with the electorate. This could lead to voter suppression.

These techniques might include creating automated social media accounts, which we call bots. They are non-human. They could include creating fake accounts or troll accounts, which are run by humans, but aren't necessarily representative of actual voters. They could be targeted advertisement strategies which involve quickly removing ads, so they are very hard to track.

By using computational approaches and automation, it is possible to amplify and spread information very quickly. It is also possible to dampen messages and suppress ideas. This can be used for obvious and explicit forms of voter suppression, such as telling people to go to the wrong polling place. One could imagine a bot-driven version of the robocall scandal. It could also be used for more covert forms of suppression, such as creating an environment of distrust in the electoral system or encouraging political apathy. This could be done via a chatbot, for example. Emerging forms of artificial intelligence become pretty important when we're thinking about securing the integrity of our elections.

Notably, most research currently considers the role of political bots on social media alone, but increasingly, tools such as WhatsApp and other instant messaging applications are being employed. Voter suppression in these contexts is even harder to track, trace, and then enforce our existing laws.

This is clearly against the spirit of the law, but not explicitly addressed. Nor are there adequate mechanisms in place to prevent or identify these practices. A requirement to register use of automated techniques, which would also include emerging artificial intelligence approaches for communicating with the electorate, would be a very valuable addition to this legislation.

I would like to note that I say register and not ban. I believe there are valuable and legitimate uses of automated techniques for communicating with the electorate that should not necessarily be discouraged.

Second, considering the role of platforms, such as major social media companies and search engines, I think there could be better direction within Bill C-76. The bill requires organizations to not knowingly sell election advertisements to foreign entities, which of course will affect platform companies. However, beyond that, the bill ignores the substantial role platforms play when it comes to enforcing many aspects of Canadian election laws.

For example, the low cost of online advertisement and the ability to micro-target means that hundreds of versions of advertisements can be delivered throughout various Internet platforms. They are hard to track and therefore, it can be difficult to establish if and when illegal activities are happening, such as voter suppression or advertisement spend which exceeds spending limits, is purchased by foreign entities or is purchased by unregistered third parties.

Having been confronted with this problem elsewhere, for example, in the U.S., platform companies are starting to create advertisement transparency tools which are useful, but this is voluntary and could be changed at any moment, if it's not required legally.

This poses significant risk to Canadian elections because platforms make decisions in an international and commercial context, which does not necessarily align with the needs of Canada's democracy.

Finally, Bill C-76 requires political parties to make a privacy statement about protecting information of individuals. This proposed legislation does not include any form of audit or verification that the policy is adequate, ethical, or being followed. There are no penalties for non-compliance. There are no provisions that permit Canadians to request their data be corrected or deleted, which is the case in many other jurisdictions.

It is certainly fair to say that this issue is much broader than elections. The fact that political parties are not covered by PIPEDA or other privacy constraints, and the fact that elections are fundamental to the functioning of our democracy mean it's an issue that I don't think we can ignore. It needs to be discussed further, in the context of this bill.

Ultimately, I think there are useful aspects in this bill, but there are also substantial concerns regarding such things as computational approaches to voter suppression, the role of technology companies and platforms, and privacy, which I hope will be considered in more detail.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you. That was very helpful and interesting information.

Now we'll go to Ms. Zwibel from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

[Cara Zwibel, Director, Fundamental Freedoms Program, Canadian Civil Liberties Association]

Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to speak with you this morning on behalf of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, or CCLA.

I know my time this morning is short so I want to highlight CCLA's two primary concerns with respect to Bill C-76. The first relates to political advertising, particularly the restrictions on third party advertising. The second concerns political parties' treatment of personal information.

With respect to political advertising, we wish to highlight that what the legislation currently does, and what the bill would continue to do, is place significant restrictions on political speech, speech that is considered to lie at the very core of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms' protection of freedom of expression. We appreciate and take seriously the concern that wealth should not be translated into the ability to dominate political discourse. However, we have not seen any evidence that justifies or even purports to justify the restrictions that are placed on third party advertising, or that would justify the distinctions that this bill makes between different types of political expression and different political actors.

We are aware that the act's third party spending limits were upheld by a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Harper case. In our view, however, the majority of the court was wrong in that case. The evidence before the court could not justify the significant restrictions placed on third party advertising. As the dissenting judges in that case noted:

The law at issue sets advertising spending limits for citizens—called third parties—at such low levels that they cannot effectively communicate with their fellow citizens on election issues during an election campaign. The practical effect is that effective communication during the writ period is confined to registered political parties and their candidates.

The dissenters pointed out that the spending limit was less than what it would cost to run a full page ad for a single day in national newspapers. Even with the increase in spending limits brought in by this bill, it's not clear if third party actors would have an effective voice in an election campaign. In our view, this is a serious infringement of charter rights that can only be justified with clear and compelling evidence. To date, we have yet to see or hear any of that evidence.

The bill also restricts political parties in the pre-writ period, only in terms of their partisan advertising, while the restrictions on third parties are much broader. Again, it's not clear on what basis this distinction has been drawn or how it can be justified.

At a more general level, CCLA has concerns about the value and practicality of differentiating between partisan and election advertising, or more generally, attempting to limit issue-based advocacy when an issue is one with which a “registered party or candidate is associated”.

The U.S. Supreme Court has noted that what separates issue advocacy and political advocacy is a line in the sand drawn on a windy day. By continuing to restrict issue-based advocacy, the limits on third party advertising may simply serve to unduly narrow the parameters of public debate around government policy or proposed policy options, rather than limit the kind of expression that we're trying to limit here, that which influences or aims to improperly influence elections.

We also question why spending limits are set out in legislation set by the individuals and parties who stand to benefit from restricting voices that may be critical of them. We urge the committee to consider, either in the context of this bill or in a future study, whether an independent body should be established to address the question of spending limits for third parties and political parties and candidates.

The second issue I'd like to address is Bill C-76's provisions aimed at empowering parties to better protect the privacy of Canadians.

Put simply, this scheme proposed by the bill is inadequate. It contains no meaningful privacy protections and no independent oversight of how the parties protect personal information or consequences for failing to do so. In light of what we are beginning to understand about the information that can be harnessed from social media and other tools and used by political parties to engage in micro-targeting of voters, the failure to truly address the privacy issue in this bill is disappointing, to say the least.

I'm aware that the committee has heard about this issue from a number of witnesses in the last few days, so I won't belabour the point. I'll simply state that the CCLA is in general agreement with the amendments proposed by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Finally, CCLA wishes to note its support for portions of the bill that reverse some of the negative changes that were made when Parliament passed the so-called Fair Elections Act. We welcome the provisions that allow for the use of voter information cards, the return of vouching, as well as the loosening of restrictions on the educational activities of the Chief Electoral Officer. We also welcome the reform that will allow Canadian citizens who reside abroad to participate in federal elections.

I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you for having me this morning.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much.

Now we go to Chris Roberts from the Canadian Labour Congress.