Evidence of meeting #114 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was elections.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I see.
Mr. Aylward, I have a question for you. On December 3, 2012, I was in Ottawa as a staffer at the time, and I saw a plane flying around Ottawa with a great big sign behind it saying, “Stephen Harper nous deteste”. Do you remember this incident?
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Can you tell us a little bit more about that and what it cost PSAC? What happened to that airplane?
National President, Public Service Alliance of Canada
I can tell you what happened to the airplane. The airplane was basically taken down as a result of a request.
National President, Public Service Alliance of Canada
No. It landed safely in Ottawa as a result of a request to land the plane.
As to exactly what that cost us, I don't know just off the top of my head. It was in the air for a short period of time.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Would you consider that third party advertising pre-writ?
Special Assistant to the National President, Public Service Alliance of Canada
Do you mean legally?
Special Assistant to the National President, Public Service Alliance of Canada
Under the existing law, it would depend on when the plane was flying—seriously—and it would seem that it would also depend on the exact wording of the banner behind it.
The other comment I would make, just to get back to some of the practicalities—I think as a committee you have a responsibility to figure out how this act could actually work—is the example of the PSAC. It's a very large organization, and decisions are made by different components with respect to how to represent their members and how to engage in political activity that would represent their members. A lot of these decisions don't get made centrally, and yet under the Elections Act we have a central responsibility to be able to track and report under this legislation between elections. That's one of our challenges.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Blake Richards
Thank you.
We'll turn to Mr. Reid for our final two minutes.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Thank you.
I have two questions, or possibly only one, for Professor Sirota.
First of all, Leonid, it's good to see you again. I want to dwell on what I think is the central theme of what you're drawing attention to, which is that there are a number of restrictions on Canadians' charter rights contained in Bill C-76. You mentioned voting by Canadians overseas and how this deals with a charter challenge that's under way right now.
I'll just observe that there are still Canadian citizens living overseas who will be exempted from voting. For those who were born overseas, I'm not sure that from a constitutional point of view I see the distinction that their charter rights are somehow inferior to those of their parents. I guess if you argue that the section 3 right to vote is subsidiary to or limited by section 1, then you can make that argument, but I don't think that's the direction in which the Supreme Court has been heading, given that it allows prisoners to vote and so on.
More substantially, I think you raised a really interesting point. If we are fighting against the idea that there is a permanent campaign, and we want to say as a society that we don't want there to be a permanent campaign, then, I think you're implying, we start heading down a slippery slope in saying that we have to restrict political speech further and further out from the actual election date versus the writ period. Then it's this pre-writ period that starts on June 30 that will inevitably be found inadequate after zillions of dollars get spent in the next election prior to June 30, and then we will see further restrictions.
Is there a danger that we're heading in the direction of seeing substantial restrictions on freedom of speech, or is that too much fearmongering?
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Blake Richards
Before you begin, Mr. Sirota, I'd ask that you try to keep it brief, because we have reached the end of the time for the panel here. Please give a response, but a fairly brief one, if you can.
Lecturer, Auckland University of Technology, As an Individual
On the first question, I think it's a good point.
On the second question, yes, I think that's major. Now, whoever wants to do [Technical difficulty—Editor] is up to you and your colleagues in Canadian [Technical difficulty—Editor] in Parliament bringing forward, and also [Technical difficulty—Editor] putting an end to it at some point. I don't know where that point might be, so I think it's primarily your responsibility. Calls are made already to June 30 and up [Technical difficulty—Editor] and yes, I don't know as a matter of principle, [Technical difficulty—Editor] expression [Technical difficulty—Editor]
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Blake Richards
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here.
Mr. Sirota, we apologize that things didn't quite work out so that you could be here for the whole thing, but we're glad we were able to have you join us.
Thank you to all of you for your contribution.
We'll suspend briefly to set up for the next panel.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Blake Richards
I call the meeting back to order.
We have our final panel of witnesses for today.
We are joined by Kevin Chan, who is head of public policy at Facebook. He is with us in the room.
By video conference, from Washington D.C., we have Michele Austin, who is the head of government, public policy and philanthropy at Twitter Canada; and Carlos Monje, director of public policy from Twitter. We are happy to have you both here.
Before we turn to the opening statements, I will mention that we have a couple of items here from Mr. Chan. We have his opening statement, with portions of it in each official language, but it is not translated so that we have the whole statement in both official languages.
If we want to distribute that, and also pass around a letter that he would like to have distributed that he received from the office of the commissioner of Canada elections, which is only in one official language, we would have to have unanimous consent.
Do we have unanimous consent?
Liberal
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Blake Richards
We will turn the floor over to Mr. Chan for his opening remarks.
NDP
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Blake Richards
Mr. Chan, never mind the confusion in the room, the floor is yours.
Kevin Chan Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, thank you for the invitation to appear before you today. My name is Kevin Chan, and I am the head of public policy for Facebook Canada.
I want to begin by acknowledging the importance of the subject at hand today, the integrity of our elections.
Facebook stands for bringing us closer together and building community, creating a healthy environment for civic engagement. It is crucial to our mission as a company. We know that a service that fosters inclusive, informative, and civically engaged communities is critically important to the people who use Facebook.
I want to point out that we know how vital a platform Facebook is for your respective political parties and leaders in engaging citizens, and that it is an important means of communication that Canadians use to contact you directly. The Prime Minister used Facebook Live last week to announce Canada's new tariffs on the United States.
The leader of the opposition recently took part in a question and answer session with Canadians via Facebook, and the NDP leader live-streamed on Facebook his speech at the recent Kinder Morgan rally on Parliament Hill.
We recognize that Facebook is an important tool for civic engagement and that is why we take our responsibility to election integrity on our platforms so seriously.
In Canada, we understand the degree to which Facebook is a key platform for your respective political parties and leaders as well as an important way for Canadians to engage directly with you. The Prime Minister used Facebook Live last week to announce Canada's new tariffs on the United States. The Leader of the Opposition recently engaged in a Q and A session directly with Canadians on Facebook. As well, the leader of the NDP live-streamed his speech at the recent Kinder Morgan rally on Parliament Hill.
We recognize that Facebook is an important tool for civic engagement, and that is why we take our responsibility for election integrity on our platform so seriously. We have been engaged on the issue of election integrity in Canada for many years. Following the last federal election in 2015, the Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections noted that Facebook's “cooperation and swift action on a number of key files helped us to quickly resolve a number of issues and ultimately ensure compliance with the Canada Elections Act”. It is our full intention to be equally vigilant in the next federal election in 2019. As referenced by the chair, a copy of the entire letter from the Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections to Facebook has been sent to the committee for your consideration.
As you may know, the Communications Security Establishment published last year a report outlining various cyber-threats to the next federal election and identified two areas that Facebook sees a role in addressing: one, cybersecurity—the hacking into the online accounts of candidates and political parties; and two, the spreading of misinformation online.
In response, we launched last fall our Canadian election integrity initiative, which consists of the following five elements. First, to address cybersecurity, one, we launched a Facebook “Cyber Hygiene Guide” created specifically for Canadian politicians and political parties. It provides key information for how everyone who is administering a political figure or party's Facebook presence can help keep their accounts and pages secure. Second, we are offering cyber-hygiene training to all of the federal political parties. Third, we launched a new cyber-threat email line for federal politicians and political parties. This email line is a direct pipe into our security team at Facebook and will help enable quick response for compromised pages or accounts. Fourth, to address misinformation online, we have partnered with MediaSmarts, Canada's centre for digital and media literacy on a two-year project to develop thinking, resources, and public service announcements on how to spot misinformation online. This initiative, which we are calling “reality check”, includes lesson plans, interactive online missions, and videos and guides that will promote the idea that verifying information is an essential life and citizenship skill. Fifth, we launched our ads transparency test, called “view ads” here in Canada last November. This test, which is ongoing, allows anybody in Canada to view all ads a page is running, even if they are not in the intended audience. All advertisers on Facebook are subject to “view ads”, but we recognize that it is an important part of our civic engagement efforts. Candidates running for office and organizations engaged in political advertising should be held accountable for what they say to citizens, and this feature gives people the chance to see all the things a candidate or organization is saying to everyone. This is a higher level of ads transparency than currently exists for any type of advertising online or offline.
The “Cyber Hygiene Guide” and more information about these five initiatives can be found at facebookcanadianelectionintegrityinitiative.com. I have also circulated copies of the “Cyber Hygiene Guide” to this committee for your consideration. This is only phase one of our Canadian election integrity initiative, and we intend to launch additional measures to address cybersecurity and misinformation online in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election.
I want to also share with you some measures we have taken in advance of the Ontario election happening today. We conducted outreach to all Ontario candidate page administrators, sharing best practices to keep their accounts secure and ensuring that they have access to our cyber-threats crisis line. We sent an in-app notification to all Ontario candidate page administrators, which appeared at the top of their feed, reminding them to turn on two-factor authentication, and we launched a new MediaSmarts “reality check” public service announcement focused on how to access the validity of information online during a campaign. This video, which has been running since May 3, has been viewed more than 680,000 times. We will be rolling out similar initiatives for other provincial elections in Canada in the months to come.
With respect to Bill C-76, the elections modernization act, it is legislation that is about a broad range of election issues, many beyond the scope of Facebook. Bill C-76 does include a provision to require organizations selling advertising space to not knowingly accept elections advertisements from foreign entities. We support this provision.
Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you today, and I will be pleased to answer your questions.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Blake Richards
Thank you, Mr. Chan.
I will mention to the committee that with regard to the letter that I referred to, which we didn't have unanimous consent for, the clerk will have it translated for us and when it is translated, we'll distribute it. Obviously, it won't be today.
We'll now turn to Mr. Monje for opening remarks.
