Evidence of meeting #80 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 debate.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Paul Adams  Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, As an Individual
Graham Fox  President and Chief Executive Officer, Institute for Research on Public Policy
Jane Hilderman  Executive Director, Samara
Clerk of the Committee  Mr. Andrew Lauzon

12:25 p.m.

Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, As an Individual

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON

I take it from that then that you favour a statute. I ask this because the minister suggested there might be a statutory or non-statutory way of getting to the objective laid out in her mandate letter. So you are in favour of a statute.

Let me ask all three of you the same question. Without a lot elaboration because I have other questions, could you just indicate whether or not you are in favour of a statute?

12:25 p.m.

Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, As an Individual

12:25 p.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Institute for Research on Public Policy

Graham Fox

I have no view as of yet.

12:25 p.m.

Executive Director, Samara

Jane Hilderman

In the model of the broadcasting arbitrator, it does exist in statutes. If you were to go that route, then I think you'd have to have it reflected in law. As for the minister's observations, I would be curious to hear more. From reading the blues, I didn't get a sense of exactly how it would work through a grants and contribution scheme. Maybe it would. I couldn't really visualize that outcome.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON

Yes. I don't see how you'd get to certain things. You'd have to necessarily amend certain legislation, anything that affects financing for parties, for example, or the way in which broadcasters act during writ periods, because any change to it involves a change to the Canada Elections Act. I just don't see how one avoids that. I'm not saying you have to go down that road, but if you do go down the road of trying to be prescriptive, I think you have to be prescriptive through amendments to the Canada Elections Act. I'm making an assertion and seeing if you thought I was right or wrong about that.

Here's a problem that I think exists with these kinds of discussions. This is a zero-sum game, as Mr. Fox pointed out. It's a zero-sum game to some degree among the various broadcasters that have incentives to try to cause you to watch their network as opposed to getting the coverage online. That suggests to me very strongly, and this is related to my next question, that anything that comes out of this, if there were a legislative process, ought to be a product that is available instantaneously, and is under some form of.... I'm not sure creative commons is the right copyright, but effectively there should be no copyright control over it.

I'm wondering if you agree with that or not. The question is for all three of you. I'm asking it briefly, because I have to move on to my third question.

Mr. Fox.

12:30 p.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Institute for Research on Public Policy

Graham Fox

I would agree with that. I think you do need to take some of those decisions out of that negotiation room between political parties and broadcasters, because that's where the zero-sum game exists. I think general rules or principles that come from elsewhere that are uniformly applied across platforms is a more neutral way to go about it.

12:30 p.m.

Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, As an Individual

Paul Adams

I agree.

12:30 p.m.

Executive Director, Samara

Jane Hilderman

Yes. I don't think what we're asking our broadcasters to do is too onerous, given it's three hours in one debate every four years, to make it a common licence for everyone.

12:30 p.m.

Conservative

Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON

Now I come to the part that I struggled with the most. We can argue over how much time should be given for opening statements and all of the structural issues, but the key issue of who gets to participate and to what degree is the key zero-sum game. Right now it tends to focus, and has for several years, over the participation of the Green Party.

Looking back historically, it is clear that participation or non-participation of a party in the debates has been absolutely critical to the potential success of parties. In 1993, for example, it was critical to the breakthrough of the Reform Party and Bloc Québécois. Had that not been available, the outcome of the elections might have been very, very different.

That is not a neutral question, and the problem we are therefore faced with is this. We can either lock that in statute, or we can leave it up to the discretion of some commission or commissioner, which means that the fate of our parties in the next election, of the Parliament we get, and the policy that comes out of that Parliament are to some degree at the discretion of somebody or some commission. That's a problem for which I don't have a clever response. I'm hoping that maybe you do.

That is my final question, so in the remaining time, I'd be interested in what you folks have to say about that.

12:30 p.m.

Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, As an Individual

Paul Adams

I would be cautious about overly rigid rules for a commission or commissioner ahead of time. Canada's party system is much more fluid than, say, the United States' or Great Britain's. If you look at the list of parties that have been competitive in this country in the last 25 or 30 years, you're at over half a dozen pretty quickly. The example of 1993 is very striking. Two parties that hadn't existed, at least at the level of official recognition, were the two parties that became the leading opposition parties.

I think, when you look back to the inclusion of Elizabeth May, that was a programming decision made by the networks based on what they thought would make exciting television. I'm not saying that it was a mistaken decision democratically, but those should not be the principles on which those decisions are made.

12:30 p.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Institute for Research on Public Policy

Graham Fox

I have two quick comments in response to your question.

First, I think there's an issue with the timing of those decisions. Often they're made either right on the eve of an election or even in the opening days of an election when people are still trying to decide who gets access to which debates. The fact that political parties are directly involved in negotiating with the broadcasters means that you can rely more on.... Tactical considerations of whether it's in my interest to have you standing next to me are more prevalent than if you made the decision months out, before I knew where you would be in the polling versus where I am and so on.

I also think it's a mistake to make decisions based on a specific circumstance in which we have a party and the leader before us. One could imagine that you could come to a set of principles or a set of guidelines that would inform all such decisions around which you could agree. Are there thresholds you can imagine in terms of presence in the House at dissolution, or in terms of where they're running candidates and how many? Is there a threshold in terms of public opinion support six months out of an election that is now set in any event?

I think trying to find a way to say that if you meet the majority of these conditions you're kind of in is a more useful way than having to ask on the eve of an election whether so-and-so will get access to a specific debate, which is obviously problematic.

12:35 p.m.

Executive Director, Samara

Jane Hilderman

I would just largely echo Mr. Fox's comments.

Again the broadcasting arbitrator is interesting, because the criteria are in law but there's discretion. He's been able to, over time, sort of modulate that formula in terms of allocating broadcast time. Again, let's say these are the factors we think are most important, but you have some discretion given the circumstances. Take the point that you can do this before the writ drops, which takes some of the politics out of the room.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell

Thank you.

Mr. Christopherson.

November 23rd, 2017 / 12:35 p.m.

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you all very much for being here.

I wasn't at the last meeting. I had another commitment, so I just want to express my enthusiasm for this. It's not that it's not a bad idea and stuff. I am really gung-ho.

That last time was just a zoo. That was ridiculous. Democracy and Canadians were not served. We're all guilty. I'm not casting aspersions here. Every political party has its share of the blame for that circus.

I read the blues from the last meeting when I was prepping. I noticed Mr. Reid raised similar issues the last time about statutes and legality. If that continues to be unclear after we've met with the Chief Electoral Officer who has a great amount of expertise, then, Chair, it might be wise for us to spend an hour at least with our parliamentary law clerk to understand exactly where we can go and can't go, and the legal pitfalls of going in one direction in terms of Parliament. I'll just leave that with you, sir.

I have to say that initially I thought a stand-alone commission made a lot of sense. I didn't really give it a lot more thought. Since then it's crept back into my own mind whether or not we really should be looking at setting up a whole new stand-alone entity that really only comes to life once every two to four years, depending on whether it's a minority or majority Parliament, versus keeping it somewhere within the office of the Chief Electoral Officer. The advantage of it being with the Chief Electoral Officer is of course that the partisanship is already removed; it's an agent of Parliament. That person works for Parliament and not the government, and that's crucial.

Maybe within that framework the supports are already there. They can be ramped up as they get closer and ramped down. I'm wide open as to which is the way to go. I wonder if you have any further thoughts on that or you can expand on your preference or your thoughts on whether a stand-alone commission would serve us best or we could save a whole lot of money and be a lot more efficient if we went with an already existing structure and modify that.

Could I have your thoughts, please, from all three of you?

12:35 p.m.

Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, As an Individual

Paul Adams

My initial thinking in the wake of the IRPP event a couple of years ago was that it should go under Elections Canada because of the existing structures and for all the reasons that you articulate. I put an “or a commissioner” in my remarks, because to me that's not the most fundamental thing. I think the fundamental thing is to have somebody who's not partisan, who is politically neutral, and who serves the interest of the voters. But yes, Elections Canada was my first thought.

12:35 p.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Institute for Research on Public Policy

Graham Fox

I think form should follow function. Decide on what you want to give this commission or commissioner as a mandate, and then governance decisions will flow from that.

12:35 p.m.

Executive Director, Samara

Jane Hilderman

I think we ask our Chief Electoral Officer to do a lot, so I would be hesitant to go beyond making sure that the post is filled with a competent person who can help manage the process. In particular, I think our election system is served by being above the fray, and political debates planning tends to get pretty close to the fray. This would have to be something that the committee considers carefully. Yes, Elections Canada may have a role, but it needs to be somewhat insulated from directly planning the debates.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

That's excellent advice. Thank you all very much.

Before I go on to a broader question, Ms. Hilderman, you raised the issue—and based on my age this stuff is twice as difficult for me to understand—of artificial intelligence and the implications it may have. Can you expand on that a little, so I can get a broader sense of how you see it? I think you're right, but I just couldn't make the argument.

12:40 p.m.

Executive Director, Samara

Jane Hilderman

I wouldn't consider myself fully conversant in artificial intelligence, but I know it's a debate that's coming to legislators. Truck driving is often brought up as the example that's most immediate, but I think it's going to change everything. It's coming to politics, and we haven't thought about it as carefully as we should.

It's already playing out. You have artificial intelligence or machine learning using existing data to select people, through social media or other platforms, to target and test messages. This involves not one or two different messages, but hundreds, sometimes thousands to perfect that targeting. We don't always have a sense of the information in these messages, or a sense of whether the people being selected know why they're being singled out. If you think about the public square or the public discussion, it's very easy for some voices to get extremely amplified, thanks to the artificial intelligence being used to create bots and other things that are seeking out certain points of view and ampliyfing them, or other people's points of view are not heard at all.

The bottom line is that this is distorting the public square. We're saying that debates are trying to equalize access for the voter, but in the midst of it, a lot of other pieces are going around that we would be remiss not to consider in thinking about the information environment.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Right. As for artificial intelligence coming to politics, I know a lot of Canadians who would welcome any kind of intelligence coming to our politics.

The next clear thing for us is going to be the powers and the mandate and how prescriptive we get. The key issues are going to be the dates of the debates, the number of debates, the inclusion or exclusion or participants, the location of debates, the format of the debates, and who will broadcast the debates. That, in my view, captures an awful lot.

Each of you has spoken to one degree or another about not being too prescriptive and maintaining some flexibility. How would you see the mandate? Would you suggest that we say, “You are responsible for the number of debates and you will make that determination”, or would you see them being told there needs to be a minimum, a maximum, a range? I'd like your thoughts on prescriptiveness, non-prescriptiveness, nimbleness.

12:40 p.m.

Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, As an Individual

Paul Adams

I think there should be debates on the major networks in the last weeks of the campaign. There should at least be one debate in each language in the last, let's say, two weeks of the campaign.

12:40 p.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Institute for Research on Public Policy

Graham Fox

There's probably a way you can have your cake and eat it too in this case. You could probably select, as Paul was saying, a strict minimum of debates that are available across all platforms where you could be more prescriptive while not stifling other debates that may have a more particular format or more specific audiences. As we saw in 2015, specific audiences are apt to sprout up. We don't want to preclude the mandatory audiences but we want to allow diversity to flourish.

12:40 p.m.

Executive Director, Samara

Jane Hilderman

Ditto. I think Canadians would find it eminently reasonable that they're guaranteed at least one debate, and setting a floor for that, I think, is not too burdensome on parties or broadcasters.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.