Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 9th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

I know, Mr. Salvo, that you have a bit more to share. I will ask this, if it's suitable, similar to the request made of Mr. Chiu: If you have additional information to share with the committee, could you submit it to the clerk? We'll have it translated and then shared with committee members in both official languages.

With that, Mr. Chiu and Mr. Salvo, I would like to thank you on behalf of PROC committee members for being here. We apologize for the technical issues at the beginning of this set.

We'll be moving into our next panel. With that, we wish you both a good rest of the day and thank you for your time and attention today. If there is anything else, please just send it to the clerk, and it will be circulated.

For the purpose of committee members, we know that bells will start shortly. Do we have agreement to work through the first 20 minutes of bells? We'll have the clock put up on the screen, so that we're all aware of it. Is that suitable?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

That's excellent.

Depending on what happens, we will go into estimates next week. We will need a budget passed for the estimates, so that we can have the copy and so forth. Are we okay with that budget being passed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

That's excellent. We will suspend for two minutes, do quick sound checks and start on the next panel. We'll see you shortly.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

I call the meeting back to order.

In our next panel we have Sam Andrey, managing director of the Dais at Toronto Metropolitan University, by video conference.

We also have Vivian Krause, researcher and writer, by video conference.

We will now start our opening remarks.

Mr. Andrey, let's start with you. Welcome.

[Sam Andrey, Managing Director, The Dais, Toronto Metropolitan University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the invitation to address the committee today.

My name is Sam Andrey. I am the managing director of The Dais, a policy and leadership institute at Toronto Metropolitan University, where we work to advance public policy solutions for the responsible governance of technology and a strong democracy.

We have been conducting regular surveys of Canadians over the past four years to better understand online misinformation and to track public attitudes toward regulating online platforms.

I want to begin tonight by sharing a high level of what we understand from our research about the spread of online misinformation in Canada. About half of Canadians say they see false information online at least a few times a month. The use of online platforms for news, particularly Facebook, YouTube and private messaging apps, is associated with higher exposure to and belief in misinformation.

About 10% to 15% of Canadians have a relatively high degree of belief in misinformation and are more likely to hold false or conspiratorial beliefs about many topics, such as COVID-19, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and immigration. This group tends to have lower trust in mainstream media and public institutions in general. Conversely, this group shows higher levels of trust in and use of social media and messaging platforms for news, and people in this group are less likely to say that they fact-check things they see online using another source. These collectively are conditions that can be taken advantage of by foreign actors to both seed and amplify false information online.

What are potential policy solutions to this challenge? This is not an easy question for a liberal democracy while protecting free expression and avoiding unintended consequences, including the potential to produce chilling effects, surveillance creep and the censoring of voices that represent the most vulnerable.

There are of course proactive efforts the federal government is already supporting in some way—things such as digital literacy programming in schools and communities, and maintaining strong, independent journalism. We also have measures in place now, through the Canada Elections Act, to monitor digital election ads and prohibit foreign parties from directly purchasing those ads.

However, a number of allied jurisdictions are also now advancing regulatory models that place additional legal responsibilities on online platforms to more transparently address their systemic risks to society, including their role in spreading foreign disinformation that is designed to undermine democratic processes.

Regulatory models could, for example, advance responsibilities to require labels on synthetic or deepfake media, or to clamp down on what's commonly referred to as “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”, a tactic that can be used by foreign actors to artificially spread false information through the use of fake or automated accounts.

There are also efforts under way to improve tools that enable users to more easily fact-check or understand the context of what they come across online. For example, WhatsApp has rolled out a feature for highly forwarded messages, whereby you can tap on a magnifying glass and send that message to a Google search. Twitter has also begun piloting its “Community Notes” feature, which allows users to add context to misleading tweets, which others can then rate the helpfulness of. Nudging features like these, as well as other efforts that encourage users to think twice before sharing, can help mitigate the spread of misinformation without censorship.

I want to close by saying that we have found, through our surveys, that these platform governance proposals are supported widely, by more than 80% of Canadians, and that the majority of Canadians believe the intentional spread of false information is a threat to Canadian democracy that needs to be addressed by our governments.

Thank you for the opportunity. I'm looking forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you, Mr. Andrey.

Ms. Krause, it's over to you.

Welcome to PROC.

[Vivian Krause, Researcher and Writer, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for the invitation to join your meeting today.

My name is Vivian Krause. I am in Vancouver, and I am appearing here as an individual.

The reason I am here is that I've had two experiences since 2017 with Elections Canada investigations, and I think that those experiences can perhaps be useful in looking to see how they went and how they can be improved.

Since 2017, I should say that I have been involved with two investigations, which were Leadnow and WE Charity. In both cases, these were non-profit, youth-focused organizations, which are very different from an authoritarian state government.

In both cases, the organization at the heart of the investigation had openly acknowledged that it had been trying to influence election outcomes. In both cases, there was clear evidence of funding from outside Canada.

For example, in their book, WEconomy, the Kielburger brothers write that they had been approached by Allstate—that's the American insurance company—wanting to “buy election results”. That's on page 253 of their book. They go on to explain, “[I]t's not what you think. For the insurance [company], the cause [was] youth empowerment,” but the Kielburgers explain further that they had calculated that it cost $34 to “buy” a youth vote. Allstate gave WE Charity $34 million for their youth program, which I take was enough funding for one million youth votes.

I'm sure we all agree that we want to encourage youth voting. That's not the issue. The issue is the funding.

The second point I'd like to raise is that, with Leadnow, the reason this was a concern to me is that Leadnow was created by an American organization. After the 2015 election, its executive director wrote in its annual report that year that it had run a Canadian campaign that had moved the needle, contributing greatly to the ousting of the Conservative Harper government.

Even in these two cases, where there was an admission on the part of the organization being investigated that they had been trying to influence the election's outcome, Elections Canada found nothing wrong.

In the case of Leadnow, I was interviewed. It was a four-hour interview, if I remember correctly, and I remember at the end of it how frustrated the Elections Canada investigator was. He said, “People like you who are concerned need to get the Elections Act changed, because”—as he said—“we can only enforce it. We can't change it.”

I think there are three specific things that need to be tightened. One is the types of activities that are regulated, especially with a focus on online activity. Two, the time frame for reporting funds is way too short. Three, non-cash, in-kind contributions are really where the impact is being felt.

The second point I would like to make, and I'll be brief, is that, to make our elections more resistant to outside interference, I believe that it's at the CRA that we need to see change, and, in particular, at the charities directorate. The reason this is so important is that charities can, in essence, Canadianize funds, so that once funds have gone through a Canadian charity, in the eyes of Elections Canada those funds are Canadian.

As I see it, the charities directorate has been operating largely on an honour system. I say that because for the last 30 years, CRA has revoked only 584 charities. That's an average of 22 charities per year over the past 20 years. That's less than one-tenth of 1% of Canada's 86,000 charities, so it is a negligible number.

Since last summer, CRA has revoked or put into the process of revocation a total of 18 charities run by a single individual, a tax lawyer in Vancouver. These audits, I think, are important to take a look at, because they're revealing, not only about the charities but, even more importantly, about CRA oversight.

One of the important things to note is that these 18 audits took, on average, 10 years from the point of the transaction or the activity that CRA found to be offside and revocation. The range was from a minimum of seven years to 21 years. That's just far too long.

In one case the audit report was completed in 2012. It took another 11 years before the charity was shut down just last month, as of March 25.

I draw your attention in particular to the case of Howe Sound Samaritans' Foundation, a Canadian charity—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Ms. Krause, are you close to the end? We have already—

[Vivian Krause]

Yes. I have two more sentences.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Okay. Go ahead.

[Vivian Krause]

I was going to mention Howe Sound Samaritans' Foundation. They were revoked because they paid the cost of a consultant to provide information to the Chinese government about charitable activities in eastern Europe, particularly Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This was paid for via a company called Enabling Environment Endeavours.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

I'm sorry. Those are a long two sentences. We're limited in time tonight. Thank you.

If you have opening comments, as always, just share them with the clerk and we'll get them circulated to all members.

We will enter our first round of six minutes with Mr. Calkins, followed by Ms. Romanado, Ms. Normandin and Ms. Blaney.

Mr. Calkins.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My first question will be for Ms. Krause.

Would you want to elaborate on your concerns regarding the charities directorate at the CRA?

[Vivian Krause]

My concern is that the CRA is not enforcing the law requiring that charities stick to activities that are exclusively charitable. The example I was trying to illustrate was of a Canadian funded via a Canadian charity, who was providing information to the Chinese government about what's going on in former Soviet countries. That's not charitable activity.

If you read the revocation reports that are coming out, there are some very concerning activities the CRA is revealing.

It's the nature of the activities that are being conducted that's a concern, number one.

Second is the delay. When it's taking 10 years to shut down an errant charity, that's too long.

I could go on. It's the nature of the types of activities occurring that's a concern, and the other is—

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

I don't mean to cut you off, but I want to move on.

I'm an Albertan, Ms. Krause. It's been glaringly obvious to me throughout my political career that money has come across the border through various foundations and charities to advocate against things like the energy sector, against pipeline development. We've seen this, and I know you've spoken on these things a lot as well.

Foreign money can interfere in our domestic affairs in numerous ways if we allow it. Now we have some relatively serious allegations of money being funnelled in by a foreign state through proxies in Canada to help certain candidates win elections, win nominations, etc.

I had a bill back in a previous Parliament, C-406, that would have banned third party advertising by any organization that received foreign funding. The issue seems to be, especially when it's on the charity side.... I'm wondering what conclusions you can infer when it comes to a foreign state actor, and how that would be different. The problem I believe Elections Canada has with this is that it's not able to sort out the molecules per se without keeping track of separate bank accounts and where the money actually comes from.

That's one of the glaring loopholes that I think we can all agree on here.

What are some of the other glaring loopholes that allow foreign money to flow into Canadian charities or into our political process that you think need to be closed?

[Vivian Krause]

That's the big question.

I think the answer is, number one, that the CRA is running the charitable sector on an honour system. There just isn't nearly enough auditing. When you have 80,000 charities and only one-tenth of 1% of them are shut down a year, it's just negligible.

Specifically with regard to elections, the two things I saw in the investigations that I was part of were, first, that organizations were having an influence via activities that aren't regulated. For example, online activities, or creating a donor base, or developing video content, or creating websites, editing reports, writing speeches, coaching and providing strategic guidance aren't regulated. None of those were reportable expenditures.

The second issue is the time frame. What I saw is that so much of the election preparation was done years in advance. By the time the two-year mark came around—that is, two years before an election—the groundwork was already laid. If you compare that with the timeframe for reportable expenditures, it's a matter of months.

It's very easy to circumvent the rules by making your expenditures before the reporting period even begins.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Could you elaborate on this? You talked about the types of activities that should be regulated and the time frames—those are fairly straightforward—but you also talked about non-cash, in-kind contributions, which, I think, are very difficult things to track.

Could you give us some examples of how you think that's being abused?

[Vivian Krause]

There's a lot of online support you can give to a campaign from outside Canada. Even things like media monitoring or monitoring online activity.... That's going to be very difficult to control, because it can be done from a beach in Australia, or anywhere. I mention the beach in Australia because that's where the website for Leadnow was created, apparently. That's part of it.

I'll give you another example. The online donation mechanism for Leadnow was created by an organization based in Washington, D.C.

Whenever things online can be prepared by an online consultant anywhere, it's hard to track the expenditures.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Another rationale the government had for voting against my bill, Bill C-406, was that they were going to instead pass a government bill, Bill C-76, which, if you believe the government's talking points of the day, would have closed some of the loopholes in foreign funding of elections by third parties.

Do you think Bill C-76 has been a success?

[Vivian Krause]

I couldn't answer that question, to be honest. I really couldn't predict.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

Mrs. Romanado, you have six minutes.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Through you, I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here with us this evening.

My first question is for Mr. Andrey.

You brought up some very interesting information with respect to disinformation campaigns and social media. We all know how disinformation campaigns on social media were used in Crimea prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

We all know that members of Parliament have a role to play in terms of informing our constituencies, but we also have a responsibility to make sure the information we are providing people is accurate.

One of the areas you mentioned, which I think would be interesting to hear a little more about, is the evolution of AI and what that can do in terms of misinformation campaigns out there. I've seen videos that have obviously been faked. They look and sound like a person but have been proven to be incorrect.

Can you elaborate a bit on what you're seeing on the ground in this regard, and how we can combat that?

[Sam Andrey]

Absolutely. I think, in general, automated content or bot accounts—which are sometimes called “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” by some of the big platforms—have been tactics used by foreign governments and state actors for quite a number of years. It's a form of automation. The concern is that the sophistication of these tactics is growing and that AI—in particular, generative AI, where text, video or images can be created more easily—is rapidly getting better and will make the detection efforts that platforms have tried to ramp up over time less successful. That is, I think, the biggest concern. Doctored videos, deepfake images and...text, as well, are growing in frequency.

In terms of what to do about it, there have been proposals that any synth-fake media should be labelled. Of course, there is legitimate use of synthetic media that is satirical or artistic. However, if we're concerned about the spread of misinformation, perhaps there should be a little label on these platforms that informs the user that's the case. If it is meant to mislead, the platforms could try to impose labels on these images and improve over time—get to the point of kicking users off the platforms who continue to post manipulated images without labels, for example.

In its most extreme form—I'm sorry if I'm talking for too long—there have been suggestions that generative AI tools like ChatGPT could keep a log of their outputs and that platforms could then, basically, track against that log to automatically add the labels that....

Again, these are ideas people are putting forward to try to address the risks.