Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 21st, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much.

We'll now turn to Ms. Sodhi for six minutes, please.

[Amandeep Sodhi, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thanks to all of our witnesses for being here today.

Through you, Mr. Chair, I'd like to ask my first question of Ms. Bajaj.

In your appearance at the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference, you noted that diaspora communities engage with online information differently than other members of society. Why do you think that is?

[Shelly Ghai Bajaj]

In our research, we found, first and foremost, that their experience is differentiated by the actual digital spaces in which they engage. As I mentioned in my remarks, they use private encrypted chat applications at a higher rate than Canadian averages. By virtue of the design of these digital spaces, their experiences are different. This is because these private digital spaces are unique among other public social media platforms, such as X, YouTube, Facebook and so forth. In these private digital spaces, you're engaging with individuals you know, and information is being shared with people whom you often trust. This, at an individual level, often impacts how information quality is assessed and processed.

As individual users, we all use these heuristic devices and cognitive shortcuts to quickly assess and process information that's incoming, and we process the quality of the information. As for the shortcuts that were shared with us by focus group participants, sometimes the identity of the sender would impact how they processed and received the information. They're in a chat group; they have an auntie in there, and that auntie is very trusted. The auntie is known to send good-quality information, so they're going to trust what she's sending to them.

Vice versa, they also use this on the flip side. Sometimes individuals develop a reputation in these private chat groups for sharing poor-quality information—sometimes misinformation. This is also used as a shortcut to ignore that kind of information.

The digital spaces in which they engage shape their experiences with disinformation online.

[Amandeep Sodhi, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

What challenges do you believe this creates for encountering disinformation in these communities? For the second part, what opportunities does this create for strengthening resilience in diaspora communities?

[Shelly Ghai Bajaj]

In terms of challenges, in academic literature the focus has been on the spread of disinformation and its impact on elections. We found in our research that disinformation isn't just experienced between the start and the end of an election cycle. It's an everyday experience, by virtue of our digital participation in these digital spaces.

The challenges are that there are often a few buckets recommended for solutions and responses to countering disinformation. One bucket falls under what we call the legal regulatory framework. This is using regulatory mechanisms to reduce the encounter—the spread of disinformation online. For private spaces, this creates unique challenges, because these are inherently private spaces in which people are sharing information, with the expectation of some privacy.

In liberal democracies, we have the benefits of individual rights and civil liberties, so we don't necessarily want to erode trust by having government intervening in these digital spaces. It also creates a challenge in that, because of their closed and encrypted nature, you can't collect data at scale, so it's harder to know what's happening in these spaces. This often produces unique considerations around research design.

The other kind of intervention that's often recommended for countering disinformation is technological. This is content moderation—slapping something online that says the content is false. This is also trickier in private digital spaces. These things can be interpreted ambiguously.

For example, in WhatsApp, something can be “forwarded many times”. In our research, we found that “forwarded many times” is interpreted differently by different groups of users. Younger users would often use that as one of the cognitive shortcuts to signal that this is junk information coming in. Older users would often use that flag as a way to interpret that information as higher quality.

Technological interventions are also limited. This is why, in our work, we've really pushed and advocated for a bottom-up approach. These digital spaces are hard to govern through legal mechanisms and through technological mechanisms. What you really need is a bottom-up, grassroots, civil society role in which you're building trust, inoculation and prebunking at the individual level. This is the opportunity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

You have five seconds left.

[Amandeep Sodhi, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Excellent work.

Thank you so much.

Ms. Normandin, over to you for six minutes.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

Ms. Banka, we know that just because people have the right to vote, it doesn't mean they do. You said that 16- to 18-year-olds voted at fairly high rates.

Technically, 16-year-olds have to go to school, and the classroom is a good place to discuss and understand the issues in an election. Have you studied that or identified that correlation?

Does exposure to voting at an earlier age increase democratic resilience afterwards?

If students learn to ask the right questions in school, are they more likely to ask more questions as they get older?

[Sasha Banka]

That's what I was about to say. You explained it very well.

Yes, 16-year-olds typically go to school, a structured environment where they have access to resources and supports. Conversely, at the age of 18, a young person typically leaves home or may move to a different city, so they're in a less controlled environment. Resources and information on the voting process may not be as readily available to them.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much, Ms. Banka.

Ms. Broder and Ms. Ghai Bajaj, both of you talked about civic engagement online, which can take many forms. As we know, most platforms' business model revolves around disseminating information. The more the information is shared, the better it is for social media sites.

Do you see civic engagement as a way to fight fire with fire when it comes to ascertaining the quality of the information being shared? For example, we could require platforms to make it mandatory for people sharing information to check a box indicating that they have or haven't verified the content but are choosing to share it anyway.

Should we increase civic engagement in the sharing of information online?

Should the platforms be required to do that?

[Shlomit Broder]

Thank you. That's a great question. Even though I deal a lot with digital spaces, I have an opinion, which I'm happy to share.

There's a world of research out there about interventions that help the digital environment be, perhaps, healthier for us. I'm not sure about fact-checking. I think fact-checking has proven to be more problematic.

I'm not sure whether it was introduced here before, but another very successful example is the concept of friction, which is that, when you have someone about to press a button that says “share”, a simple line pops up that says, “Are you sure you want to share this?” Just introducing a friction moment has been proven to be effective in getting people to share less information that is problematic.

There's a world of recommendations from experts in this field—this is what they do—on how we can try to build better guardrails within our platforms. Separate from that, I definitely don't advocate for censorship online. I don't want to regulate speech as much as I want to regulate transparency.

I can speak for our organization. We used to do regular research through CrowdTangle, which was one of the mechanisms Facebook provided to civil society organizations to research their platform and the data. It was taken away. That's just one example.

There are many things we can do related to how these systems are designed, related to the transparency offered to researchers and civil society. There are also all kinds of things that we can do in the platforms that, I think, are not ones that we would debate and argue come at the expense of freedom of speech. Many things can be done that will have broad agreement.

Thank you.

[Shelly Ghai Bajaj]

May I jump in?

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Absolutely.

[Shelly Ghai Bajaj]

Thank you for the question. This question really emphasizes the need for us to adopt a multipronged approach.

Absolutely, we should have these friction mechanisms and force big tech platforms to put these friction mechanisms in place. These friction mechanisms can even work, to a limited extent, in private encrypted chat apps. For example, WhatsApp has a limit on the number of people you can forward content to. That, in and of itself, slows down the spread of potentially harmful content or disinformation.

That said, some technological solutions will likely be more effective in public, open platforms than they will be in private. This is why there's also the need for a legal regulatory framework that considers differential harms and impacts. However, there's also a need for bottom-up engagement in which we are teaching individual users, at a very individual level, the basics of AI and digital literacy and, hopefully, contributing to the long-form durable information literacy, which are those critical reasoning and critical thinking skills that we all need to use, as individual users, in this digital world.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much.

We'll go to the next round.

I have a warning in advance. Unlike normal, I will be enforcing the strict time limits. We have a couple of extra minutes, but we'll have to stick to the time.

Mr. Cooper, you have five minutes, please.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to direct my questions to Ms. Banka.

Thank you for your submissions regarding lowering the voting age. I will say at the outset that I respectfully disagree with your position, but I understand some of the arguments you've put forward.

One argument you put forward, which is often put forward as to why lowering the age would be a net positive, is encouraging greater engagement, with young people voting and this becoming a habit going forward as they become adults. However, I would argue that some of the data and analysis of it is not particularly strong. If you look at a lot of the research, it tends to be focused on the immediate impact of lowering the age and having 16- and 17-year-olds voting. I think that if you look at a number of jurisdictions, you will find that 16- and 17-year-olds who have the opportunity to vote for the first time often do vote at a slightly higher rate than 18-year-olds, for example, but what is less clear is the longevity of this early voter boost.

I would cite one study from Scotland, a fairly detailed study. I think Scotland is a good jurisdiction to look at because they have had voting for 16-year-olds since 2014, so there has been more than 10 years of it now. This study, “Longer-Term Effects of Voting at Age 16: Higher Turnout Among Young People in Scotland”, looked at:

...original survey data from Scotland collected, among 16- to 31-year-olds, seven years after Scotland lowered the voting age to 16. The data was collected specifically to allow for the consideration of cohorts with different ages of enfranchisement. The survey sample includes cohorts of young people who experienced their first opportunity to vote at age 16/17 as well as cohorts who experienced their first election aged 18 or older, between four years before and up to seven years after the change of the franchise.

The study concluded:

For engagement with politics beyond voting in elections...we find no lasting difference between young people who were eligible to vote at 16 versus 18. The experience of voting at age 16/17 did not make a difference in young people's non-electoral engagement in early adulthood.

Can you speak to the issue of engagement over the long term, not simply voting at the age of 16 or 17?

[Sasha Banka]

Thank you for the question.

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the study, but I find it really interesting. I could totally look at it and then provide a response later on, or the folks from Vote 16 could do that. I'm not very familiar with the research on that. What I will say, though—and this is not from a scientific perspective but is just my personal opinion—is that I think in general when we talk about habits, the more you do something and the earlier you start doing it, it has a tendency to stick for longer. However, of course, I understand there's research, and I'll have to look at it before I provide an answer.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

Can you speak to any other jurisdictions? I cited one study from Scotland, but can you point to other studies that would support that argument?

[Sasha Banka]

There are the studies and case examples I mentioned in my testimony, but I don't think I have anything specific when it comes to the longevity of the effect, which I think is what you're specifically referring to. As I said, I would have to defer it to a later date, but I think it's an important topic and I will definitely get back to you on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

You have 15 seconds.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

Okay, Chair.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much, Mr. Cooper.

Madame Kayabaga, you have five minutes, please.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you.

Through you, Chair, I'd like to welcome and thank all of our witnesses for being here today.

My first questions will go to Madame Banka.

First of all, I want to commend you for your opening remarks. I don't think my 16-year-old could pull that off, so kudos to you for being so eloquent. I'm sure I'll get in trouble for saying this, but it is well.

[Voices]

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