Thank you.
Evidence of meeting #34 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was political.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #34 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was political.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
I'm going to continue my cruelty, Mr. Jackson. We'll go for four minutes for the next two rounds and then call it a day.
Conservative
Grant Jackson Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Dr. Tenove, to follow up on Mr. Jeneroux's questioning, your suggestion to deal with foreign interference or activities online and content on platforms that are owned or located in foreign countries, and to try to address breaches, is to have the commissioner of Canada Elections make agreements with similar officials in those countries. Do I understand that correctly?
Assistant Director, Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I think there are a couple of routes of action. One is the more prosecutorial approach, which is identifying infractions and imposing penalties, possibly by pushing it into a prosecution phase. The other thing that I mentioned, though, is the ability to directly require online platforms to cease the transmission of content that appears to be intentionally spreading false claims about the electoral process.
Does that clarify what you're asking?
Conservative
Grant Jackson Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
It does, sort of, but I guess I'm just trying to understand how that would work in a real-world scenario, with a platform like WeChat, for example.
Assistant Director, Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
As it currently stands, the approach is that there are relationships between, I believe, the commissioner of Canada Elections and the platforms, to make requests once they identify infringing content, but there is no real authority to have those acted on. I suppose that beyond fines, beyond being able to apply penalties when platforms do not take down content that the commissioner has signalled is prohibited, there might be other means necessary to stop transmission in Canada. That's something I'd be happy to think through and get back to you on.
Conservative
Grant Jackson Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Mr. Conacher, on the topic of the commissioner, previous witnesses have raised concerns about the lack of judicial review for a commissioner acting.... The commissioner's office would be put in the role of, really, fulfilling two roles at the same time if there's no judicial review mechanism for a complaint. I wonder, do you have some comment regarding that?
Co-founder, Board Member and Chairperson, Government Ethics Coalition, Democracy Watch
The Supreme Court of Canada is going to rule soon on a Democracy Watch case, which was heard in January, concerning the right to judicial review for these kinds of administrative tribunals, commissioners, agencies or boards. The Ethics Commissioner currently has a bar to judicial review on certain areas. I think the ruling on that case will establish the standard. Generally, the courts have upheld the right to judicial review when Parliament has tried to bar it, so I don't think any attempt to bar judicial review will be successful in the long run. It's a lot better to just remove it.
Conservative
Grant Jackson Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Okay, that's where I was going to get to. Your recommendation, then, would be that this provision be removed from this piece of legislation.
Co-founder, Board Member and Chairperson, Government Ethics Coalition, Democracy Watch
It's the court's role, and the proper role, in our Constitution.
Liberal
Liberal
Élisabeth Brière Liberal Sherbrooke, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Garnett, we have heard a lot of comments and opinions on the 10% rule, whereby contributions may not exceed 10% of annual income.
What are your thoughts on that?
Class of 1965 Professor in Leadership, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
Thank you for asking that question.
I think the balance that is trying to be struck in this particular bill would be between limiting speech and allowing legitimate organizations to have a voice within the electoral system. The idea behind that 10% rule is to ensure that organizations that are not contributions-based would still be able to participate. You can envision a situation in which an organization that is not necessarily in the business of fundraising would be, essentially, left out of that electoral conversation if they weren't able to use some of their own funds.
One concern that I have, and one thing we might want to be concerned about with this idea that's come up that “Well, maybe there should just be a separate pool for just those particular actions,” is whether it does turn into more of the PAC-based system that we see in the United States. My understanding of “third parties” is that they are existing groups and organizations within Canada, groups of citizens who want to have a voice in the electoral conversation. Therefore, I think that moving towards a system in which it's just another avenue for contributions, another avenue for spending, might be a dangerous route to go down.
Liberal
Élisabeth Brière Liberal Sherbrooke, QC
We are running out of time. I would like you to quickly tell us your thoughts on the provisions in Bill C‑25 regarding disinformation and deepfakes.
Class of 1965 Professor in Leadership, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
One thing I can contribute to the conversation is this: Putting into an election bill that one cannot say false things about an election, for example, is relatively new. We've done some comparative work looking at how election laws deal with the issue of disinformation. Canada is one of the few places where this has been written into election law. There are very few examples of that, cross-nationally.
The thing I'm concerned about is this: While I think it's definitely a step in the right direction, we've noticed, in some of our cross-national research, that there's very little evidence on whether it ends up having the intended effect, at the end of the day—whether it's enough to actually improve the quality of our discourse. That would be where broader things that are not necessarily easily legislated through an elections act have to come into play. Things like civic education and civic literacy are longer-term investments, essentially, in the population. It's about investments in political institutions, even. That's one thing I caution.
While it's definitely a step in the right direction, we can't expect it to be the silver bullet that deals with the issue of disinformation in elections.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
Thank you so much.
I'd like to thank all the witnesses.
This meeting is adjourned.