Juno News - December 22, 2019Bureaucrats monitoring US social media for “misinformation” about Canadian immigration
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Summary
A few months ago, I broke the story that Canadian government bureaucrats were monitoring social media posts from Canadians and reporting within the department anti-immigrant sentiment. I wanted to explore this a little bit more, so I filed an access to information request with the department and got over 2,500 pages back. And in that I learned that the department is also monitoring reaction from Americans.
Transcript
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A few months ago, I broke the story that Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Canada
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bureaucrats were monitoring social media posts from Canadians and reporting within the department
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anti-immigrant sentiment. I wanted to explore this a little bit more, so I filed an access
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to information request with the department and got over 2,500 pages back. And in that,
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I learned that the department is also monitoring reaction specifically from Americans. What are
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Americans saying about Canadian immigration? This is something that came up in a few of these
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emails related to what they call the public environment scan. Supposed to be the scan that
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basically indicates where Canadian perceptions are about the work that IRCC is doing, and more
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broadly, the government's handling of immigration. In one particular email, a communications staffer
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reports there hasn't been too much conversation on the US-Canada border from a US perspective.
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She points to a post-millennial article as well as some Twitter commentary on it. And in many cases,
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there's nothing to report in these emails. It's all just standard fare about what's going on
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on the internet. But there's one specifically that tips the hand of the department to say that
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tracking American sentiments is a priority. Lisa Scarizzi, who's a social care advisor in the
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communications department, says she's following the format to focus solely on conversation from
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what's being said in the US. Below are the topics around border security. She points to a lot of border
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security stuff that is going on on Twitter, what Americans are saying, as well as a history.com
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article, and says that other than these two points, she hasn't seen too much conversation.
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But it isn't just about what Americans are saying about Canada. The department is also tracking
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what is going on in America domestically, specifically around the DACA. This is the
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Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, something that was very contentious, that was being used for a
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lot of criticism towards Donald Trump's administration. And the Canadian government was for
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some reason tracking what people were saying about it, pointing out that Twitter remains the chief
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platform for the conversation, hosting 57.86% of online public discussion. With the new announcement
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of America's plan for DACA being released on February 8th, we will be working to expand the DACA section
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of our searches of a program the government uses for social media monitoring to attempt to capture as
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much information as possible. Unsurprisingly, bureaucrats were also monitoring when Donald
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Trump referred to shithole countries in that famous comment that made a lot of headlines around
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the world. Another story Canadian immigration officials were tracking is the rejection of extending
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temporary protective status to Nepali immigrants. 9,000 Nepalis that were in America. Donald Trump did not
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extend it. And they were reporting how traffic on social media indicated people found his announcement
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unnecessarily cruel or ghoulish, citing a Washington Post story that seemed to be doing very well
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in traffic. The list goes on of stories where Canadian government bureaucrats are monitoring
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not just American reaction about Canada, but also American domestic political content and commenting.
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I reached out to the department to get an explanation as to why and received back a statement that says
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media monitoring and social media monitoring are standard practices in the government of Canada.
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It allows departments such as IRCC to be aware of coverage of our issues and to monitor both media
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and stakeholder comments on our business lines. We monitor issues, not individuals, and we do not
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monitor for political purposes. By monitoring topics that are trending internationally, including in
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the US, the department is able to determine if there is misinformation circulating about Canada's
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immigration programs. Given that IRCC works with vulnerable populations whose lives can be
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significantly impacted by misinformation, it is essential for the department to keep abreast of
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information being circulated about our issues and to correct inaccurate information when it is
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circulated, regardless of where the information may have originated. Now, this is something that did
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not come up in the documents themselves. There was no example of the government correcting misinformation.
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It's possible that the search terms for my access to information request didn't have the right one. So we'll
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certainly follow that and expand that. But the government is monitoring American internet comments
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for misinformation about Canadian immigration. That was the takeaway from these. This is the type of
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research that True North is only able to do from your support. We don't get any of that $600 million
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journalism bailout money. We get support from people that value what we're doing. So if you can chip in a few
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dollars by heading on over to tnc.news slash donate, it would be very much appreciated.