Foreign election interference “clearly undermined our democracy” – Royal Military College professor
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss the impact of foreign disinformation on the Canadian election, and the lack of action being taken by Elections Canada to combat it. We also talk about what we can do to prevent similar attempts in the future.
Transcript
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Dr. Luprecht, are you aware of what happened to my colleague Kenny Chu in the last election,
00:00:05.140
primarily because he introduced a bill to propose making this foreign influence registry?
00:00:11.460
I'm aware of some of the online activity that was directed at your colleague,
00:00:16.980
and I also believe that that activity had a material influence on the outcome in that particular writing.
00:00:25.740
So there was a McGill study, I'm sure you might be aware of it, that said the overall election,
00:00:32.140
they said it didn't have a material impact, but at certain writing levels,
00:00:36.120
they can't discount that it had a material impact on the election.
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Would you say that he was one of the ridings, primarily because he brought forward this bill
00:00:43.620
that was targeted by foreign disinformation campaigns to defeat an incumbent candidate in a Canadian election?
00:00:52.180
Yeah, I think it clearly undermined our democracy, and it was quite nefarious
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because the activity, as you well know, was conducted in language, in neither English nor French,
00:01:02.840
it was primarily conducted in a third language, a language in which our security, intelligence,
00:01:08.180
and law enforcement agencies have rather limited capabilities,
00:01:13.240
nor did we have a plan of how we would actively identify such influence activity and be able to counter it.
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And so, yes, it was, I think it is a canary in the coal mine of what any member of Parliament faces
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when they actively engage in activity that displeases some of our adversaries.
00:01:31.820
That's great. You know, I can understand, you know, I'm reading the 2021 Elections Canada report,
00:01:36.580
and, you know, they sort of talk about misinformation and disinformation,
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but it seems like they're really downplaying the impact of disinformation and information,
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saying, you know, that Canadians can trust the election,
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and I think overall, the vast majority, we can trust the election,
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but we know how sometimes elections in Canada can literally be decided by a single riding
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Do you think that Elections Canada needs to take this more seriously,
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and even, not only in their reports after the fact, but even during an election,
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to alert Canadians that there is a disinformation campaign being conducted during the election?
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It's not an online problem. This is a longstanding problem in Canada,
00:02:16.140
where riding associations are captured by certain entities that are either close to certain countries,
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to certain ethnic groups, to certain religious groups.
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So what I would say is that the online attempts at clear interference in our democratic processes
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is simply a continuation of a longstanding problem that is related to riding its constituency association levels
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and not sufficient attention, but also not efficient constraints.
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Do you think Elections Canada should have done more?