Canadians Wary of Gov’t Deciding What Is ‘True or False’ Online, Federal Research Finds

View of Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sept. 1, 2020. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Canadians are wary of Ottawa deciding what information on the internet is true or false, according to in-house federal research, which also found that few are likely to rely on federal government websites for information.

“Many participants expressed reservations about the Government of Canada telling Canadians what is true or false,” said a report by the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter.

Findings described in the report, titled “Study on Online Disinformation Advertising Creative Testing,” were based on eight online focus groups. The CSE awarded Ottawa-based Ekos Research Associates the contract worth over $47,000 in October 2022 to conduct the study.

The report added that most of the study participants “said they feel confident they can tell the difference between real and false information you can see on the internet at least most of the time.”

The researchers also noted that few respondents said they would “go online to a Government of Canada website for information.”

Many respondents suggested the federal government should focus on “helping Canadians identify misinformation through tips and tricks” while also “being careful to provide neutral information without any political lens.”

The report comes as the Canadian Heritage Department is working alongside other federal offices to draft legislation that will target “disinformation” and “harmful content online.”

In a letter earlier this year to the Commons foreign affairs committee in response to a dozen committee recommendations on the topic of “the situation of human rights defenders, journalists and media organizations,” the federal government said it was “in the process of designing a new legislative and regulatory framework for online services, including social media platforms.”

The approach being considered included creating a “digital safety commission” tasked with enforcing new rules to compel online platforms to “identify, assess, and mitigate risks on their platforms through their own internal systems and processes,” the letter said.

Cabinet has not yet specified when it hopes to introduce the legislation.

Online Information

From April to June 2022, a panel of 12 experts held discussions and provided advice to the government on drafting an internet content regulation bill.

The announcement of the panel by Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez and Justice Minister David Lametti in March 2022 came some months after the Liberal government introduced legislation in June 2021 aimed at tackling online hate speech that lapsed during the snap general election that was called for Sept. 20, 2021.

Between July and September 2021, Rodriguez’s department held an open online consultation with Canadians to gauge public sentiment toward legislation targeting online activity.

Findings were not released until some months after the consultation concluded, in a report titled “What We Heard: The Government’s proposed approach to address harmful content online.”

According to the report, “Regarding the substance of the proposal, although multiple individuals and organizations welcomed the Government’s initiative, only a small number of submissions from those stakeholders were supportive, or mostly supportive, of the framework as a whole.”

Nonetheless, it said there was “support from a majority of respondents for a legislative and regulatory framework, led by the federal government, to confront harmful content online.”

Meanwhile, internal government documents obtained through an access to information and privacy (ATIP) request submitted by Canadian lawyer Michael Geist showed that around 90 percent of the 350 respondents who gave feedback through the online consultation were “unsupportive” of Ottawa’s proposals for tackling online harms.

“Concerns most cited are those around censorship/freedom of expression,” said a Department of Canadian Heritage report titled “Online Harms Consultation Preliminary Overview of Submissions” that Geist obtained through his ATIP request.

It added that most individual respondents also had concerns about “the role of law enforcement and fears around surveillance, and the definition of ‘hate speech,'” as well as the proposal’s “lack of definitional detail” about what will be considered harmful online content.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in November 2022 that his government remains focused on legislating against “online harassment and violence to ensure trust in technology.”

“While always ensuring and defending free speech, we must make it clear that it cannot be OK to bully and attack people online,” he said on Nov. 14, 2022.