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.
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 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.
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.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.
“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.