Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault says his agency has reached out to major social media companies ahead of the next federal election to ask them to help secure it against misinformation.
“I have written to all the key social media platforms to engage them and seek their support to making this election a secure election,” Perrault told reporters in Ottawa on March 24 in response to a question on election security.
Perrault said AI-generated materials such as “deepfakes” are a “serious concern,” and highlighted a recent Canadian Centre for Cyber Security report that found “synthetic material” has been used to create misleading content to impact elections around the world in recent years.
Perrault said it’s also concerning because “people tend to overestimate their ability to detect” such content.
Perrault said Elections Canada is continuing to work with its security partners on political threats and securing IT systems for the election, which is slated for April 28. He said the agency has launched a new online tool called “ElectoFacts” to debunk inaccurate information related to voting and elections.
“I encourage Canadians to use Elections Canada as the authoritative source of information about the federal election process,” Perrault said.
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“I also encourage Canadians not to let their social media feed dictate what they read. Check out your candidates’ platforms. Go and read the political parties’ platforms. Take the time to look at different news sources and commentary and make up your own mind.”
Foreign interference in Canada’s election has been a focus of policymakers in recent years, with a 16-month public inquiry into the subject recently concluding. In January, the Hogue inquiry released its final report, which said foreign interference did not change the outcome of the last two federal elections, but could have impacted local ridings.
The report said misinformation and disinformation by foreign actors pose the “single biggest risk” to Canada’s democracy.
Hostile Actors
During a press conference on March 24, government representatives outlined how foreign actors may attempt to interfere in the upcoming federal election.
Vanessa Lloyd, deputy director of operations at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said potential threat activities related to the spring election are “likely to differ from those observed in past elections.”
Lloyd said the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) task force, which she chairs and is composed of security officials from agencies like CSIS and the RCMP, has determined most hostile actors have “adapted their tradecraft to further conceal their foreign interference activity, making it even more challenging to detect.”
Lloyd said hostile state actors are increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence to interfere in democratic processes around the world. She said generative AI is being used to create this content “quickly and at low cost.”
The Chinese regime, according to Lloyd, is likely to continue targeting Canada’s democratic institutions through a “complex array of both overt and covert mechanisms.” She said this includes using social media to target Chinese Canadians and promote narratives favourable to Beijing.
The governments of India, Russia, and Pakistan could also interfere in Canada’s elections to promote their interests, according to Lloyd.
