Canada’s chief election official has issued an extensive report on the last two federal elections, calling for action to crack down on hate groups, improve third-country regulation and new laws to make it illegal to spread misinformation about elections and voting.
“This report … is the beginning of an important conversation with parliamentarians and Canadians about ways to improve our electoral process,” Stefan Perrot said on Tuesday. “This is an extremely important exercise that we must undertake periodically to ensure the viability of our democracy in the face of changing circumstances, challenges and aspirations.”
Perot’s report calls for an amendment to Canada’s Election Act to make it illegal to disseminate information that disrupts or undermines elections.
In particular, the report states “prohibit a natural or legal person, including foreign persons and entities, from making knowingly false statements about the voting process, including voting and counting procedures, in order to disrupt the conduct of elections or to the legitimacy of the elections or their results is undermined. “
The report does not call for police scrutiny of political messages from candidates or parties. It says action must be taken now because the continued spread of misinformation could “threaten the credibility of the entire electoral system on which democracies are based”.
“For me, it’s basically drawing a line in the sand,” Perot said. “It is not good to deliberately undermine our electoral process by disseminating information that one knows to be false and to do so in order to undermine the process.”
The report calls on online platforms to publish policies explaining how they will deal with the dissemination of misinformation “which inaccurately depicts election-related procedures”.
The report also calls for greater transparency in political messages from political parties, candidates and third countries, arguing that there are shortcomings in regulating only those messages, defined as advertisements, when social media and other online platforms are able to disseminate political messages that do not meet this definition. .
Perot said he wanted the rule, which required ads from political figures to identify who allowed the message to be simplified and extended to text messages, YouTube videos and other social media posts, which can now be distributed anonymously.
All political messages should reveal their authors and tell voters how they can get more information about those behind the messages, the report said.
To get there, Perrault recommends that websites run by political entities – such as political parties, candidates and third parties – be required to link to a register with the ability to search for paid digital communications to improve transparency.
Hate police groups
To combat hate groups seeking to register as political parties, Perot wants to allow voters to ask the court to determine whether the main goal of an organization seeking to register as a political party is to promote hatred against an identified group.
“There is currently no mechanism to deal with this problem,” Perot said. “If there is a hate group that wants to register as a country at the moment, it could do so and thus gain access to a number of benefits.”
Among those benefits, he said, are access to registered voter lists, free television airtime and tax credits for contributions that should not be used by hateful groups.
Perot said voters should challenge such organizations in court because it is not appropriate for him or the Canadian election commissioner to play a role in choosing which political parties to register.
Third party financing
To ensure that foreign entities do not fund third-party advertisers in elections, Perot’s report says that any third country that claims to be self-financing must prove that it receives no more than 10 percent of its funding from donations .
Perot said a distinction must be made between third countries – such as corporations and unions – that use the revenue raised in Canada to fund political communications and smaller third countries that rely in part on donations to survive.
He said there was currently no way for Canada’s chief election officer to keep track of where smaller groups got their money, and that was a problem.
“What I am proposing is a mechanism to ensure that only contributions from Canadians or permanent residents go to third-country funding,” he said.
The report also calls for the regulation of “problem-based” communications that do not name a party or candidate, but “can reasonably be seen as the goal of encouraging or opposing a party or candidate during elections and election periods.”
The report also calls for a number of other changes, including:
- Allow applicants to register earlier to allow Elections Canada to better manage its communication rules.
- Increasing the protection of voters’ personal information by giving them the right to refuse to receive election messages.
- Extend the minimum number of days in indefinite elections from 36 to 44 days to allow Elections Canada to reduce the number of late ballots.
- Allowing voters to register for a special vote 45 days before election day.
- Allow special ballots to be marked only with the name of a political party and not with the name of a candidate.
- Require the head of Elections Canada to recommend an election date that does not interfere with religious or cultural days of importance.
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