Disinformation

The Centre for Free Expression has joined with 23 other organizations and 34 individual experts to call on Innovation, Science and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne to split the proposed Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) from the omnibus Bill C-27 in which it is currently embedded so it can be returned to the parliamentary committee for proper consideration – something it has not had to date.

A recent bombshell of a book about the corporate capture of Alberta’s energy regulator sheds light on how private organizations and public institutions sometimes converge into powerful networks that disseminate misinformation. The peer-reviewed book elucidates the inner workings of this phenomenon by developing an approach to analyzing institutional influence and dysfunction that can be used by investigative journalists, scholars, and anyone else opposed to abuses of state and corporate power.  

As we have seen in recent elections and in the present pandemic, misinformation can do real harm.  But the Canadian government’s plan to consider legislation to criminalize the spreading of misinformation is the wrong response. Criminalization will not stop misinformation. In fact, it often draws more attention to it, as well as undermines civil liberties and human rights essential in a democratic society.