The Paul Wells Show - Election week 4: it's a jungle online

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

How concerned should we be about election interference online? Taylor Owen and his colleagues at the Media Ecosytem Observatory keep a close eye on who's trying to sway our elections, and whether or not they're succeeding. He joins Paul to discuss that work and share his wish list for the next government’s digital policy.    Taylor Owen is the founding director of the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill University. You can hear him every other Tuesday on his podcast Machines Like Us.   In campaign news, Carney and Poilievre appeared on Quebec's biggest talk show this week. Now, they're getting ready for the debates. Hélène Buzzetti, political columnist for Coops de l’information, breaks down Montreal Week.   Season 3 of the Paul Wells Show is supported by McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy

The Paul Wells show is made possible by McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy, where I'm a senior fellow. How do you know who to trust? There's a lot of crap on the internet and there's a lot of really bad content on social media. How do you separate the signal from the noise when the noise is a lot of really bad content on social media, how do you separate the signal from the noise when the noise is a baseline of really bad content? This week campaigning and governing online and another look at the campaign in Quebec in a week that was all about Quebec.

I'm Paul Wells, welcome to the Paul Wells Show. I've had some fun over the last few weeks following the federal election campaign to various corners of the country. This week, we're gonna follow the campaign online to a world where you never know whether you can trust what you read. One of the leading experts in media, online technology and democracy in this country is Taylor Owen.

He's the Beaverbrook Chair in Media Ethics and Communication at McGill University. He's the founding director of McGill's Center for Media, Technology, and Democracy. His podcast, Machines Like Us, is a technology show about people, and it comes out every other Tuesday. And Taylor worked closely with the Trudeau government

in producing legislation that tries to protect citizens in this strange new world. So he pays close attention to online communication during campaigns because he and his team try to identify organized disinformation efforts. And he's also thinking hard about what will happen after the election because any new government will face some of the same questions the Trudeau government faced, sometimes controversially, in trying to govern

online. After my feature interview with Taylor Owen I'll check in once again with my colleague Hélène Buzetti, one of Quebec's most respected political columnists, in a week where both of the big parties camped out in Montreal to prepare for the television debates. First, Taylor Owen. Taylor Owen, thanks for joining me. Hey, happy to be here. You are kind of occupationally all the time at the cutting edge of analyzing the impact of new digital media on democracy. So for you, like for me, elections must be kind of a busman's holiday, like a chance to finally see how all of your concerns play out in real time. What's this campaign like for you? So one of the projects that we run is the media ecosystem observatory. And essentially we try and

is the media ecosystem observatory and essentially we try and capture as much of the Canadian information environment as we can, all the public content circulating on the internet, on social media, in journalism, and watch it and see what's flowing through it. So in an election, it is sort of our Super Bowl, right? It's the time when there is the most attention on politics, there's the most content flooding through our ecosystem, there's the most attention from potential malicious actors, which we pay a lot of attention to. And Canadians themselves are paying the most attention to the news and to information. So we put a real premium on the integrity and the reliability of information during an election. So we're really trying to look under the hood there and see whether what we are seeing

and what is circulating is authentic and aligned ultimately with our democratic interests. Do you have any sense of the trend line of malicious versus innocuous information? You know, it's really, really hard. And I know that's not the best answer here, but there is so much, this won't be news to you. There's a lot of crap on the internet and there's a lot of really bad

content on social media and there's a lot of really bad people on social media. But that is not an election phenomena. That's not a foreign interference issue. That's just a reality of our internet and our social media. That they are designed to amplify and give voice and give opportunity to people with ideas we don't agree with, or sometimes people with malicious and bad intent. And that's the baseline in which we go into an election. So what we try and do, and this is really the hard part honestly, is how do you separate the

signal from the noise when the noise is a baseline of really bad content. We put a lot of effort into trying to avoid what often happens in this conversation, which I'm sure you've seen a ton of and we've already seen some in this election, which is journalists or partisans or just citizens seeing something that looks malicious and looks bad and flagging it as some malicious act of a foreign actor or something that's going to undermine our election. When the vast majority of those cases will not do so. The vast majority of bad things on the internet are seen by very, very few people and have almost no impact. But some things do.

And some things take off and are seen by lots of people. And we've seen in the past, in past elections can have an impact on how people view candidates, how people vote, how people feel about each other and their fellow citizens, whether they're further divided from each other or not, right? Like we know that that can happen. The problem is finding the things that do do that versus the noise. And that's what we put a lot of effort in trying to do. Who's the we?

What kind of resources are you throwing at this? So we, I I mean we have About 25 people working on the election in our observatory and we have a network of a dozen research partners across the country which we collaborate with So how it works. I mean is like we as you know, there's been tons of cases where people flag something that looks suspicious We take a look at it and we see if we think it has any. Validity or any potential seriousness, right? So potential to get, have impact to breach lots of people, to be picked up by a prominent voice that would amplify it to lots of people, potential signals of malicious intent.

If we see that we create what we call an incident and we study it. We put a survey out in the field to see if people are seeing it, if we see that, we create what we call an incident and we study it. We put a survey out in the field to see if people are seeing it, if it's changing people's views. We do a deep dive on the data to see how it's tracking and spreading across seven platforms. And we put a call out to our research network for topical experts to see what might be behind it. Who do they think it's coming from? What do they think the intent of it might be?

And we kind of triangulate those things. And then we issue a report that we publish publicly a number of days later and we say, do we think this mattered or not? That second step is interesting. So it's not just a hypothetical sense of whether it might have an impact. You, you actually try and measure whether

it has had an impact. Absolutely. Yeah. And sometimes you can't do that until the thing really spreads. Right? So I'll give you a good example. Like, I don't know if you've seen cases of this, these 51st state websites that have popped up. Yes. As you've seen reference to this, right? There's a bunch of them that have emerged and a few of them look like they're kind of sock puppet sites, right? So they're Facebook

groups that were previously about something else. And in March of this year, so before the election, we saw a few of them turn into 51st state groups. So one was like a buy and sell group that had tens of thousands of people in it, right? All of a sudden, it's now a 51st state thing. So like we create an instant of that because that's interesting right? Like why would someone turn a group with an audience, a built-in audience already, into one that's going to maybe promote content about the 51st state? But it hasn't done anything. So we're sort of watching that and that's an incident but

there's no point in surveying on that or bringing in experts on that because they haven't started posting yet. But if they do, then we'll trigger these other sort of steps, right? And it's the same with another, a number of the things we're seeing right now. We're seeing tons of coordinated bot stuff on X. That's just kind of a function of X right now because all the guardrails have been taken off. So there's a ton of JNAI content flying through X that is not having a huge impact yet.

We've seen those fake CBC sites, GenAI content of fake CBC sites using fake photos of candidates. So those are out. We are doing some survey on that to see just how far reaching those are and people actually seeing them because a lot of people are sending those to us, interestingly. There was a bunch of artificial inflation of carnies ties to Epstein, a bunch of bought activity doing that, but it doesn't look like it had far reach.

It was happening before the election, interestingly, so someone was kind of seeding that early. We don't know who though, we don't know where it came from. And now probably most interestingly, and we have some mixed feelings about this one is site, the government intelligence group flagged. That was my next question.

In his case. Yeah. Um, we've created an incident of it. So we're sort of analyzing it as we speak. So what they've said is that, I mean, what we know is that there is a fairly large mainland Chinese WeChat channel that discusses international news in Mandarin. The bias of that channel is very anti-American. And what site, which is the federal government task force of a sort of a coordination body

to coordinate what the government knows about foreign interference during an election, flagged that they found a couple of posts that were pro-Karney in that group. Now we've looked at those posts and I mean one of them says that Karney will be tough on Trump and there were there only two posts and we haven't seen them circulated very broadly yet. So it is a big group. It is in mainland China. But it's a very anti-American group

to begin with, editorially. And there are a couple posts. So we're sort of looking at why the, I mean, look, I don't know. We don't know yet. The other reality here is the government has access to information we don't. All we do is look at what we can see publicly.

The government obviously has access to intelligence and Five Eyes data, their own intelligence, right? So, I don't know. So they might have made the decision to go public in the middle of a campaign based on a context that they haven't, can't, have decided not to reveal. Or maybe, I mean, it was a very exciting day.

There was an announcement by the site task force, which includes national security intelligence people in the government, that they were gonna have a news conference on an incident. And then it wasn't until reporters got there that they, and this is the first time that sort of thing has happened during a campaign. And in the end it was these reasonably cryptic,

reasonably low key comments about Mark Carney. And so the other possibility that comes to mind is having been accused a million times before of being asleep at the switch, that they decided to err on the side of caution and to blow the whistle hard, even on a questionable case. Yeah, I mean, like you would have followed

the Foreign Interference Commission closely. And one of the main takeaways from that is that governments face this really wicked problem, particularly in elections, which is a caretaker government is responsible for the integrity of the election. They have access to a ton of information about what might be happening that we don't and they can't even disclose to the public. And the only threshold we've created in Canada previously to this election was, did this incident threaten

the integrity of the election? If so, the P5 panel, right, the critical incident response panel, should flag that to the public. So it's a known entity before the end of the election. But that threshold is incredibly high and incredibly difficult to know in real time. Like, how do you know if an incident threatens the integrity of an election in real time, in the middle of an election? And what are the implications of the government saying that? And so I think what they've done here in response to the commission findings is lowered that bar. So instead of just using that critical election incident

protocol, they've taken this broader site group, which is a broader range of people, and said, look, we're going to be more open about the things we're watching and seeing through the various mechanisms we have to watch the election. And I think that's probably right. I think more communication is better. The Biden administration did this in the last US election.

Every few days, you'll remember, they came out and talked about things they were seeing in the information environment and potential attempts by the Russian government to do X, Y, or Z, right? And nothing was determinative, but it was meant to create a kind of normalization of the government speaking about this topic during an election. I think it's probably good they're doing that. It's gonna be interesting if they escalate it though.

Like that's the real question, right? Then we're in sort of Romanian election territory, right? Where the government is saying there was an actual threat to the integrity of the election that might even undermine the results, right? And then we're in different territory, but nothing like that's happened in Canada. might even undermine the results, right? And then we're in different territory, but nothing like that's happened in Canada.

Is it also an area in which Western societies have built up antibodies of which you and your colleagues might be one? Like I get the feeling that in 2015, 2016, there was a level of kind of institutional naivete, which meant that, uh, anyone wanting to run a bot farm could just run free. Whereas now, the responses and the awareness, and maybe to some extent, the architecture

of the platforms has changed to the point where it's harder for the bad guys than it used to be. Yeah, it's so interesting, right? And I think the architecture of the ecosystem is the exact way of framing this, and that is always changing. So the design of these platforms, as you know, or just every day they're different

than they were the day before. These are living things that are designed and evolving. So we're in a very different place than we were in 2016. And look, I think some things have gotten better and some have gotten worse. So in 2016, or sorry, 2019 election, which was the first one we studied, we were being informed by what happened in the US in 2016, or sorry, 2019 election, which was the first one we studied, we were being informed by what happened in the US in 2016, when all the red flags about foreign interference broke

through, right? And we everyone became concerned about this. So we were too in Canada. And what we found was that actually the Canadian ecosystem was actually pretty resilient at the time to these external shocks. They put in place the Election Modernization Act that made foreign buying of ads illegal. We lowered the cap on how much you could spend on digital ads, right, to reflect how cheap digital ads were. We started studying this and publicly and journalists were covering it.

And perhaps most consequentially from my perspective, Canadians at that moment still consumed a ton of traditional journalism and had a lot of trust in it. Totally different than America. The Canadians like across the political spectrum had like 80 plus percent trust in the five main news organizations and very high consumption of them. Like most people consumed one of them every day. One of the main five. And our theory in that election

was that that, in some ways, is part of one of the antibodies we're talking about here. That if you see something crazy on the internet during the day, and then you go watch the evening news, and that disproves it, it might not totally convince you of that crazy, against that crazy thing, but it does have an effect, right? It's a normalizing effect.

What we've seen since that election is those two variables, as you know better than anyone, have cratered. Our trust level in journalism and our consumption of broadly defined traditional journalism have both gone down closer to American levels. That's a really big change in our ecosystem that we're trying to account for in this kind of work. I mean, that's all really interesting, but it's not the only file that you work on.

You were also sort of a key architect of a lot of the previous governments, the Trudeau government's proposed legislation that they brought in regarding taming the wilds of the internet, the online harms act, the discoverability legislation and a lot of that is still unfinished business and will become the business of the new government, whichever one it is, whether it's conservative or very different flavour of liberal government. Yeah.

Uh, and I assume you've been, you've been trying to game out what work will be on your table and what work will be on government's table after this election. Yeah. And it's, we're in this kind of interesting moment, I think where the previous government, whatever one thinks of what they did do and what

they weren't able to accomplish. And I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, they were pretty active in this file, right? There were a number of attempts to govern in various ways our digital ecosystem, everything from C18, supporting journalism, a CBC mandate review, a competition policy review, an AI act, a data privacy act, an online harms bill, a fair amount of activity, most of which or a bunch of which died on the order paper when this parliament was prorogued.

So we're in a pretty big reset moment with two governments that have very, very potential governments that have very different views of what the state's role is in governing our digital technologies and I think we could face two very different paths I mean like just to give one example that you're very engaged in is The previous government did a number of things on journalism policy as you know Yeah, there's a labor tax credit that supports a bunch of journalistic labor, there's the news media bargaining code which for better or worse has led to the creation of a large fund for journalists to support journalistic labor, there was a CBC mandate

review, right? Like a number of attempts to support the production of journalism in our ecosystem. And the Conservative Party is signaling that they'll get rid of all of it, right? Not some of it, but all of it, including English language CBC. And in that scenario, we may be in a position, a position that seems more likely three months ago than it does now, frankly, so it would probably require a majority government conservative government. I think to do all of this Where we might have run the experiment of what a completely free market journalism ecosystem in Canada might look like An experiment a lot of people have been calling for for a long time, right?

Like we've never had that before ever We've always supported journalism in one way or another through government regulation and government policy. But that system might have been dismantled including the largest actor, the CBC, and man, if Dublin studies the ecosystem, that would have been a remarkable thing to observe. Like what happens to Canadian journalism when you remove all government support for it. So that's one example. I think on online safety, it's another potential pivot point. The conservative opposition was very against many elements of the online harms bill and had

a very different vision of what that would be. So there's two very different paths there as well. So look, I, it's an interesting moment for this conversation, honestly. Has Mark Carney tipped his hand on a lot of this stuff? I know he's, he had an event where he talked about the future of the CBC.

He, he clearly, CBC is a valuable wedge between him and the conservatives. I mean, I think that's it. I mean, that's probably why that is the one piece of digital slash information policy that's been released so far. Okay. So with my power as imaginary next prime minister of Canada, I appoint you deputy minister for the digital ecosystem What would you propose the challenge with governing the digital ecosystem is need to do a lot of things

There's no silver bullet to make this thing better, right? You need better data privacy. You need competition policy to make sure there's not a duopoly on ads You need some form of online harms policy to mitigate against, mediate against the worst kind of content, the child sexual abuse material. There's a bunch of tools you need to do, in my view. You need transparency policies that we can study and understand what's going on online. All these different things. The mistake of the last government in my view was they placed each of those components in much bigger bills in different departments. So we had C27, which was all of data privacy modernization and AI together.

A small piece of that was about protecting the information ecosystem, right? But it was also about incentivizing investment in Canada and scaling Canadian innovators and all these other things, right? Our competition policy wasn't just about Google and Facebook ads, it was also about the Westons and about our banking sector and about all these other things, right? So my view is we do actually face a bit of an emergency with the immigration ecosystem. I think we haven't done the things that other countries have done to make the system more transparent and accountable.

And we should pull a bunch of those different pieces from across bills together into one act and move that fast and then work on all the other things, right? The other things that were present in all those different bills. I think that could be done quickly and with a lot of support. It has popular support, definitely, like the vast majority of Canadians support that kind of bill, and I think it has cross-partisan support too. A lot of what gets hidden in some of the rhetoric around these bills is that they actually have a lot of cross-partisan support, including in the Conservative

Party. A lot of the online harms bill, except for some of the more sort of hate speech oriented things, the core of that was supported across parties. So if we can sort of dial it back to the core of these bills, I think it's something that could be done easily with a lot of support. But maybe that's wishful thinking, honestly. This stuff gets politicized as you know, better than anybody very quickly.

Well, yeah. I mean, basically three big areas of legislation and they just had an almighty fight over all of them. They burned through two heritage ministers before they got to, to, to. Online safety. Yeah.

I think they should have done it first. I think they'd got the order wrong, frankly. I mean, maybe protecting kids on the internet should have been the thing they started with rather than doing a Netflix tax, right? Like let's start with the thing really people really care about. And what they really care about is that their kids are out on an entirely unregulated internet, um,

getting approached by strange men in their direct messages. Like maybe let's deal with that problem, right? And first, and then work on some of this other more complicated stuff. And on that, on the online harms, everything I've heard from the representatives of the big, like Google and Facebook and so on, is that they actually would have welcomed government action on this front,

because if not, it falls to the companies to designate what's harmful and to police it. Is that, are they crying crocodiles tears there, or do you believe that they would really like to see government help? So I think, um, I'm not sure they want government help. I think the big companies have come to terms with a certain kind of regulatory approach because it's being normalized in other jurisdictions and they're complying in other countries. So I think in part because most of the Online Harms Act

was designed in a way that was building on and learning from the Digital Services Act in Europe, the Online Safety Act in the UK, right? So there was precedent for this approach. Companies were already complying. So it's very difficult to fight an approach in Canada that you're already complying with for all of Europe. And so, look, whether or not they welcome it or not,

I don't know, but I believe they weren't gonna fight the core of it the way they fought some other bills. Is any of this conversation, this debate, recast in the context of global trade war? And, well, to some extent, the stated preference of one of the party leaders that we turn away from the United States and towards the rest of the world. Can you turn away online?

I think that's such an interesting question and one that I'm sort of preoccupied with at the moment. The challenge has always been that the companies one needs to regulate in this space I'm sort of preoccupied with the moment. The challenge has always been that the companies one needs to regulate in this space are American companies and they're some of the largest companies in human history. That creates a governance challenge. Now if you're Europe, you can probably pull some weight and your market is big enough and these companies care enough about being in the European market that you have a pretty big stick to play there. We're in a slightly different

boat right? I mean we're a smaller country we don't matter as much to the American companies so it puts us in a tricky spot. So aligning with what other countries are doing makes sense for us right? So let's not get too ahead of our skis and let's align broadly with what Europe and other peer countries are doing. We might meet a different moment now though, right? I mean, it's pretty clear that the US is signaling that they're going to use pretty aggressive sticks, whether it's tariffs or stronger measures of economic warfare, frankly, against countries that are regulating against the interests of their companies.

Vance made this really clear when he was doing his European tour right after the election, right? If you guys regulate in a way that we think are undermining the interests of our companies, we're gonna go nuclear on this. And you better be ready for it. So that is one variable that is real. And I think we need to take consideration, but

something else has happened, which could be a countervailence to that, which is. If Carney is right, that there is going to be a decoupling of certain large democracies and the American market and America, then that might present an opportunity for governance alignment in this space. So if there's 10 or 15 countries that are all aligning their trade and their regulatory policy in a cohesive way and separating it from America, and if we're going to be a part of that Then there'll be more of this kind of policy

I think right because we're going to need to build our own digital infrastructure. We're going to need to have aligned policies with Europe We're going to have similar data rules around where it's stored. We're probably gonna have similar AI policies right as those countries The alternative is also possible though, which is the week after the election, whoever is Canadian Prime Minister goes to DC and cuts a deal on USMCA renegotiations with Trump. And in that scenario, I don't think our digital policies stand a very high chance of being a red line in those negotiations. I think supply management has a shot at being a red line. I'm not sure a digital services tax or a data transparency regime or journalism support

policy. I just don't see those being a red line that we're going to go to bat for if the government, whoever it is, decides our best interests are to cut a deal with America right now. But those are two really different scenarios, right? Like for the country, not just for this file, but like I'm curious what you think about that. Like are we gonna strategically decouple from America or are we gonna go all in on North America again?

I don't have a clear sense. It sounds like Canada is going to be a policy taker more than a policy maker. And the only question is whose policy we take. Is it going to be closer to the EU or closer to the United States? Yeah. And I think it's EU plus, right?

Like I think there is maybe an interesting configuration where some big global South democracies become a part of that too. Um, if Brazil and Indonesia and South Africa and Europe, Australia, Canada, I mean that starts to become a fairly broad democratic coalition, so to speak. Do we have weight in that though? I don't know.

I mean, Carney can say he wants to lead that, but like, I don't know. It's funny, because what I keep telling myself is that Carney should know better than anyone that big neighbors have gravity. And the lesson of Brexit is that it's very hard to turn away from the half billion people next door. And I really think turning the page

on the Canada-US relationship is a lot easier said than done. I think so, it's easier when you're being threatened aggressively though Yeah, I think it's been quite remarkable to see the reaction to that hostility in Canada And I got reaction is I mean it swung an election 30 points, right? or polls in an election 30 points, which is Both unprecedented and pretty remarkable, right? And that's a real thing, I think. And this actually is relevant for the

foreign interference conversation too, frankly. Has the decline in talk about a 51st state from Musk and Trump and American podcasts, is that a temporary pause around this election or is that a real change in position? And I don't know the answer to that. Just as I don't know the answer to a fundamental question, what on earth did Carney tell Trump to get him to stop? Because Trump's like a dog with a bone when he gets an idea in his head. Well, I put it back to you. I mean, was it Carney or Daniel Smith that got in his ear? What on earth would she have told him? Anyway, like we it back to you. I mean, was it Carney or Danielle Smith that got in his ear?

What on earth would she have told him? Anyway, like we're in the area of- This is you're swinging the election. You're ruining our election. Yeah. I mean, that's what she told Breitbart, right? Yeah. I've just, I'm not aware of a comparable case

where the president is saying something three times a day and then he stops on a dime. Like if nothing else, it demonstrates a level of self-control that surprises me. I mean, that is shocking, right? And Musk too, Musk, like we know from, and we are actually very concerned looking at the, we were looking at possible vectors of influence

in the Canadian election, Musk's posts being prioritized to every Twitter account or ex account in the world every time he posts is a pretty big vector, right? And we know he used it in the UK and in the German election, I mean to mixed results honestly, but he was willing to use that to spread false information in both of those countries. Was he going to be willing to do that here? He started talking about 51st state and promoting it and like with Trump, he stopped. So it's worth asking why they both stopped.

I mean, you presented one theory. Maybe that's one. Another is they realized that was Supporting the wrong horse in Canada. Yeah, that's another theory. I don't think we know one way or another but the discipline is remarkable the one thing I would add to this though is The role both of them play in the ecosystem. It's not just related to what they say It's what effect it has on What else is said and what else is amplified on the platforms. So when Musk says something, his content matters for sure, but it signals

to an algorithm and to a community of people, whether they be the whole broader influencer community and a bunch of bots that are out on X, that these are things that should be talked about and amplified. So when they were both talking about the 51st state, who else was talking about it? Rogan was debating it. Shapiro was debating it. Bannon was talking about it. Hundreds and hundreds of bots were all amplifying that con, right?

So there is an ecosystem effect to when the big fish say something in these ecosystems, and they've stopped saying it. So that rhetoric has declined across the ecosystem, which is interesting. We're in a different place than we thought we were gonna be in if they'd kept doing that through the election. I mean, I remember I was at that conference

that you organized in Montreal a couple of weeks before the writ drop. And the panel that I moderated, one of the questions was what's Elon Musk going to do? What's JD Vance going to do during a campaign? And instead they're turning into the very

large dog that so far hasn't barked. Yeah. And I, it's an interesting question to why we don't know the answer and what happens after the election? Do they reemerge and is it, or was this just like a trial balloon and Trump started saying some crazy stuff and everybody backed it because he was saying it and they don't have although Like look the message we were hearing from a lot of the americans at that conference

Including a number of national security affiliated americans Was you guys should be taking this seriously, right? Like there are a lot of people promoting an expansion of american territory and strategic reach who have proximity and presence in the White House. And so you probably at the very least should be taking this rhetoric seriously. And I was a bit taken aback by the way that was framed by some of those people at that event, frankly. It was a bit unnerving. Well, I don't normally like to end a conversation on a puzzle or a riddle, but I think we're stuck with it. And frankly, I kind of like it. Yeah, me too.

Maybe we'll know why all of this happened and didn't happen in a few weeks. Well, let's reconvene and we'll solve the riddle after the election. Absolutely. Taylor Owen, thanks so much for joining me today. My pleasure, thanks so much for joining me today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

I wanted to give you an update since this interview. Taylor mentioned the unusual case of the federal government's site task force, flagging some posts about Mark Carney early in the campaign. Well, Taylor and his colleagues have investigated those posts and they posted their results. We find no cause for alarm or sign that China has materially interfered in the Canadian election using this channel. Coming up, my latest interview with Hélène Buzetti about the election in Quebec. I want to say a word about the people who are supporting this podcast. McGill University's

Max Bell School of Public Policy is committed to the research, teaching, public outreach, and practical advocacy of sound public policy grounded in a solid understanding of the overall policy process with all its imperfections and limitations. With their one-year intensive master of public policy program, they teach a principle-based design of policy solutions to important problems. Learn more at mcgill.ca slash maxbellschool. Elaine Busetti, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me, Paul. It's Montreal Week on the campaign.

They started on Tout Le Monde En Parle on Sunday night. And Wednesday and Thursday are the debates, also in Montreal. My readers have spent the whole campaign debating, is Carney's French good enough? Why is Carney selling in Quebec, even though he keeps saying things that theoretically don't sell in Quebec? Can you explain, well, explain Quebec to us? We've got a few minutes. Explain Quebec, how many hours or days do I have?

Well, how do I start that? Well, first of all, on the question of French, I think we discussed that earlier. At the very beginning of the campaign, or even before the campaign started, I was really critical of Carney's French. And I got a lot of, I was really critical of Cardi's French. And I got a lot of, I wouldn't say hate mail,

but people responding to me saying that I was too critical of his French, that that was not the question in this campaign. And let me talk generally about the campaign. Like we keep saying that, you know, the ballot question is who's best suited to stand up to Trump. And I think Pauliev is right.

He has a point when he says, well, nobody can stand up to Trump. Nobody can, you know, change Trump's mind. But I think really it's a problem of phrasing. When we say that, what we really mean is who can stop Trump policies and Trump style of politics contaminating Canada? I think that's the real issue. People are afraid. They're looking at what's going on in the South. They realize that, hey, democracy takes hundreds of years to build and as few as a hundred days, and you can destroy it. People are afraid, and they're afraid that this new way of doing politics could come up north and contaminate our own debates. So that's the overall situation,

I think. And in that context, Quebecers, not only Quebecers, but certainly Quebecers look at Poiliev and they don't like him. They find him to sound a little bit too much like Trump, and therefore, because they don't like him, they just choose the other guy, what's his name again? I think in that context, it doesn't really matter who's the liberal party, as long as he's not Pierre Poliev. I think that's what's going on. Quebecers realize that there's a choice to be made between two people in terms of who's gonna lead the country and they don't like one of the choice. So they just go for the other one.

So as long as Mark Carney doesn't set himself in fire, I think it will be fine. Pauliev had to be happy with his performance on Tout le Monde en Parle. They both did pretty well. Yes, they did. But I think Pauliev had to be happy with his performance on Tout Le Monde En Parle. They both did pretty well. Yes they did. But I think Pauliev had a win as soon as he showed up on the set and didn't have horns on his forehead

because that's what a lot of people have been told to expect. Yeah. You know, especially in Montreal. What do you think of their performance on Tout Le Monde En Parle? And does it even matter? I've started to think that we tend to pump this show up a little too much because in the end it's back to back puffball interviews.

It is, it is. And I have a concern about that because we keep saying that there's a risk of, you know, the young people getting their information from Facebook and TikTok, where in fact they're only exposed to each party's respective propaganda. And then we tend to reproduce the same thing on these mainstream media platforms, like Tout le Monde en parle, where in fact, we're only giving the opportunity to party leaders to give us their spin again, without really confronting them. So in a sense, it was a very easy platform. And yes, I think both performed very well.

And on the case of Pierre Poiliev, I think what really helped him was that for once, and it was very refreshing, it was not this robotic politicians repeating his line and his spins. He actually sound authentic. We haven't seen that Pierre-Paul Liev a lot in the, I was about to say in the last four weeks, but in fact in the last 20 years really. So it was good for him. And in terms of Carney, I think he hit a score when he

distanced himself from Justine Trudeau when he said something about the economy, you know, I'm good at the economy and dealing with economic subjects. And this is something Trudeau was, how did he say that, less interested in. And I think it really hit a chord with that. It helped him positioning himself or confirming that he will be more of a centrist instead of being on the left and I think that was very good for him otherwise it's a match new you know. Meanwhile Pauliev has been giving more and more long-form interviews in English I'm not aware of an interview he's given in French outside of tout le monde en parle so as we're speaking, Tuesday morning, they just posted a long interview that he gave to Brian Lilley at Sun News.

And before that, less traditional outlets. He spoke to Shane Parrish, who's a Wall Street tech blogger with a huge audience, almost all of it American, and he spoke to Camila Gonzalez, who is sort of a Latina influencer, red carpet interviewer, and she sat down with Ana and Pierre Paulia for almost an hour. And they're interesting interviews. What Parrish and Gonzalez sure don't do is contradict anything he says or compare what he's saying today with what he might have said last year or you know Push him the way journalists do but there's now several hours of Pierre Paulie of talking in a relaxed manner online That wasn't there several days ago and

That's one of a few ways in which Paulie of has continued to deliver surprise in this last several days of the campaign and Carney has delivered Carney. Well, I'd say about that in Quebec, I'm not so much aware about these alternative interviews that he gave out. There was one with Olivier Primo who was kind of a controversial personality because he had this beach club in Montreal that created some sort of controversy he was involved with. And then at some point, maybe two or three years ago, he said that he would hire reporters to write news stories for him and he would pay $5 a piece. So there was a big controversy about the salary he was offering. So he had this long interview with Pierre Poiliev and Sophie Durocher at the Quebec Core Network

did an interview with Olivier Primo, condemning the fact that he does that because he allows for the liberal, the conservative leader to avoid mainstream media. So I'm not so sure it works well, but it's always the same thing with the conservatives is that they keep talking to those who already vote conservatives.

They keep talking to the conversi, right? The believers. And they keep hitting this glass ceiling that they are themselves creating. In politics, somebody used to tell me, in politics, you don't divide, you add up. It's all about adding up people to your big tent. And that's what Pierre Poilier was a problem doing.

I just recall what he said last week when he asked about Cory Tanik's comments about electoral malpractice. And he labeled them as a liberal and or a lobbyist. I mean, this is a former spokesperson for Stephen Harper. This is someone who's been working for Doug Ford. And just because he has said something contradictory, all of a sudden he becomes an enemy. And I think people see that. So I think that's the major problem of the conservatives. And in Quebec, it's very interesting because I was trying to understand what's going on in the province. And it seems to me like Quebec is like a microcosm

of reflective of what's going on in the rest of the country. The conservatives are holding their support at 23, 24%. It's quite a lot for them in the province. They tend to be stuck at 20%. So they're actually pretty strong. And they might with that win one, two, and maybe three extra seats in the Eastern part of the Quebec city and maybe, maybe Trois Rivières. And look at what's happening in the rest of Canada. They are also very strong at 38%. It's a very good score for the conservatives. I remind you that Stephen Harper won a majority in 2011 with 39.6%. So they're very close to that. It's just that the NDP is collapsing and the

liberals are getting stronger. Same thing in Quebec. The Bloc Québécois is collapsing and the Liberals are getting stronger. But what's happening in both cases is that the Conservatives are too close to the Alberta, Saskatchewan-minded people, who are closer in terms of mindset to the United States. Well, same thing in Quebec. What about Quebec City? Why are they so strong in the Quebec City area, which goes south to Lac-Mégantic, to Beaux, which are areas bordered to the United States? Well, again, this area of Quebec is our Republican sector, segments of the population. So the conservatives keep targeting these people, but they forget that these are not representative of either Canada or the rest of Quebec. And that's why they're hitting that glass ceiling. So in Quebec, because they get stronger in that area, it might result in three extra seats. And this will give the impression,

the illusion that they're on the right track when in fact they're not. What they're proposing is that they're on the right track when in fact they're not. What they're proposing is putting off many more Quebecers. There's a constant debate in politics, especially in the last 20 years or so. Do you grab the center and build the biggest coalition possible or do you excite and motivate your base? And until this year,

Pauliev was doing a pretty good job of doing both. You know, he was essentially able to rely on Justin Trudeau to demotivate the liberal electorate. Now he's maxed out the historic conservative vote. He's about as high as Harper ever got. But he is having a very difficult time making inroads. And now the only question is, can Carney keep the momentum and excitement going? And I think that's starting to be an open question. He's tied down for the next three days because of debates.

And then we'll see. It once again is looking like a very interesting final week. You're right, but what's happening right now, especially in the rest of the country, right, is the NDP collapsing. And from a Quebec perspective, it's always difficult to understand that NDP voters in some areas of Canada

tend to switch between blue and orange, right? So in, technically, with the collapse of the NDP, the conservatives should have been able to pick up some of that vote, but they're not. And that's the real question. Yes, of course, true to life and everything changed and the NDP is not good, blah, blah, blah. But the real question is, why is it that in that context of the two way race, Why is it that we get stuck at 38? We cannot convince more people to vote for us. And that is the real question that the conservatives will have to ask themselves after the election if, as the polls seem to suggest, that they will lose that election big time. But you're right. The polls are stagnant to a point and the debates could be interesting.

And I was looking at that. So can they make a difference, especially in Quebec? And maybe they could, but maybe the English debate will make a difference because I was remembering the last 2021 debate. It was actually a question in the English format by Sacha Karel, which made a, you know, about Bill 21, was it a racist bill? And that made a difference for the Bloc Québécois. So it's, it's actually ironic. And the 2019 debate was a bit the same, a question from Altia Raj about again, Bill 21, uh, post to Jagmeet Singh in this case. And again, it helped the Bloc Québécois. And also in 2019, there was the debate in French

where the abortion question was raised and Mr. Sheerat problems with it. And therefore it didn't help the conservatives there. So debates can make a difference, but sometimes not the ones we think. Yeah. Well, that's why you have them, right? Because they inject surprise into what can otherwise be very routine campaigns.

I'm looking forward to the debates. I'm glad there's only one moderator. That means that the leaders will have most of the time to talk and most of the rope to hang themselves if that's what it comes to. I agree and I have to say for those who don't know me, I've participated in those debates in the last two. I was one of the many, many reporters asking questions.

And I tend to agree with you. I think a formula with only one moderator is much better. In the past, we had two and that's not so bad, but five or six or seven is way too much. So yeah, it's a good thing. Although we have to ask ourselves questions about why the Green Party is there. They're not complying with two of the three criteria's that were set.

Yeah. They're essentially not minimally present in the Canadian political scene anymore. And therefore by the consortium's own rules, they shouldn't be invited, but they are anyway. And I suspect this is really just a matter of format because so few days before the debate, they don't want to have to redo the set, redo the time allocation and all that. It would be too much trouble, but still it raised the question of what's the point of having rules if you don't actually enforce the rules. And I think it will

raise questions about the legitimacy of that commission after this election, I suspect. about the legitimacy of that commission after this election, I suspect. I have spent a decade raising questions about the legitimacy of that commission. I know. But I've given up. I wish them the best of luck and I'm looking forward to their debates.

Hey, Ellen, thanks so much for joining me today. That was great, bye. Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica and supported by McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy. My producer is Kevin Sexton. Our executive producer is Stuart Cox. Laura Regehr is Antica's head of audio. If you subscribe to my Substack,

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