World Report - World Report presents: How Safe is Your Vote?

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

As Canadians prepare to head to the ballot box, the integrity of this vote matters more than ever. From foreign agents to fake influencers... How serious are the risks to Canada's democracy? Can Elon Musk be considered a hostile state actor? And what are officials doing about these threats? Parliamentary reporter Janyce McGregor will tell you where we're most vulnerable, why meddling keeps happening, and what you need to know in this season of spin.Featuring:Gloria Fung, the Canadian Coalition for a Foreign Influence Transparency RegistryHenry Chan, former co-director of Saskatchewan Stands with Hong Kong Balpreet Singh, World Sikh OrganizationSukhdev Singh Gill radio host of 'AJJ DI AWAAZ' Kiu Rezvanifar, President of the Canadian Ethnic Media AssociationFormer NDP MP Charlie AngusBeatrice Wayne, Director of Research and Policy, Samara Centre for DemocracyStéphane Perrault, Elections Canada Chief Electoral OfficerVivek Krishnamurthy, Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Law School...and more!

This is a CBC podcast. Hi, it's Marcia Young. If you're a World Report listener, you probably know parliamentary reporter Janice McGregor for her sharp political analysis and her extensive coverage of the public inquiry into foreign interference. We're in an election period. Janice is keeping a watchful eye on the ways foreign actors might be trying to influence this vote and what officials are and aren't doing to stop them.

It's important information to know, so please enjoy this special presentation of How Safe is Your Vote? Hi there. Explain to the press theater. I got it. Oh, thanks very much. No problem. I'm Janice McGregor, a senior reporter in the CBC's Parliamentary Bureau.

This is the ninth federal election I've covered, but there's something different about this one. It's up! Every week, representatives from security and intelligence agencies brief reporters on whether Canada's vote is safe from foreign interference. Hello everyone, bonjour tous. With us today are officials to discuss the security of the federal election. Remember how we got here? Fears about foreign meddling started with intelligence leaks to the media.

Eventually, we all covered a full-on public inquiry into whether hostile foreign states interfered with the last two elections. To do better this time, officials monitoring meddling attempts are sharing what they find as we go. Officials aren't telling us these things because they want voters to worry. Attempts to interfere are just that, attempts. They're sharing this stuff to make us smarter. Adversaries' tactics change over time. Canada's tactics change over time too.

From foreign agents to fake influencers, there's a lot to think about before heading to the ballot box. The public inquiry ended, but the foreign meddling attempts haven't. How does this affect our politics? What are we going to do about it? I'm Janice McGregor and this is How Safe Is Your Vote?

Do people even know what we're dealing with here? Yeah, I am concerned. My understanding is that there is a possibility that some other foreign countries have funded some representatives' campaigns. Do you know anything about foreign interference in Canadian elections? Oh yeah, I've heard about it. What have you heard about it? Well, whatever, you know, just with, what is it,

China interference and Russia too maybe? I don't know. Well, I know that it has occurred to more or less degree depending on people's viewpoints, but I'm expecting that our security people will do the right thing and find out what's happening. Welcome to our new normal, meddling attempts, like this disclosure from the Security and Intelligence Task Force monitoring this federal campaign. We are aware of an information operation targeting the 45th general election on the social media platform WeChat. She's talking about what's been detected on WeChat's most popular news blog, an account

viewed by millions, including potentially Chinese-speaking voters in Canada. Intelligence considers it a covert tool of Chinese Communist Party propaganda. Officials already caught posts on this same account targeting conservative critic Michael Chong and former leadership contender Christopher Freeland. Now it's at it again, amplifying both positive and negative takes on Liberal leader Mark Carney. Here's how Laurie Ann Kempton from the Privy Council office explained it. So I don't think we can speak to the intent. I will say that the PRC should not be trying to

shape the opinions of Canadians, especially during an election period. This kind of coordinated, inauthentic behaviour is just an attempt to pollute the digital environment. So for those of us who don't use Chinese social media, why are officials so worried about this? How does the Chinese government try to manipulate Canadian voters on this platform? WeChat, usually they just use the phone and then, okay, let me engage you in my group,

and then you become part of the member. However they will also conduct search on you. The administrator will have the absolute right of allowing anybody to join or expelling anybody from the same group. So I cannot join. They know my name. Gloria Fung is an advocate for democracy in Hong Kong.

She's based in Toronto, but she also convenes a national network of human rights groups demanding more protection against foreign influence. They keep a close eye on what the Chinese Communist Party is up to on WeChat. And even some of the other mainland Chinese, they're also very cautious because once you've joined it, you know, you'll be under surveillance. She's worked on campaigns herself. So come election time, she's really monitoring these networks. I have already seen signs of disinformation campaign fake news being spread around in some swing writings, which are the target writings of the Chinese Communist Party.

In the 2021 election, Feng says she was the whistleblower who first spotted fake news circulating about Kenny Chiu and other conservative candidates who'd been critical of China's human rights abuses. The Foreign Interference Inquiry probed this disinformation campaign and found it could have influenced some voters. It just wasn't clear how many. So if you are critical, if you criticize Chinese Communist Party, immediately you'll be framed to be anti-China, anti-Chinese people. So basically they intended to fan up the nationalistic sentiment of the mainland Chinese voters in Vancouver. But the way how they operate

that is to confine this kind of fake news to only Chinese language circle. It never spread beyond that. It's almost like a black box. If you don't know Chinese language, you don't read Chinese character, it's impossible for you to get to know what is going on. Fong says political parties are naive about how easy it is for Chinese consular officials to build networks that penetrate their campaigns. I've seen politicians attending banquets of the Chinese consulate, attending banquets or even social events of the CCP process all the time, if they have the resources to attend all these functions and at the same time taking

tons of pictures with all these so-called foreign VIPs, if I can do my research, if I could still educate my community members about what is going on, then I'm quite sure any political party can do the same. It's just that there's a lack of the political will and there's also the willful blindness that these political parties have shown to the infiltration and the interference because they could be the beneficiary of such interference. Fung was one of many Hong Kong activists outraged when liberals

didn't immediately dump this Toronto area candidate. If you guys want to pick him up and take him to the Chinese consulate you make him a million dollars. I'm just joking. But there is a arrest warrant out for him. That's Paul Chang at a local Chinese language news conference back in January talking about how the Chinese Communist Party had issued an arrest warrant for democracy activist and broadcaster Joe Tay. Tay had been running for the conservative nomination in Chang's riding. That seat, Markham Unionville, according to the 2021 census, is about two thirds ethnically Chinese. At first, liberal leader Mark

Carney tried to play defense. My view this is a teachable moment. It re-underscores the respect with which we treat human rights. But on the campaign trail, Chang's joke, an attempt to curry favor perhaps with the Chinese language reporters around him, wasn't funny. Listen to how New Democrat Jenny Kwan reacted. At the inquiry we heard how she's been targeted shunned even in her hometown of Vancouver for criticizing Beijing. That is what transnational repression looks like and we need to stand together to fight against it and not peddle it as the way it is being done from the Liberal candidate. I should also add that the Liberals frankly has not taken this

file, this issue seriously. Meanwhile you have the Conservatives. Pierre Poliev would not even get the security clearance. What is he hiding and why is he putting his own political interests ahead of Canadians' interests? It's shameful. So we need to actually fight this fight. We cannot afford to jeopardize our democratic institutions. When the RCMP began investigating this so-called joke, Chiang dropped out of the race. This case made headlines but other attempts to intimidate and interfere

may be flying under the radar. I have seen it in person and in a lot of these nominations, there are no rules at all. It is basically a gong show. That's Henry Chan speaking at an event that Gloria Fung organized on Parliament Hill for groups who've been targeted in Canada by hostile foreign states. Chan's been part of a group called Saskatchewan Stands with Hong Kong. He's also active in Canadian politics. He's run municipally, he's worked federally, and last year he tried to win a nomination

to run for the Saskatchewan Party back in his hometown of Saskatoon. What he experienced left him looking over his shoulder. That last week when we were selling membership, a whole, I think, almost two dozen or more, membership of Chinese name came up in the list of members who can vote. Two dozen members added at the last minute, all with Chinese names, and his team didn't sign them up. He wasn't targeting Chinese voters for support. It was a bit unusual, he thought.

Like other political parties, you don't have to be a citizen to join the Saskatchewan party. You just have to be a permanent resident in that riding and buy a membership. We saw basically people coming in with different, the ID requirement is very low. Nobody is really managing that because a lot of them are not professionals. They are volunteers. The nomination meeting was chaotic as they sometimes get in contested races with candidates from multiple cultural communities all competing. Chan's volunteers spotted what they considered to be rule violations irregularities and they alerted party officials who were supervising the vote. We had actually

people on the phone who said they actually don't live in the address that they bought a membership for. CBC News contacted the Saskatchewan Party's director, who was there. He told us that in the party's opinion, these concerns weren't substantiated. Chan's team disagreed, but the party's decision was final. What haunts Chan was one person in particular who showed up at the nomination, a consultant, originally from Beijing, who Chan says had approached him once before, asking what he was prepared to do for the Chinese people and allegedly offering support in return. Chan didn't accept his help. Later he found signs on social media

that this person may have ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Was what he experienced foreign meddling? That's pretty hard to prove with a secret ballot. So we did not know who voted. These are some of the loose loopholes that different parties have. The Saskatchewan party didn't even win this seat. Chan's not alleging that any sitting MLA is compromised, but as a Hong Kong activist, he takes this stuff seriously. He alerted public safety authorities. If you think about it, if a regime can, say, get all the nomination for all the different

parties, then no matter how you vote, you'll get the person the regime want. I'm Janice McGregor and you're listening to How Safe is Your Vote? Exploring what you need to know about threats to the integrity of this spring's federal election. Elon Musk is entirely, is absolutely a hostile state actor. What happens when your neighbor isn't so friendly anymore?

That's coming up. Liberal leader Mark Carney isn't the only leader who's had to deal with a candidate controversy? Thank you for the question. Pierre Polly-Eve dropped a conservative candidate with ties to India's ruling party over a social media post that said some people should be dep ties to India's ruling party over a social media post that said some people should be deported to India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi should

take care of them. Intelligence discussed at the public inquiry on foreign interference suggests India attempted to meddle in the conservative leadership race that picked Poliev in 2022. The Conservative leader still faces lingering questions about whether some of his financial backers have ties to Modi. Well, first of all, I received 37,000 separate donations that anybody can make online. We don't have the capacity to do CSIS background checks

on every single person who makes those 37,000 donations. We condemn 100% any foreign interference in Canada and anyone who collaborates with it should be jailed. But the real question you should be asking is why haven't the Liberals got the Foreign Agent Registry up and running? Because then we would know proactively who is working on behalf of a foreign government. Indian interference fears also lingered after the liberal leadership race this winter.

The liberal party has come out. One day it was foreign interference. The next day it's about financial violations. I don't know what story is going to be coming out tomorrow. That's former Brampton MP Ruby Dalla speaking to CBC on the day she was disqualified from the leadership race. She was the second Indo-Canadian barred from running for rule violations that were never fully explained by party officials. Ottawa area MP Chandra Arya was also disqualified and then weeks later also banned from even running as a candidate again

because of unspecified new information that emerged. Mark Carney is now running in Aria's former seat. The Liberal Party sets its own rules for who can run. We don't know much about the alleged violations that ended these candidacies, but for Balpreet Singh, one of the lawyers for the Sikh Coalition that participated in the public inquiry, it was painful to watch. It felt as though the Liberal Party hadn't really learned much from the findings of the Foreign Interference Commission. Chandra Arya over the past summer actually made a personal visit to India. And then during that visit,

ended up meeting with the Indian External Affairs Minister, as well as the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and took pictures of this visit and posted them to social media. And at the same time, we as a country are facing off against India, who has engaged in very serious transnational oppression and foreign interference. So why is he able to get these high level meetings and what's going on during these meetings? Even after he returned, his rhetoric was actually quite concerning. So instead of calling out this transnational oppression, he was going on about Khalistani's

this and that and actually amplifying what we found to be Indian disinformation. Was the Liberal Party transparent enough about why he was disqualified from the race? No, there really wasn't any reason that was provided for his disqualification. I mean, people in the mainstream commented that maybe it was because he didn't speak French or maybe it was because he made't speak French or maybe it was because he made some very insensitive remarks about Quebec. But in the Sikh community, our strong suspicion is that it might have had something to do with foreign interference and influence from India. So let's talk about the second candidate then, Ruby Dala. Again, same thing, Why did her candidacy give rise to concern in your community?

Since she exited Canadian politics, she spent a whole lot of time in India and that included campaigning for the ruling BJP, making political appearances and her video is actually on Narendra Modi's YouTube page where she appears with him and she praises him very heavily for supporting and assisting the Sikh community in India, which is kind of ironic, given the fact that India has targeted Sikhs abroad, and their human rights record in India is frankly just appalling.

So once again, we're dealing with a Canadian politician parroting Indian disinformation and propaganda. And we see that the Prime Minister has had a chance to practice not only believing in the values and the teachings of our Guruji's, but he has had a thought to... I mean, from a non-Sikh perspective, or maybe let's just say a white Canadian perspective, you had the two racialized candidates who were disqualified, and part of the talk is

that it might have been due to foreign interference. What does that say about racialized candidates in general? It plays towards these racialized racist tropes that we're seeing that these aren't real Canadians. So even though we disagreed with both of their candidacies, it really would have been better had the reasons been made clear. What do you think the impact is on our politics when all these questions are left to linger at the end of a leadership race? In recent years, we have seen a rise in intolerance and particularly around the issue of foreign interference, saying that Canadian politicians who come from backgrounds that are from other countries that are they really in it

for themselves or for Canadians or are they in it for a foreign country and I can tell you that Sikh involvement in politics is well known. We are very politically engaged as a community and we have been the victims of foreign interference. So we are in fact more eager to combat foreign interference than maybe even, you know, average Joe Canadian. That was lawyer Balpreet Singh from the WorldSick Organization. Journalists who serve ethnocultural communities in Canada are on the front lines of the fight against fake news, but they also face harassment from hostile foreign states. That's Sukhdev Singh Gill, hosting his Punjabi radio show on AM radio in Toronto. It's called Today's Voice

and his voice speaks out about human rights abuses in India. He told the public inquiry how this made him a target. Two, three times I got call indirectly from Indian Consulate General Office. I asked them why you want to speak to me? if they want to come on my radio show they can come on my radio show actually they said they want to speak about your radio program and one guy said stop talking against India I said look your color ID is blocked I don't know whose you are then same guy told me then you will not get visa to go India. I said look I'm living in one of the best country in the world.

I don't need visa to go back to India. I got called from my station manager. He asked me somebody is complaining about your radio program. He showed me the facts. It was coming from 345 Blue Seat East, which is next building to Colesler General of India. Then the station manager were laughing. Look how stupid they are. They don't even know how to complain. Those pressure tactics seem pretty clumsy, but threatening small businesses so they're afraid too?

Businessmen or business community sometimes they hesitate to give advertisement on my radio program. That's another way to try to sway media coverage. Yes, it is for, directly and indirectly. They don't want anyone in the media to actually criticize India. My leadership is not a big thing, but for Indian government maybe it's a big thing because I'm not running the show the way they want to run this show. Dear viewers of Iranian Land, I greet you and hope that... Khiou Rezvanafar produces a show for Omni Television that serves the Iranian community.

An audience that no longer has an embassy to deal with because Canada cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 2012. They closed the building but they're still here. Three decades ago, when he was just starting out, he says he was approached. And he was a, I believe, cultural attache. The gentleman told me that, well, so we have the same

agenda. We should work together. We have to be complementary. We get you everything you want and everything. And I got my witness and I said, thank you very much, but I don't need any kind of cooperation. I don't need any collaboration. I know what I want to do. And that's it. They offered through some of the, let's call it, proxies to financially support me because any TV program at the very beginning, you have a tough time. And I'm smart enough to know that where that money would come. And I told them right in their face, thank you.

I don't need it. Resvanifar heads up the Canadian Ethnic Media Association. It's tough right now for independent media, traditional business models, subscriptions, ads, no longer pay the bills. And there are foreign governments that they say, OK, we support you financially. And in return, we expect this. And some people might say, OK, no problem. Because of financial challenges, they basically give up.

The Foreign Interference Inquiry recommended public funding to help journalists remain independent and to protect Canada's sovereignty too. It's extremely important that the Canadian government, the one that is now or the one in the future, to understand the magnitude and the importance of the job that we do. By providing that type of funding, then the Canadian government should not worry about misinformation or any other media source to go providing misinformation or being influenced by the foreign government. That's television producer Kyu Rizvanovar. I'm Janice McGregor.

Coming up on How Safe is Your Vote. Just kind of curious about where you've been getting your information. Most of the time it's from social media. Yeah, Facebook too. Yeah. Through business, friends, social media. Social media news, yeah, for sure. How the struggle against disinformation tests all of us. I'm Janice McGregor and welcome back to How Safe Is Your Vote? A show that makes you smarter about how political opinions are manipulated. The greatest threat, the one that I believe threatens the very existence of our democracy, is disinformation. After months of pouring over classified documents, asking questions that required security clearance to even discuss, what did Commissioner Marie-José Ugg's foreign interference inquiry find? Distinguishing what is true from what is false is

becoming increasingly difficult. Toxic bros and toxic bots steal your dreams and creep your thoughts tell you never ever mattered anyway. You can believe it's wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn't very strong to begin with. U.S. Vice President JD Vance shook the Munich Security Conference with those remarks downplaying Russian meddling in Western democracies. His administration's talk of annexing countries

set off alarm bells across Canada. Those fighting words come from New Democrat Charlie Angus rocking out there with his band the Grievous Angels on the same night that this federal election campaign kicked off. Angus isn't running again, but he used his final weeks as a parliamentarian to warn anyone who'd listen that what he sees coming out of Washington is a creeping authoritarian assault on Canada's sovereignty. Charlie Angus wrote to Elections Canada asking it to investigate whether Elon Musk is helping to spread Russian disinformation on his social media platform X.

It's becoming clear that what's happened in the United States is that there is now a group of very powerful people who are intensely anti-democratic, who have no interest in respecting the rule of international law, and would be more than happy to undermine democratic countries. And they've focused, Mr. Trump and both Mr. Elon Musk have focused attacks on Canada. We would be incredibly naive to think that we can carry on our little elections. We've already suffered from massive bot farms. We're already starting to see the AI. We're going to see deep fake. The idea that Mr. Musk has control of the X algorithm at this time for Elections Canada not to take this is a major full-on threat to our democracy.

To me, it's inconceivable. But not everybody is on Twitter, what we call X now. Why is this platform that's only used by a certain segment of the population such a threat? What we know is that the whole online world is based on the power of the algorithm and the algorithm is chasing rage and where there's heat, there's stories. So if Elon Musk is interfering in the X algorithm to promote certain views and shutting down other views, those suddenly seem to become legitimate voices. And when you can't tell what's fake, when you can't tell what's offshore bought, it does have the power to influence.

Pending the Brexit election didn't require massive interference. It was about being able to shift eight votes here in one county, 15 votes there at another polling station. It's worth pointing out the Canadian Parliament actually has an outstanding subpoena for Mark Zuckerberg in Carrols-Henberg to come and testify. And they blew us off. I would really like to see the Canadian Parliament, if he ever stepped foot to go fishing in Canada, that we would actually

use that summons against him and make him come testify about what Facebook knows about online disinformation. Maybe that's just my dream, but we have an outstanding warrant and I think it was the only outstanding summons that was ever issued. We put an open timeline on it so that any future committee can reintroduce the summons to call Mark Zuckerberg. Nicole Soule Yeah, Parliament's track record with cracking down on this sort of thing, unfortunately, is not... Richard P. Olsen Pretty low, yeah. The power to shift points of view is very, very dominant in online platforms. And Mr. Musk has shown a willingness to intervene

and to use his platform for his increasingly extremist political views. Who's dropping the ball here? Did Parliament drop the ball in terms of giving Elections Canada the powers to do something about this? It's very clear that in taking on the tech giants, the federal government has only gone part of the way because the tech giants are incredibly powerful.

We saw how Facebook shut down access to media, which has really exacerbated disinformation. So the federal government has hoped for the best, and we're not seeing any of the best right now in the world. I think Elections Canada may not have the tools and it would be fair for them to say listen MP, you didn't give us the tools so go back to Parliament and ask but they didn't say that either they said well this is what we have and I look at it I think it's completely inadequate so what we need to do is keep asking questions. So after talking to Charlie Angus, I did just that.

I raised it with Canada's Chief Electoral Officer, Stephane Perreault. Why wouldn't the Chief Electoral Officer want to play a role in stopping fake news? It's critical for the legitimacy of my office to remain entirely nonpartisan. So weighing in on the accuracy of information regarding a candidate, a party or a platform would very severely undermine my credibility or not weighing in on one when I've weighed in on the other, right?

So I think it's something that I cannot undertake without putting in peril the legitimacy of my office. Now a little later we're going to talk about what Elections Canada is doing to keep your vote safe. But as you heard there, regulating political speech online isn't going to be one of those things. And yet the danger that the Enquiries Commissioner warned us about is real. Social media accounts aren't required to be transparent

or even truthful. Shouldn't voters be entitled to know if the influencers they follow are paid by a political party or a hostile foreign state? Likes and shares, they're bought and paid for too. That bothers researchers like Beatrice Wayne from the Samara Center for Democracy. When we see and track abuse in elections, bothers researchers like Beatrice Wayne from the Samara Center for Democracy.

When we see and track abuse in elections, often we see while the conversation looks highly abusive, they're actually, these comments are coming from very specific people who are just very, very active. We call them power abusers to indicate the amount of impact they're having in our online public discussions. So if one person is posting a lot and this could look like one person's account suddenly getting out of the blue many, many, many likes in a way that is not really explainable, those are indications of inauthentic engagement. So online you might think that you're seeing a groundswell of political support, but the accounts sharing it may not be Canadians at all. They might not even be real people. Researchers call that astroturfing. Get it? Fake

grassroots. So it's not even the issue of current algorithms being tweaked to show political bias, although that's certainly possible. It's a reliance on solely engagement as a metric of establishing the algorithm that is harmful to our democracy. Wayne says there's one emotion that platforms like Facebook value more highly than others. Outrage. Angry social media users are more likely to engage. That sells more ads and so algorithms push us to the most inflammatory stuff. RIP respectful debate.

Ideally, we would be working with social media companies to address their impact on democracy and find productive ways that we could increase pro-social civic conversations online through social media. But hold up though. Regulating speech? Are we sure we want to go there? One of the underpinnings of the law of free expression is of course this idea of a marketplace of ideas. That's Vivek Krishnamurthy, an associate law professor at the University of Colorado, but actually he's Canadian. The public inquiry that probed foreign interference attempts on democratic institutions called him as an expert witness.

He's thought a lot about how the fight to crack down on disinformation runs up against the right to free speech. Does Elon Musk fit the profile of a hostile state actor now? That is a fascinating question. That is a fascinating question. I think the short answer to that is it seems that yes, we are in a very unprecedented situation with the fact that Musk has this tremendous amount of power at the apex of the US government that is ill-defined in terms of US law. And he also happens to own X, which is one of the most influential social media platforms in the world. And he uses that platform, really, to his own political ends, unconstrained by the rules that are still there to govern X, which he mostly gutted. I think we're starting to see him use that power to interfere in democratic processes

in countries around the world. So how big a problem is this? Not everyone's on Twitter or X, but I think X really has an agenda setting function. It is an important platform where many people who are plugged into politics spend time. And it sets the agenda for conventional media as well, right? So whatever Musk says on X gets amplified in mainstream media, right? And that sort of sets the course for a lot of discussions on a lot of issues. So if you're a regulator or an elected official seeing this, how do you stop him from meddling in Canada's next election? One idea that we could put out there is to say that ex-Undermusk's ownership is so toxic that it should simply be banned. That would be an extraordinary step, really unprecedented.

And one that I would believe is in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Likely ineffective as well. I think the more conventional thinking that we've had around this is to try to encourage platforms to act responsibly. And this is certainly part of the online harms legislation that the government introduced in the previous session of parliament that has now died on the order paper, right? It's to incentivize

platforms to develop policies and procedures to ensure that they're safe places for the people who use them and that content that can have a malign effect on politics and democratic discourse are dealt with adequately. But of course, Musk has dismantled all of that. Is it possible to stop authoritarian meddling with anything short of draconian measures in return? I don't think so. I think one of the costs of living in an open society is that you will always find people, whether they are domestic or foreign, who seek to leverage that openness against the interests of that society, right? So if we were to pursue those draconian measures, we would have lost the very thing that we cherish

the most. It's a cliché to say that, you know, the sort of price of freedom is eternal vigilance. But this is a moment where we shouldn't give up on our values and our core commitments. If anything, it's time to redouble on them. We had so many conversations about China and TikTok, right, for the last couple of years. And meanwhile, I think we did not pay nearly enough attention to what's happened with X. And I think that's sort of emblematic of a, you know, larger sort of shift in Canada's position in the world, which is that yes, China is a country with which Canada has a very complex relationship, to put it mildly. But I think we thought that we could take the United States largely for granted. And that is becoming increasingly clear to many traditional U.S. allies that they can't,

that the second Trump administration is very different from the first in the way that it's willing to use its raw power and also in just its level of commitment to certain kinds of ideological principles that it's very willing to push. That was law professor Vivek Krishnamurthy. Trust is such a fragile thread, it'll pull you through a fiery dread. In late February, Canada's Privacy Commissioner agreed to investigate whether Elon Musk's platform complies with Canadian privacy laws amid fears that Canadians' data might be used to train artificial intelligence, helping social media target and shape political opinions even more.

You're listening to How Safe Is Your Vote. I'm Janice McGregor and we're exploring how Canadian voters can be influenced and what officials are trying to do about it. A few days before this election campaign started, Canada's cyber intelligence agency warned that countries like China, Russia and Iran will very likely use artificial intelligence to try to mislead voters. The head of Canada's Centre for Cybersecurity, Raj Gupta, told CBC what his team worries about. Misinformation was a big one and we're seeing that grow. There's a number of reasons for that. I mean there's social media platforms

that act as amplifiers. Everyone's got a megaphone now that's able to put out a false narrative. And then you can now, you know, justify or substantiate false narratives with synthetic content through AI and other sorts of means like that. So misinformation is critical. It's a challenge for all countries around the world. And in the space of an election, we know that nation states use information operations as part of their apparatus. And honestly, with the technology evolving as fast as it is, there's only so many controls you can put in place to try to rein it in. This takes us to a pretty dark place. I get it. But are we really at the mercy of these algorithms? In the end, it's still your hand marking your ballot.

The box and the voting screen will be in a table at the back or on the side, but you're going to first see a poll worker. Elections Canada is trying something to make new voters feel safe. It's hired educators like Tasim Karr, who speaks Punjabi and led this event in Surrey, BC. Jobby and led this event in Surrey, BC. I'm trying to meet people where they would normally be having that community, that sense of safety and discussion. The conversations that we're having aren't always easy and aren't always accessible or understandable.

So I think I'm fortunate enough to reach the groups that I'm familiar with. It's all part of a pilot project, civics lessons basically, to make sure all Canadians, but especially newcomers like the ones this LGBTQ plus organization helps understand their voting rights and how Canada's democracy works. And we have our first voter! Great job, here's a little sticker for you. I talked to Chief Electoral Officer Stephane Perot about how his agencies had to step up to protect Canada's vote and the changes that he's proposed for Canada's Elections Act.

Has foreign interference ever meddled with the register of electors? Not in Canada. When people show up to vote, they have to prove their identity, they have to show ID. Has foreign interference, foreign meddling, ever meddled with that process during a Canadian election? There's never been any indication of that in any form whatsoever. No. Have we ever had a case in Canada where foreign interference has become an issue in terms of the integrity of the vote count? No, we haven't.

So when we're worried about foreign interference in our elections, it sounds like what we're really talking about is what might be on people's minds or in their hearts when they go behind the screen to mark their ballot. Do you think that's a good thing? really talking about is what might be on people's minds or in their hearts when they go behind the screen to mark their ballot.

Do you think that's what the issue is that we're really talking about? Yeah, I think it's the main area of concern. So it's not the electoral process itself that's been under attack. It's around the broader electoral ecosystem that surrounds the voting process. So the information people receive, the nomination process for candidates, that's where there have been areas of concern. I think there's been a significant change

after both the Brexit experience and the US 2016 presidential election, where we realized that there are more players that need to be playing a key role in the electoral process. And that's where we realized that there are more players that need to be playing a key role in the electoral process. That's where we began reaching out and collaborating with security partners at a much, much higher level.

Both in terms of the cyber security, but also in terms of the overall cyber environment. Because you as the chief electoral officer, you're not an intelligence expert. I'm not. I'm not. And so we focus on one aspect, an important aspect, which is the voting process, making sure that it is secure and making sure Canadians have the right information on how to

vote, you know, what are the ID requirements, what's the process to be followed for counting, what are the safeguards so that they have trust in the electoral process. But around that, the security of political parties, how nominations are run, whether there's disinformation of a partisan nature in the social media environment, this is not something that we play a role in. During the foreign interference inquiry, there was a lot of attention paid to party nominations at the riding level and leadership races and they were identified as a key vulnerability perhaps in terms of foreign meddling attempts.

They are under the auspices of the political parties themselves. They don't, with the exception of sort of some financing rules, they don't fall under the elections act, not under the purview of the legislation that Elections Canada works inside. Among your changes is talk of sort of bringing more of these aspects of our democratic process under the umbrella of this legislation. Why do you think that's important? Yes, I think there's a balance here that needs to be reached. I did not recommend

and still would not recommend bringing those events under Elections Canada's mandate to administer. So we should not be administering the vote for a leadership or nomination contest. I think the way it is run is a decision that belongs to the parties. The type of voting procedure, the timing, the length of these procedures, these are all matters that belong to the internal life of the party and it's part of their freedom to decide. But that does not mean that there cannot be certain rules

and safeguards around the process. So for example, who gets to vote? Should there be minimal requirements there? Should it be at least permanent residents or Canadian citizens? So that's what I recommended. There are prohibitions around the vote that should equally apply to the voted nominations. So when you're talking about threats and bribery and voting more than once, these kinds of broad, you know, high level offenses that are criminal in nature,

there's no reason not to bring those statutory protections to the procedures that take place, whether it's a nomination or a leadership contest. So there is a role for greater protections around those processes without necessarily having elections kind of random for the parties. And to be fair, the parties don't want to give that up either, which makes it awkward for someone like yourself because the ultimate results of the general election you know are going to be judged for integrity but if the weak link happened before it came under your auspices there's nothing that you as the chief electoral officer can do at that point.

Yes on the other hand at the end of the day Canadians get to vote on the person put forward by the party so it's important that there be transparency and a certain level of trust around that procedure, but for the selection of the candidates within the parties. But these candidates then come forward and they take part in a process that is governed by elections Canada, that is subject to very significant controls.

And at the end of the day, Canadians get to choose on it. How concerned should people be about whether some of the money that is used to influence way people's opinions is actually coming from illicit sources? You know one of the key aspects of our system is that there's not a lot of money in our politics and everybody's seen what's happened in the US the amount of money and what what that happened in the US, the amounts of money and what that entails in terms of influence, right? And so we don't have that in Canada. There's very little money compared to what you see elsewhere. Australia just passed legislation. They're going

to bring down their contribution disclosure rule from $16,000 to I believe $5,000. We're at $200 and that's for public disclosure. $20 and up we at Elections Canada get the information. So the level of transparency, the level of controls that we have are quite solid. What lessons then did you learn from what came out of the inquiry that have shaped your

approach to this election? One thing that did strike me, which I was not attuned to before the inquiry, was the extent to which members of some communities felt threatened when they were seen voting. And perhaps did not appreciate the controls in place to protect the secrecy of the vote. And they didn't feel secure voting.

And that was not something that it was attuned to. in place to protect the secrecy of the vote. And they didn't feel secure voting. And that was not something that it was attuned to. And so we've made some efforts to build that into our information products in different languages so that people understand that when they vote, there is no way that someone can know how they voted. Even the person at the desk that's helping them vote and putting the ballot in the ballot box

will not see how they vote. Do you feel like people still trust Elections Canada the way they did in today's media information environment, which of course is full of people with theories and skepticism? The information we have is that there's a very high level of trust in Elections Canada, but it's not something that we can take for granted. It's something that we have to work very hard at to maintain and even hopefully enhance. That was Canada's chief electoral officer, Stephane Perot. At the end of the day, democracy is about conversations, real time, face to face.

Like this event in March, hosted by the Samara Centre and CBC Radio's Ideas. Sometimes for queer and trans youth in particular, it's life saving to see them represented. How the library can help to know it. Most of us came to this country to make a better life. I think that there's such an emphasis nowadays on austerity within government. Hear that? It's the sound of voters gathered at the Burlington Library exchanging ideas about what's good for Canada, how it could work better, where different politicians might lead it. In person the discussion is more civil than what we often see online, more honest, more real.

I do feel like this got me thinking about certain things. I appreciate the one commenter's statement about supporting local newspapers and local news sources that hadn't been something I really considered. Shereen Youssef says she's looking for opportunities to do more of this, exchange ideas about how we can all make a better country. I've been looking also to join a book club so I've been just showing up to some of these some of these some of these events there's more of you know that direct contact to building

community and that allows an opportunity to you know know your neighbor and to to organize that's really actually one of one of the other reasons I've been showing up to these events more frequently this year. As a political reporter, this fills my heart. Knowing that despite the threats out there to the integrity of this election, our country's also full of voters who are thinking carefully about their choices, as our democracy, hopefully, springs eternal. hopefully, springs eternal. How Safe is Your Vote was produced by Helen Surgener.

Special thanks to Alexandre Duval, Grant Linton, Tanushi Bhatnagar, Emma Godmeier, and Mukas Chugtai. Our senior producer is Anna Lazowski, and you heard music by the Grievous Angels. I'm Janice McGregor. Election Day is April 28th. Don't forget to vote. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.