Elections Canada has been in touch with social media platforms about election misinformation
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The head of Elections Canada says he has been in touch with social media platforms in an effort to address concerns about misinformation as Canada wades into an election campaign.
Chief Electoral Officer Stephane Perrault told reporters on Monday that he has reached out to social media sites such as X and TikTok to "seek their support to making this election a secure election." He said he has been satisfied with the response so far.
"We'll see what action actually takes place during the election. Hopefully they won't have to intervene, but if there are issues, hopefully they will be true to their word," he said.
Perrault said he would make his communication and the response from the platforms public.
TikTok, whose parent company is Chinese-owned, said in a news release on Sunday that it is "shoring up our efforts to safeguard the TikTok platform during Canada's federal election season."
"[There are] several ways we do this — including that we protect the integrity of elections by removing harmful misinformation about civic and electoral processes, partnering with fact-checkers to assess the accuracy of content, and labeling claims that can't be verified," the statement said.
Perrault cautioned Canadians to be on the lookout for bad information about the voting process in general.
"I encourage Canadians to use Elections Canada as the authoritative source of information about the federal electoral process," he told reporters in French on Monday.
"I also encourage Canadians not to let their social media feed dictate what they read."
The agency is launching a new online tool — dubbed "ElectoFacts" — that lists and debunks inaccurate information that is swirling online.
Foreign interference in Canadian democracy has been top of mind in recent years, culminating in a 16-month public inquiry into the matter.
Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue issued a report in January that stated foreign interference hasn't determined the outcome of previous elections. But Hogue wrote that the biggest threat to Canadian democracy is the spread of misinformation and disinformation in the media and on social networks.
"In my view it is no exaggeration to say that at this juncture, information manipulation (whether foreign or not) poses the single biggest risk to our democracy," she wrote. "It is an existential threat."
Perrault said voters can report misinformation to Elections Canada.
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