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Alberta

TDF expresses concern over Election Canada’s new mis/disinformation policy

Published

1 year ago

10 minute read

From The Democracy Fund

TDF’s Legal Team

Written by 

The Democracy Fund sends a letter to Elections Canada and Minister LeBlanc.

Elections Canada has recently developed a policy to monitor and dissuade the publication of “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

In January 2024, it launched its ElectoFacts website to provide “correct information about elections that Canadians can easily access.” Elections Canada claims that it does not intend to establish Elections Canada as “the arbiter of truth” that will actively monitor the accuracy of statements and information distributed by parties and candidates.

However, The Democracy Fund (TDF) fears that the ambiguous language and the apparent lack of legislative authority to engage in such an endeavour will lead to an expansion of the program. Elections Canada has also contacted social media companies to remove “inaccurate” information: this is troubling because it is arguably an infringement of free speech rights, and there appears to be no judicial oversight of this censorship.

Canadians have the right to criticize their government and its processes – even if this criticism is wrong, inapt, trivial, unfair or unjustified. Efforts by the Western governments to constrain criticism using fashionable terms such as “misinformation” or “disinformation” are just state censorship rebranded for modern audiences.

TDF outlined its concerns in a letter to the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer and the Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs, Dominic LeBlanc.

Our letter is attached below.

February 9, 2024

via email

Stéphane Perrault
Acting Chief Electoral Officer
Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
Elections Canada
30 Victoria Street
Gatineau, Quebec
K1A 0M6

Dear Mr. Perrault,
Re: Elections Canada Misinformation/Disinformation Monitoring

We are a civil society organization and registered charity that defends and promotes civil liberties in Canada. We are writing to express our concerns regarding comments around election “misinformation” and “disinformation” on the Elections Integrity and 1 ElectoFacts website.2

On its Election Integrity website, under “Disinformation or Influence Campaign,” Elections Canada outlines several types of objectionable conduct, namely:

  • Elections Canada: Influence campaigns aimed at discrediting parts of the electoral process.
  • Political Parties/Candidates: Social media campaign to spread false information about a candidate.
  • Electors: Foreign online campaign aimed at specific diaspora communities to influence their vote.

In addition, Elections Canada purports to monitor the “information environment” (the news media, the Web, social media, etc.) to detect:

  • Incidents that could affect the smooth administration of a general election or by-election;
  • Inaccurate information on the electoral process, which could prevent people from exercising their rights to register, vote or be a candidate; and,
  • Social media accounts and websites that impersonate Elections Canada, which could lead to confusion.3

We note that Elections Canada has previously contacted social media companies – including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram:

  • Elections Canada (EC) engages with digital platforms that have a significant Canadian presence as well as those that have reached out to EC.
  • For the 44th general election (GE44), EC worked with Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and for the first time, TikTok and Reddit, to establish protocols for reporting cases of false information on the voting process and impersonation of EC.4

The purpose of this contact was to report online content to these platforms and, presumably, have them remove “false information.” This was done without prior judicial oversight and review.

There are a number of problems with this approach to monitoring online information.

First, it is not clear that Elections Canada has the legislative authority to report citizens or their online comments, or attempt to influence platforms to remove “false information.” Even if it did, doing so without judicial review and oversight is arguably improper.5 Where there was authority to regulate “false statements” in the Canada Elections Act6 (“the Act”), we note that the court, in Constitution Foundation v. Canada (Attorney General), held that s.91(1) of the Act breached s.2(b) of the Canadian Charter or Rights 7 and Freedoms.8

Importantly, the legality of prohibiting the publication of “false news” has been adjudicated by Canadian courts, and the relevant Criminal Code provisions have been 9 struck down.10

Second, the ability to identify “misinformation” and “disinformation” requires resolution of one of the most difficult problems in epistemology. Simply put, an assessment of the truth of a statement engages the central questions of epistemology: what is meant by the claim that a statement is true, and under what authoritative conditions can one be certain that a statement is true (“the Epistemic Problem”). This Epistemic Problem has bedeviled philosophers for millennia, and remains unresolved. Until such time as it is resolved, claims to epistemic certainty are unfounded.

There is no evidence that Elections Canada has resolved the Epistemic Problem. It cannot, therefore, arrogate to itself the required certainty on matters of truth or falsehood.

Third, we note that the language used by Elections Canada regarding “false information” is ambiguous. Linguistic ambiguity allows for expansive regulatory powers. Further, the language used does not allow for “false information” that is comedic, parodistic or satirical. As a result, removal or attempted removal of “false information” will be overbroad and imprecise.

Fourth, given the concerns outlined above, it is not clear that Elections Canada could implement any process that would be better at ascertaining truth than citizens using normal human discernment.

Consequently, any removal or attempted removal of “false information” will be an exercise in either arbitrary or politically-motivated censorship. This is particularly troubling because the type of “false information” that attracts attention usually relates to contested or controversial political and moral statements, rather than trivial falsehoods.

Worse still, in our experience, punishment for contravening speech laws is typically inflicted upon minority communities, vulnerable groups and political dissidents: those with privilege avoid sanction.

Finally, attempts to remove “false information” will ultimately result in the erosion of civil liberties and democratic engagement. The reduction in exposure to moral and political information – both true and false – prevents citizens from engaging with complex arguments, and, thereby, diminishes their critical-thinking capacity. For, if the information expressed was correct, participants would have gained the benefit of exchanging their wrong information for correct information. If the information expressed
was wrong, participants would have gained the benefit of intellectual justification for their beliefs, without which they possess not knowledge, but dead dogma.11

For these reasons, we would respectfully recommend that Elections Canada restrict its conduct to publishing factual information about elections and the electoral process. It is safer and more practicable for the citizens as Canada to remain the arbiters of truth.

As always, we would be pleased to meet with you to discuss our concerns and any questions you may have about our position.

Regards,

Mark A. Joseph
Senior Litigation Counsel
c.c.: Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs

  1. Election Integrity and Security Including Foreign Interference
  2. ElectoFacts
  3. Supra, note 1.
  4. Agreements with social media platforms to address inaccurate information
  5. Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Canada (Minister of Justice), [2000] 2 SCR 1120
  6. Canada Elections Act, S.C. 2000, c. 9
  7. Constitution Foundation v. Canada (Attorney General), 2021 ONSC 1224
  8. Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s.7, Part 1 of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11 a
  9. Criminal Code, RSC , 1985, c. C-46
  10. R. v. Zundel, [1992] 2 SCR 731
  11. Chicago. Mill, John Stuart. 2002. On Liberty. Dover Thrift Editions. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.

About The Democracy Fund:

Founded in 2021, The Democracy Fund (TDF) is a Canadian charity dedicated to constitutional rights, advancing education and relieving poverty. TDF promotes constitutional rights through litigation and public education. TDF supports an access to justice initiative for Canadians whose civil liberties have been infringed by the government lockdowns and other public policy responses to the pandemic.

 

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Alberta

Alberta takes big step towards shorter wait times and higher quality health care

Published on April 9, 2025

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Nadeem Esmail

On Monday, the Smith government announced that beginning next year it will change the way it funds surgeries in Alberta. This is a big step towards unlocking the ability of Alberta’s health-care system to provide more, better and faster services for the same or possibly fewer dollars.

To understand the significance of this change, you must understand the consequences of the current (and outdated) approach.

Currently, the Alberta government pays a lump sum of money to hospitals each year. Consequently, hospitals perceive patients as a drain on their budgets. From the hospital’s perspective, there’s little financial incentive to serve more patients, operate more efficiently and provide superior quality services.

Consider what would happen if your local grocery store received a giant bag of money each year to feed people. The number of items would quickly decline to whatever was most convenient for the store to provide. (Have a favourite cereal? Too bad.) Store hours would become less convenient for customers, alongside a general decline in overall service. This type of grocery store, like an Alberta hospital, is actually financially better off (that is, it saves money) if you go elsewhere.

The Smith government plans to flip this entire system on its head, to the benefit of patients and taxpayers. Instead of handing out bags of money each year to providers, the new system—known as “activity-based funding”—will pay health-care providers for each patient they treat, based on the patient’s particular condition and important factors that may add complexity or cost to their care.

This turns patients from a drain on budgets into a source of additional revenue. The result, as has been demonstrated in other universal health-care systems worldwide, is more services delivered using existing health-care infrastructure, lower wait times, improved quality of care, improved access to medical technologies, and less waste.

In other words, Albertans will receive far better value from their health-care system, which is currently among the most expensive in the world. And relief can’t come soon enough—for example, last year in Alberta the median wait time for orthopedic surgeries including hip and knee replacements was 66.8 weeks.

The naysayers argue this approach will undermine the province’s universal system and hurt patients. But by allowing a spectrum of providers to compete for the delivery of quality care, Alberta will follow the lead of other more successful universal health-care systems in countries such as Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland and create greater accountability for hospitals and other health-care providers. Taxpayers will get a much better picture of what they’re paying for and how much they pay.

Again, Alberta is not exploring an untested policy. Almost every other developed country with universal health care uses some form of “activity-based funding” for hospital and surgical care. And remember, we already spend more on health care than our counterparts in nearly all of these countries yet endure longer wait times and poorer access to services generally, in part because of how we pay for surgical care.

While the devil is always in the details, and while it’s still possible for the Alberta government to get this wrong, Monday’s announcement is a big step in the right direction. A funding model that puts patients first will get Albertans more of the high-quality health care they already pay for in a timelier fashion. And provide to other provinces an example of bold health-care reform.

Nadeem Esmail

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
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Alberta

Alberta’s embrace of activity-based funding is great news for patients

Published on April 9, 2025

By

From the Montreal Economic Institute

Alberta’s move to fund acute care services through activity-based funding follows best practices internationally, points out an MEI researcher following an announcement made by Premier Danielle Smith earlier today.

“For too long, the way hospitals were funded in Alberta incentivized treating fewer patients, contributing to our long wait times,” explains Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at the MEI. “International experience has shown that, with the proper funding models in place, health systems become more efficient to the benefit of patients.”

Currently, Alberta’s hospitals are financed under a system called “global budgeting.” This involves allocating a pre-set amount of funding to pay for a specific number of services based on previous years’ budgets.

Under the government’s newly proposed funding system, hospitals receive a fixed payment for each treatment delivered.

An Economic Note published by the MEI last year showed that Quebec’s gradual adoption of activity-based funding led to higher productivity and lower costs in the province’s health system.

Notably, the province observed that the per-procedure cost of MRIs fell by four per cent as the number of procedures performed increased by 22 per cent.

In the radiology and oncology sector, it observed productivity increases of 26 per cent while procedure costs decreased by seven per cent.

“Being able to perform more surgeries, at lower costs, and within shorter timelines is exactly what Alberta’s patients need, and Premier Smith understands that,” continued Mrs. Wittevrongel. “Today’s announcement is a good first step, and we look forward to seeing a successful roll-out once appropriate funding levels per procedure are set.”

The governments expects to roll-out this new funding model for select procedures starting in 2026.

* * *

The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.

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