Campaign disinformation bill a good start

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This article was published 19/04/2025 (341 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Democracy benefits from an engaged, alert, and informed citizenry. For this to happen, citizens require access to truthful information and/or the tools to detect false or misleading information.

Bill 30, now before the legislature, involves important amendments to Manitoba’s two election laws. The amendments are intended to improve the efficiency, accessibility, transparency, fairness and integrity of the provincial election process. This is a good bill which could be improved with some modifications suggested below.

There are too many parts to the bill to be discussed here, including important provisions intended to protect public confidence in the electoral process.

This commentary focuses on those parts of the bill which deal in an anticipatory and preventative manner with the rising threat of deceptive and manipulative communications in the campaign and pre-campaign period from multiple sources, including from foreign malign state and non-state actors.

Bill 30 amends the Elections Financing Act by requiring that all parties must establish and implement a code of ethics to govern advertising by parties, candidates, constituency associations and contestants in leadership contests. The code must be made public and the parties must establish a procedure for accepting and addressing complaints about breaches of their codes.

There is no monitoring by Elections Manitoba. Instead the parties will regulate themselves, with the potential for complaints and negative publicity providing incentives to embed ethical norms into their practices and cultures.

A more general, voluntary code of ethical conduct has existed since 2000, adopted after a vote-rigging scandal. That code already calls for the avoidance of misleading and defamatory messages about other parties and candidates. Parties, candidates and others also commit to “strive at all times to make statements that are accurate and to avoid statements that are misleading and deceptive.” It is unclear from the outside how seriously the parties have taken the provisions of the 2000 code.

I have two recommendations to ensure that such codes are more than symbolic gestures. First, the parties should be required to identify online the procedures for raising ethical concerns and to publish an annual report on how the cases that arise were handled. Second, the parties should be required to identify a designated, integrity official (ideally from outside of the party) to receive and deal with breaches of the codes.

A related section of the bill deals with the emerging threat of misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation involves the inadvertent communication of false information, whereas disinformation involves the knowing communication of false information intended to inflict political damage and to gain an unfair advantage.

Under the bill, “persons and organizations” are guilty of an offence if they make, distribute or publish a statement knowing it is false. The use of the quoted phrase means that the offence provision covers, not just parties and candidates, but also other actors like political action committees and interest groups that may seek to disrupt the electoral process.

The bill also prohibits the use of “deep fakes” consisting of deliberately manipulated images, videos, audio, and texts intended to make emotional connections, arouse fears, mislead voters and mobilize supporters to vote.

The bill provides that the commissioner of elections will police the new rules on falsehoods in both the pre-election and the election periods. Although he is appointed by the CEO of Elections Manitoba, he operates independently to ensure compliance with, and enforcement of, Manitoba’s two election laws.

Based on a “reasonable belief” that a violation has occurred, the commissioner is granted authority to issue a stop order on the offending communications. Such stop orders must include: a description of the communication; the provision of the law which is violated; and the potential penalty if the communication is not taken down.

To prevent a situation in which there is little or no time to respond to disinformation, removal of offending messages must happen within 24 hours, unless the commissioner grants an extension. Failure to comply with a stop order may result in a penalty of up to $20,000 per day, with a right to apply to the courts for relief from the penalty.

It is unclear whether under Bill 30 the commissioner will engage in continuous monitoring of the far-flung media environment. More likely, he will continue his reactive approach of receiving complaints, launching investigations, reporting findings, and imposing sanctions when violations occur.

The commissioner’s broader mandate under Bill 30 would require more subjective judgment calls, for example, whether malicious intent is behind false messaging. Depending on how technology and political practice evolve, there may be many more cases to be adjudicated, requiring a full-time commissioner supported by additional budget and staff.

Bill 30 contains no outright ban on the use of synthetically generated disinformation, presumably because such a provision would likely prompt a constitutional challenge on free speech grounds. There is also no requirement in Bill 30 that all deepfakes generated, for example by artificial intelligence, must be identified as such, something which is found in legislation passed in other jurisdictions.

Hopefully the designers of Bill 30 have given thought to the implementation requirements for translating its provisions into practice.

Here is one suggestion: to encourage greater awareness of the new rules, a page should be added to the Elections Manitoba website describing the provisions of the law in plain language, encouraging individuals and organizations to identify disinformation, indicating how to submit complaints, and explaining how those complaints will be handled.

Paul G. Thomas is professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba.