Democracy

There’s a war going on for the hearts and minds of citizens in western democracies, including Canada. It’s not a war between traditional political parties, but rather a clandestine war launched by countries like Russia, China, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Shadowy non-state actors, including right-wing billionaires and racist “Christian Nationalist” groups, are also involved. The tools and tactics involve bots and algorithms and podcasts and influencers.

The Russians call these “active measures” campaigns. They seek to destabilize western democracy and influence government policy and the outcomes of elections – not by tampering with votes, but by turning citizens against each other and undermining faith and trust in institutions.  They are literally hacking our brains.

The threats posed by this new and toxic information environment are exacerbated by the importation of political strategies and tactics from the MAGA movement in the United States – strategies and tactics that are undermining their democracy, and which could do the same to ours if they’re allowed to take root here.

As representatives of workers who are being targeted by these campaigns and manipulated inside this toxic social media environment, the AFL and our affiliated unions have a duty and responsibility to understand what’s happening and to fight back. In a nutshell, we need to help inoculate our fellow citizens against campaigns of mass manipulation.

It’s time to:

• Prohibit the preemptive use of the Notwithstanding clause to sideline the courts and limit the basic democratic rights outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms
• Introduce digital media literacy curriculum in schools modelled on the approach pioneered in Finland. Most Finns have essentially been inoculated against Russian digital interference. We need to follow their example.
• Place restrictions on foreign ownership of major media outlets, starting with Postmedia, which controls virtually all of Canada’s major newspapers and is owed by an American hedge fund with close ties to Donald Trump.
• Strengthen whistle blower protection for people who have important information to share about malfeasance inside government and big corporations. The importance of this kind of protection has recently been demonstrated with the unfolding UCP health corruption scandal.
• Strengthen legislation related to lobbying of our provincial government to better and more effectively identify foreign interference.
• Repeal legislation that has paved the way for parties at the municipal level and changes to municipal election finance rules that favour the wealthy.
• Regulate the use of AI during election, specifically requiring all AI generated content to clearly marked as such.
• Require all paid social media influencers to register and report who pays them with a disclosure that basically says “this message brought to you by…”
• Pressure the federal government to make social media companies liable for things that are posted on their platforms. Until that happens, they will have no real incentive to clean up their sites.
• Acknowledge what’s ACTUALLY happening with the world’s main social media platforms: they’re being taken over by right-wing billionaires with the explicit goal of hacking the brains of ordinary citizens, in an effort to get us fighting among ourselves instead of uniting as workers and citizens.
• Without acknowledging this reality, we’ll never be able to successfully protect ourselves or our democracy.