Liberal MP Judy Sgro (Humber River-Black Creek, ON) on Wednesday distributed a motion in the Commons requesting that the cabinet “work together with Ukrainian fact-checkers” to monitor internet content.According to Blacklock’s Reporter, this follows a 2019 proposal by the Ukrainian-Canadian Congress to prohibit "false attacks" on politicians.Motion 102 asks that the cabinet “strengthen the Canadian fight against disinformation inside and outside of the country.” The government should “work together with Ukrainian fact-checkers and disinformation specialists on ways of damage control and prevention of further escalation of disinformation against Canada,” it said.The motion also states “In the opinion of the House, the government should put more effort into the security of social media accounts and web pages of cabinet ministers, Members of Parliament and other political figures who suffer from deliberate cyberattacks.”In a 2019 election questionnaire, the Ukrainian-Canadian Congress requested that all political parties support measures to combat internet "disinformation." Only the Liberal Party agreed with this proposal.“We’ve been pushing the federal government to define online hate,” Ihor Michalchyshyn, CEO of the Congress, told reporters at the time. “In our view, online hate includes disinformation, which would be sort of hateful and malicious and false attacks on both our community leaders and Canadian politicians in general.”The cabinet has repeatedly accused Russia of conducting disinformation campaigns within Canada.In 2022, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission received a directive to prohibit the state-run Russian news network Russia Today from being broadcast on Canadian cable and satellite television.“Block all the websites and social media accounts of Russian state media,” Peter Schturyn, president of the Toronto branch of the Ukrainian-Canadian Congress, wrote the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission.In 2022 testimony at the Commons Foreign Affairs committee, Foreign Minister Melanie Joly agreed the TV ban was insufficient. “We’ve banned Russia Today,” said Joly. “We need to do more,” she added.“My mandate as foreign minister is really to counter propaganda online,” said Joly. She did not elaborate.“In every war, information is key because it justified why you start war. What we’ve seen since the beginning of this war, before the war, there was a big propaganda campaign.”Russia was “engaging in more and more of their propaganda,” said Joly. “Meanwhile, we know that it is happening in Ukraine and in Russia, but at the same time, it’s happening in our democracies.”Federal monitors before the Russian invasion of Ukraine discounted claims of Kremlin disinformation targeting Canadians. The Communications Security Establishment, in its 2020 Annual Report to Parliament, said it “did not observe any activity that met the threshold for public announcement” regarding fake news sponsored by foreign agents.
