Parliamentary Testimony on the Strong and Free Elections Act

This morning I had the pleasure of appearing before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which was discussing Bill C-25 (“Strong and Free Elections Act”). The bill would amend various sections of the Canada Election Act, from banning cryptocurrency campaign donations to updating parties’ responsibilities for private data to new provisions to address impersonation (including deepfakes) and false claims about elections. Below is my opening statement, followed by a few post-appearance reflections.

Opening Statement by Chris Tenove to the PROC committee regarding Bill C-25 (Strong and Free Elections Act)

I want to thank this committee for inviting me to discuss how to protect Canada’s elections. My name is Chris Tenove. I am a political scientist and the assistant director of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions at the University of British Columbia, where I research digital media, democracy, and tech regulation.

Today I will focus on challenges posed by artificial intelligence and social media. My general observation is that Bill C-25 resembles a security patch for our electoral software. It fixes some important weaknesses and should be promptly enacted, but a more substantial update to the operating system is still be needed.

I will flag gaps that remain regarding four issues: AI-generated content, false claims about electoral processes, chatbot errors and bias, and AI agents.

First, generative AI can create synthetic media that impersonates individuals or official publications. This presents a real risk and the amendments to Sections 480.1 and 481 are appropriate.

The Chief Electoral Officer and others have suggested that all synthetic content in electoral communications should be labelled as such. That may be helpful but is not essential at this time. Enforcement would be difficult and the core problem is misleading content, not necessarily that it is AI-generated. However, the deceptive use of unlabelled synthetic content could be a factor when determining whether an actor is being intentionally misleading.

Second, generative AI and social media platforms make it easier to spread false claims about electoral processes. C-25 appropriately clarifies and expands prohibitions on such claims. I am also sympathetic to the CEO’s proposal to add “intent to delegitimize elections” as a prohibited purpose, though that language may need to be narrowed.

Importantly, neither the Chief Electoral Officer nor the Commissioner of Canada Elections currently have the authority to require prompt removal of prohibited impersonation or false claims about elections processes. The BC Election Act gives Elections BC exactly this power. I propose that equivalent authority be given to the Commissioner of Elections Canada.

Third, citizens increasingly get civic information from general-use chatbots like ChatGPT, AI companions, and AI search tools.

However, these models sometimes give incorrect information regarding elections. For instance, Demos, a UK-based think tank, tested several AI services during the Scottish Parliamentary Election and found 34% of responses contained factual errors, including wrong dates and hallucinated candidates. Such errors could harm election participation.

Beyond errors, AI services may deliver biased outputs. For instance, in 2025, the Dutch data protection authority warned voters not to use chatbots for voting advice after finding that popular chatbots vastly over-recommended certain parties. Risks of bias become more acute if AI models face data poisoning attacks or are designed to advance a bias, perhaps in alignment their business model. It’s worth noting that OpenAI has begun running ads on ChatGPT in some markets.

Election laws should ensure that chatbots and other AI services document and report all political ad spending, and C-25 should close any gaps. Moreover, just as the Elections Act was amended to improve transparency for social media advertising through ad registries, we need new mechanisms to bring transparency to AI services to address harmfully inaccurate or manipulated information.

Fourth, AI agents can do more than create content — they can plan, take autonomous action, coordinate across platforms, and raise and spend money. Responsible actors will build in human oversight; malicious ones will not.

I suggest you confirm there is language holding responsible those who use agents for prohibited activities, and requiring parties and other actors to ensure there is a responsible individual or organization behind all contributions.

Finally, election law alone cannot detect, stop, and secure accountability for malicious AI agent activity and other threats I’ve mentioned. Broader AI and platform regulation will be required to act on illegal activity and impose obligations to mitigate systemic harms. We also need stronger protections for citizens’ data held by political parties. These are all part of the updated operating system that Canada’s democracy needs, in addition to the near-term patch that C-25 provides.

Thank you

Post-committee reflections

The MPs on the committee had many thoughtful questions for me and other witnesses. For our panel and the one that immediately preceded it, the hottest topics appeared to be money, disinformation, and data.

The C-25 provision that received the most attention was a new rule that allows “third parties” to use 10% of their annual operating funds for election-related activities, and to do so without needing to disclose all contributions that make up that amount. Dr. Holly Garnet on my panel argued that this provision enables civil society organizations to make meaningful contributions during elections, including organizations that aren’t set up to solicit and track all election-related contributions made by their members. Dr. Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch provided some compelling potential scenarios by which this provision could facilitate vast, untracked election contributions, should one or a few individuals give large sums to organizations outside the electoral period. Whether that scenario is likely, it’s important to think through potential loopholes or nefarious behavior that new laws might unintentionally permit.

Another hot topic – and the one I received the most questions regarding – were new provisions regarding disinformation about electoral processes. The core issue is a tension between two constitutionally-protected rights: freedom of expression and political participation. We generally do not want state agencies – including election management bodies – to decide what political claims people can make, and even erroneous political speech is constitutionally-protected. However, false claims about the electoral process might prevent people from casting their vote. C-25 strikes the balance by making it illegal to intentionally promote false claims about the electoral process itself (not positions held by candidates, for instance). I think this is a good approach, but my concern is that it may not be enforceable in some important situations. If a false claim about elections is circulating widely on a social media platform during voting days, the Commissioner of Canada Elections (CCE) would have to pursue action against the author of that material – which could be slow and even if effective may not address the harm of the circulating information. The CCE could also pursue an injunction to force the platform to remove the content from circulation, but that legal process may be too slow for the context. I therefore proposed the Commissioner be granted powers similar to Elections BC, which can require platforms or other publishers to stop transmission of false claims about elections in a short time period or face monetary penalties.

This proposal raises some real challenges. To what extent should the CCE need to prove intent in order to act on false claims? Will the CCE have the power to require action by platforms that are not based in Canada? Indeed, I was asked whether WeChat would adhere to such regulations. I’d like to know that myself!

Finally, C-25’s approach to citizens’ data is its most controversial element—at least among the experts and civil society. There were 17 briefs submitted to the committee during the very short consultation phase, and the vast majority criticized C-25 on these grounds. The bill updates what is largely a “self-regulatory” framework: political parties must set and adhere to their own rules for how they will protect the data they collect on citizens. This situation seems particularly galling given the recent revelations that a separatist organization in Alberta had been given voter data held by a fringe Alberta party. More broadly, since campaigning is increasingly data-driven and personalized, it makes sense that citizens should have some rights to know and ensure the protection of data held by parties. I’m not sure whether most federal parties want to take on these responsibilities, however.

A last thought – my statements on risks from AI agents were foreshadowed by a comment by Peter Loewen in the previous section, that we are seeing the rapid decline of our ability to regulate election-related speech by regulating campaign contributions and advertising dollars. The recent slopaganda case investigated by the CDMRN is a good example: 20 YouTube channels viewed millions of times used fake presenters and shared misleading content regarding the Alberta separatism movement. But people didn’t pay to spread that; the sensationalist content made money for its creators. Currently, election law doesn’t directly tackle that issue.

There will be a few more committee hearings on C-25, but I expect it will be sent back to the House soon for a third reading. I look forward to seeing what changes get made.