Protecting Canada's Election Culture
A Response to CBC's article: Misinformation about Poilievre's election loss persists. Here are the facts.
Calling for a safeguard on the electoral process is not stoking misinformation or polarization. But using propaganda to fact check is misleading.
CBC published an article on May 9, eleven days after the last federal election, with the headline, “Misinformation about Poilievre's election loss persists. Here are the facts.”
The article attempts to debunk narratives circulating on social media that “claim fraud and unfairness” regarding Poilievre’s election loss in his former riding. It is a mild-toned rebuke on post-election grumbling among conservative voters.
What concerns me about this article is the flawed reasoning that paints Conservatives as misinformation carriers, while distracting the public from the actual heart of the issue. As far as I’m concerned, the bigger issue here is the safeguarding of Canada's election culture in reference to the protest candidates that crowded the ballot sheets in the riding of Carleton.
It would appear CBC is more interested in legitimizing the Longest Ballot Committee's protest of running 85 of the 91 candidates in Carleton and the intended 200 names in a future by-election, than protecting the efficiency of the elections process for Canadian voters.
The justification for this disruptive tactic on the election process is that it did not affect the overall outcome of the election in Carleton, that the applicants satisfied the rules, and Elections Canada made plans to accommodate the longer count. But the issue at hand isn't about the overall election outcome. It's about safeguarding efficiency of the voting process and Canada's election culture.
Out of 86,655 votes cast in Carleton, Poilievre and Fanjoy together received more than 96 per cent of them. Based on that, it would appear that people were able to find the name they wanted, despite the long ballot. None of the protest candidates got more than a few dozen votes ... Elections Canada also knew it would take longer to count the votes in Carleton. It granted permission for officials to start counting hours earlier than they normally would. Elections Canada was clear about this on voting day.—“Misinformation about Poilievre's election loss persists. Here are the facts.”David Michael Lamb, CBC, May 9, 2025
A few years ago, Liberals tried to shut down debate on foreign interference in Canada's elections by defaulting to the point that PRC meddling in the 2021 election didn't change the overall outcome of the election. So were they implying voter suppression and foreign state meddling in our elections wasn't worth fixing?
Foreign Interference has already made Canada's elections a dartboard for meddling. Making justifications for protest pranks that create drastic inconveniences in the elections process opens the gate for more disorder and disruptions to target our elections. So are we now going to cultivate an election culture that accommodates protest pranks just because they followed the rules . . . and then conflate misinformation on those who address the practical issues of inconvenience and potential confusion for voters and Elections Canada?
This is a non-partisan issue. What is at stake is a culture of order and respect in Canada's elections. Full stop. I wrote a LinkedIn post about this last week. Here are some points.
I can only imagine the frustration it creates for voters, who make time out of their workday to line up and vote once every 4 years, and the confusion and slowdown it creates for seniors and newer ESL Canadians, who may struggle to get through the list of names to find their candidate of choice. Although this isn't foreign interference, per se, like FI, it is still a form of meddling that manipulates voting behaviour and disrupts the electoral process to our detriment ... We don't need to dissuade Canadian voters from voting because of frustrating experiences ... Failing to deter and penalize such disruptions weakens the protocols and authority of Elections Canada and establishes a precedent to normalize disorder and manipulation of our elections from both domestic and foreign actors. It's an issue of electoral integrity.
But the Liberals have made a right-wing misinformation issue out of this. In the world of social media, post-election rants can easily propagate and even snowball into exaggerations from any party. One of the setbacks of the worldwide web is the lack of quality control. But there can also be legitimate scrutiny in the middle of all the noise. Ranting can be toxic and can bend truth sometimes. But legitimate scrutiny is not misinformation and oftentimes, legitimate concerns are also embedded somewhere in the messiness of rants across the political spectrum. It's important not to bundle all opinions, including legitimate scrutiny of the status quo, as misinformation or conspiracy theory. It's also important not to use terms like misinformation and disinformation too loosely, especially when evaluating information with propaganda rather than proven facts.
The article's reference to the Media Ecosystem Observatory (MEO) as an authority on misinformation unveiled the sharp bias of this article.
In March 2022, the MEO released a report on misinformation in Election 2021. It was the default document that Liberals referenced in debates and committee meetings in 2022 and 2023 to undermine leaked CSIS reports on foreign interference in our elections. The point they kept driving home was that the MEO report concluded that the overall outcome wasn't impacted as if it were their ultimate fact-check authority.
While the MEO report acknowledges foreign interference, it concludes that foreign meddling "didn't have a significant impact on the overall election." This is the generally accepted consensus even by CSIS. So this is not the issue. The report presents some interesting research angles. But its underlying preoccupation with painting right-wing voters as conspiracy theorists unveils its political bias.
In the Executive Summary, the report asserts:
We observe the rise of a “big tent” of misinformation, where groups who hold false or conspiratorial beliefs about one topic appear to adopt similarly distorted opinions about a broad range of topics.
Groups that previously focused on sharing COVID-19 misinformation were likely to adopt conspiracy theories about a broader set of topics, including vaccines, climate change, and the integrity of the Canadian election.
These groups are increasingly distrustful of authoritative sources of information, including governments, experts, and mainstream media, and are turning to alternative information sources. Once there, they are exposed to ideas, facts, and news that is limited in diversity and tends to be strongly ideologically motivated.
These groups have a different understanding of misinformation. They are more likely to report having seen misinformation during the election but use the label to refer to the content produced by “mainstream media” and political actors they dislike.
These groups have perceptions towards truthful stories that are very different from the majority of Canadians.
An entire section of the report, "Canadians’ attitudes toward misinformation," is devoted to surveys on how Canadians with different party affiliations view misinformation. One of the summary points in this section includes the following statement that uniquely singles out right-wing party supporters.
Supporters of right-wing parties (Conservative and People’s Party) report higher levels of exposure to misinformation. However, they did not think of misinformation as a more serious problem during the election and tend to perceive misinformation as less threatening to democracy.
All the aforementioned biases, prejudices, exaggerations and stereotypes are part of the Liberal playbook of propaganda to discredit the perception of right-wing parties and voters and any scrutiny of the status quo coming from the right.
For CBC or the Liberals to defer to a propaganda-based source as an authority on misinformation and fact checks diminishes their cause. When the Liberal Government or its communication mouthpieces default to a source that sets out to discredit an entire wing of voters, it is plain propaganda.
While I am a steadfast Conservative, I don't support every right wing narrative that floats around the internet nor do I discredit every left wing narrative. I am first a Canadian and patriot before I identify with a political affiliation. I don't even like using the terms left or right wing because they put people and ideas in boxes. I'm sure many Canadians like myself are interested in truth, facts, good ideas and credible perceptions beyond political boundaries. But trying to frame a good 40+ % of the Canadian electorate with a broad brush stroke on the credibility of their perception is marginalizing and dangerous to the unity of our country and the spirit of democracy. This is exactly the kind of tactic that stokes polarization and division.
Value would have been added to CBC's credibility if the focus of this article was on raising the bar of Canada's election culture to really safeguard our democratic process from becoming an even more targeted dartboard for hostile foreign state actors, pranks, and normalizing inappropriate exploitation of the electoral process, regardless of the cause.
Ideally, if the individuals behind the Longest Ballot Committee truly value our democracy, they would take a moment to reflect and willingly opt to communicate their cause in a manner of honour as to not hurt the very institution they are aspiring to improve.
There are some boundaries of honour we shouldn't cross. The ballot box is the treasure chest of democracy. Elections need to remain sacred.