Social media tools were key to ‘Freedom Convoy’ protest, expert tells inquiry | 24CA News

Social media acted because the “central nervous system” of the “Freedom Convoy” protest in Ottawa final winter, the Public Order Emergency Commission heard Tuesday because it thought of the position performed by misinformation within the lead-up to the invocation of the Emergencies Act.

The fee’s coverage part this week follows six weeks of fact-finding hearings on the occasions that led to the federal authorities’s determination to invoke the act to finish the convoy protests. Those hearings included testimony about on-line threats and the position social media performed in organizing the protests in opposition to COVID-19 public well being measures.

Before hundreds of vehicles began rolling towards Ottawa final January, a unfastened group of protest organizers communicated primarily over TikTok and Facebook, the fee heard over these weeks of testimony. Many of them had by no means met in individual till the protests started.

“Social media was the central nervous system of the convoy, and exploration of its role crosses numerous domains, such as law, psychology, history, sociology and public policy, to name a few,” Emily Laidlaw, the Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity Law on the University of Calgary, wrote in a report for the fee.

Social media was used to boost funds, join organizers and unfold their message. It was additionally used to distinction the accounts of conventional media retailers and supply a special view of what was occurring on the bottom, Dax D’Orazio, a political scientist and post-doctoral fellow with Queen’s University, testified throughout an professional panel dialogue earlier than the fee Tuesday.

“It was a way of creating meaning, finding community and building, eventually, momentum for social and a political movement,” he mentioned.

The inquiry is in search of professional enter to bolster its evaluation of whether or not the federal government was proper to make use of the Emergencies Act in response to protests that took over downtown Ottawa and halted commerce at a number of border crossings.

The professional testimony will inform Commissioner Paul Rouleau’s suggestions about modernize the Emergencies Act and establish different areas for additional research. It may even assist him and his crew research the affect of the purposeful or inadvertent unfold of false data through the protest, which was explicitly written into the fee’s mandate.

Experts testified that regulating disinformation is a troublesome prospect — particularly since it isn’t unlawful to unfold falsehoods.

“It’s lawful but awful,” mentioned Laidlaw through the panel dialogue. “For the government to create legislation that targets lawful expression, it likely won’t survive constitutional scrutiny.”

The specialists outlined disinformation because the intentional unfold of false data, whereas misinformation was described as individuals spreading false data that they themselves imagine to be true.

It can be troublesome to draft legal guidelines that distinguish between the 2, mentioned Jonathon Penney, a authorized scholar at York University. “It’s a question of intent,” he mentioned.

The panellists additionally explored the connection between extremist views and social media, which may present an echo chamber that serves to verify individuals’s current biases.

Studies have proven the web might help entrench extremist values, mentioned Vivek Venkatesh, an schooling professor at Concordia University.

People who subscribe to extremist views more and more flip to “fringe media” as a substitute of taking in news from conventional sources, mentioned David Morin, a nationwide safety professional with Sherbrooke University, who spoke to the panel in French.

He mentioned “self-made journalists” related to these fringe retailers had been current in Ottawa through the convoy protest, and produced “alternative information” for viewers.

For instance, Morin mentioned, some different media sources reported that tons of of hundreds of protesters attended the Ottawa demonstration, when police experiences present the true quantity was far decrease.

Windsor blockade affected hundreds of jobs

A second panel on the move of important items and providers, essential infrastructure and commerce corridors instructed the fee on Tuesday afternoon that 339,275 jobs rely on the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ont., that protesters blockaded for six days in February, halting commerce to the United States.

Those jobs account for 1.8 per cent of all jobs in Canada, based on a report ready by economist Francois Delorme and economics scholar Florence Ouellet.

The blockades highlighted the vulnerability of a few of Canada’s essential infrastructure, which is ruled by a patchwork of presidency and personal sector jurisdictions.

If the federal authorities hopes to guard essential infrastructure with laws, it ought to be very clear about defining what that’s, and what’s and is not permissible close by, mentioned Phil Boyle, a authorized research professor on the University of Ottawa. Otherwise, he mentioned, the laws may very well be overbroad and used to stifle lawful dissent.

Drawing up a listing of what constitutes essential infrastructure may very well be difficult, although, mentioned Kevin Quigley, a director on the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance at Dalhousie University.

Different infrastructure is essential to totally different individuals at totally different instances, he mentioned, relying on the context. A small bridge that serves as the primary route to move meals to a small group may very well be thought of essential on a neighborhood scale, as an illustration.

Ambarish Chandra, an economics professor on the University of Toronto Scarborough, identified that in relation to Canada’s land border crossings, commerce is closely concentrated in southern Ontario.

If one thing surprising had been to occur there, the consequences may very well be catastrophic for the entire nation, he mentioned, including that Canada might encourage the diversification of trucking networks to make higher use of border crossings in Quebec and within the Prairies.

The inquiry is on a decent timeline to finish its work. Rouleau is anticipated to submit last suggestions to Parliament in the beginning of February.

Policy panels proceed on Wednesday.