[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Jacob]

Watching the National last night, on the foreign influence revelations:

• The Conservatives demand that the government reveal the names.
• The government MP (committee head, I think) says that they cannot as it is illegal and would open anyone who reveals the names up to prosecution, but if Poilievre wants to know the names he can be read in.
• The Conservative responds that this is a trap, because if Poilievere is read in he'll be bound by the same confidentiality measures so he can't reveal the names.

So the Conservatives' position is that the government should do something opening themselves up to prosecution, but that they themselves are not to willing to do that.

I guess the question here is whether the government has the ability to waive the confidentiality requirements currently covering the report?

I'll note - also from the National last night - that CSIS (I think it was, the relevant agency in any case) is on record as saying they do not want the names published.

The Conservatives also said we should infer that the bulk of the transgressions have been committed by Liberals because "we all know" that if it had been Conservatives the names would've been released already.

From that my current thought is that the Conservative Party's primary interest in this is to wring out partisan advantage, and that they care less about the actual substance of the allegations or about how to proceed to improve Canada's security.

For the Liberals, the scenario could be that they are purely running damage control and similarly don't prioritize how to improve Canada's security in these types of situations, or it could be that that is their priority; I'd need more details to draw a conclusion.

[Jacob]

The problem is so little has been released.  It sounds like this is maybe, probably, hugely important - but nobody will give further details.  Which in part is fair (intelligence!), but also kind of feels like it's being covered up.

Agreed.

I would definitely like to see both consequences and, ideally, actions taken to harden our institutions to foreign influence.

And I also want to know all the details, so I can make my own judgement.

But like you say "(intelligence!)".

And probably MPs from multiple parties are implicated.

Agreed. Part of me thinks there are more Liberals involved, because of the Conservative attack line "if they were all Conservatives, you'd have revealed the names already." Because even if the Conservative committee member won't reveal the names, they might still have given an indication of the party make-up of the list. On the other hand, maybe it's just ratfuckery, to build a helpful narrative before hurtful facts come out.

Personally I think whatever the exact makeup, the risks are system-wide not party-political and I'd prefer to see a cross-party collaborative approach to addressing this for the good of the country. But you know... 

[Jacob]

From here:

The NSICOP report described the conduct of some parliamentarians as potentially illegal but said it's unlikely to lead to criminal charges, owing to Canada's failure to address the long-standing issue of protecting classified information and methods of judicial processes.

Regardless, all the behaviours are deeply unethical and, the Committee would submit, contrary to the oaths and affirmations Parliamentarians take to conduct themselves in the best interest of Canada, the report said.

What I would like to see from this is serious efforts to "address the long-standing issue of protecting classified information and methods of judicial processes."

[Jacob]

BTW are any of you on facebook or instagram?

Does Meta still block Canadian news as a result of the Online News Act?

[Barrister]

From here:

The NSICOP report described the conduct of some parliamentarians as potentially illegal but said it's unlikely to lead to criminal charges, owing to Canada's failure to address the long-standing issue of protecting classified information and methods of judicial processes.

Regardless, all the behaviours are deeply unethical and, the Committee would submit, contrary to the oaths and affirmations Parliamentarians take to conduct themselves in the best interest of Canada, the report said.

What I would like to see from this is serious efforts to "address the long-standing issue of protecting classified information and methods of judicial processes."

So you know what my job is - but even still this is a little outside of my range.  But for what it's worth...

We have a criminal system that is extremely deferential to full disclosure to the accused, and to an Accused person's rights.  I've seen ourselves turn into absolute pretzels over how to protect the identity of a friggin Crimestoppers informant.  I can't imagine how you'd try to deal with intelligence information where you can't not only reveal the identity of a witness but how you gathered that information.

Look - all of criminal justice is a trade-off.  The most informative example these days is in El Salvador.  El Salvador had been absolutely overrun with criminal gangs (in particular MS-13) with an enormous murder rate.  New-ish President Bukele came into power promising to get rid of the gangs - and he has been hugely successful in that.  The homicide rate went down from 103 per 100,000 in 2015, to 2.4.  But let's be clear - he did it by just rounding people up with gang tattoos.  No trials, no due process.  El Salvador has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world now, with 1.6% of the entire population behind bars (triple that of the US, double that of Cuba).

So like I said - trade-offs.  I wouldn't want to live in Bukele's El Salvador.  But I can understand why we can't prosecute this kid of "treason" (not sure it meets the legal definition but you know what I mean) without significantly changing how our justice system works.

[Jacob]

A sensible point of view, Beeb. Which is to say I agree 

[Grey Fox]

BTW are any of you on facebook or instagram?

Does Meta still block Canadian news as a result of the Online News Act?

Yes and it blocks all news not only Canadian.

[Jacob]

Yes and it blocks all news not only Canadian.

Interesting. Does it also block misinformation masquerading as news, or does that still show up?

[Grey Fox]

I don't know many misinformation outlets but Rebel News and Fox News are also blocked.

[Josephus]

I don't think Meta makes that decision. Anything advertising itself as a news site is blocked.

[Jacob]

I wonder to what degree that means people go to their news sources without being directed there by Meta, and to what degree they get their news purely from FB memes.

[Barrister]

I wonder to what degree that means people go to their news sources without being directed there by Meta, and to what degree they get their news purely from FB memes.

IIRC Meta/Facebook ahd said surprisingly little of their traffic was being driven by news, which is why they refused to pay.


By the way - what's with big social media companies changing their names to ridiculous things?  Facebook->Meta, Google->Alphabet, Twitter->X?

[HVC]

I mean their original names weren't any less ridiculous, we just got used to them

[Sheilbh]

I'd slightly disentangle Meta.

I've heard talk from media/rights people here expecting Facebook to pull out entirely from news. As a source of traffic to a media it barely registers anymore (and used to be huge). From everything I've seen - from the publisher side - Facebook are more or less already out of news and may just formalise that. And in terms of content they're drowning in a gloop of weird AI generated stuff. From people who watch this stuff my understanding is it's not really a place of political memes that much any more (or, perhaps, of real people).

Which makes sense with how they've developed Threads and also Instagram. For all the risk and attention news gives it's not really a good business to be in for them compared to those other products. The big caveat with that is I don't know about countries outside the West where Facebook is also a portal into the internet.

And the other bit of Meta that is definitely still doing news and is a hub of conspiracy theories which are impossible to see or track due to its encryption, is WhatsApp. So I think Facebook are in the West pulling out of news in various ways. I've seen articles in the UK of this being the first post-Facebook election in terms of political advertising. On the other hand we just don't know what's going on on WhatsApp - there's anecdotal stuff (also in Indian elections) but it's very very difficult to see and because advertising isn't sold on WhatsApp there's no public register.

As ever though the other big thing I'd add is as ever that Twitter gets attention because it's the platform all the journalists are on - but they've got about 350 million users. Meta is far shadier in almost every respect and WhatsApp, say, has 2 billion users. In terms of news media again, purely commercially Twitter is negligible as a referrer (but it is the platform journalists use and journalists are on so they really care about it ). It's all about Google and Apple (who also, obviously operate the OSes and the app stores for news apps too, plus the browsers and, for Google, search).

On name change - Meta is the group with Facebook, Insta, Threads and WhatsApp etc. Don't know about Google and Twitter it seems weird there because they've not really built/got any other brands (except for YouTube off the top of my head), but for Meta I think it makes sense.

[Jacob]

By the way - what's with big social media companies changing their names to ridiculous things?  Facebook->Meta, Google->Alphabet, Twitter->X?

My understanding:

FB -> Meta - because Zuckerberg went all in on the Metaverse as the next big thing, and wanted to stake a strong claim as THE company for the Metaverse.

Google -> Alphabet - I think Alphabet was always the holding company? And then when the conglomerate diversified more and had other businesses that they thought needed roughly equal room as Google search & advertising business they shifted the focus to Alphabet? Not sure.

Twitter -> X - Musk's ego and infatuation with the letters S & X (with E and Y). So Space-X, Tesla models S, 3, X, Y. Most generously I guess Musk thought his personal brand would bring more value to Twitter than the Twitter brand provided, so he brought the name in line with his other companies. At one point he was touting wanting to make an "everything" app (like the Chinese WeChat); perhaps the rebranding was seen as a step in that direction. Personally, I lean towards juvenile ego-gratification, but I'm not biased towards being charitable to the man.