file:///H/...l%20C-70/Briefs,%20Exhibits,%20Speaking%20Notes/Dave%20Baker/2024-06-14_SECD_SM_C-70_Brief_Dave%20Baker_e.txt[6/14/2024 1:20:14 PM] To the Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence, and Veteran Affairs: Regarding Bill C-70, I urge you to ignore the misleading sales pressure tactics. Please greatly slow down the process to get this legislation right.

There are those who would impose a sense of time-based urgency to pushing this legislation through without giving it time for repeated rounds of steps such as due careful consideration, rehashing, rewording, research, investigation, consultation, discussion, repeating these steps, and all the other due necessary steps. A made claim by some honourable members of the House of Commons is that this legislation must be pushed through before another election occurs. This claim is misleading.

Regarding the last Canadian election: "The Liberal Party always saw Facebook ads as an opportunity to talk to the voters directly." 1 "For the seven-day period at the end of August, the Liberal Party page spent half a million dollars – that’s just as much as they spent in the three months leading up to the election." 1 Did it work? Who won the last election?

"More than halfway through the campaign, the data shows that parties are spending more money and devoting more time to microtargeting, a marketing strategy that relies on using users’ demographic and social media data (the things you like, who you are friends with, etc.) to identify the users to whom they want to campaign." 1 If microtargeting of a small percentage of Canadians can be sufficient to sway elections, could it be said that microtargeting is anti-Democratic?

"'It has essentially weaponized ad technology designed for consumer products and services,' said Sarah Golding, the president of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, an industry organization in Britain.

Her group recently called for a moratorium on political microtargeting. 'There is a danger that every single person can get their own concerns played back to them,' she said." 2 Another group, the "Web Foundation is calling for Facebook to suspend micro-targeted political ads globally." 3 "To have constructive, honest political debate and fair electoral campaigns, a society needs to have a shared understanding of what candidates and parties stand for. In the past that happened through manifestos, TV ads, radio spots and press conferences that thousands or even millions of people saw.

Microtargeting of political ads changes this model, allowing candidates to show ads with different (often contradictory or even misleading) messages to different users." 3 "Facebook is just one player among tech giants like Google and Twitter that also offer data-mining services to try to influence consumer and voter behavior.

But Facebook’s gargantuan reach, vast holdings of user data and easy-to-use self-service advertising system have made it a lightning rod for political microtargeting." 2 "Microtargeting, they have found, was a central tool for foreign groups trying to interfere in elections." 2 If we want fairer elections, call upon your colleagues in the House of Commons to propose a new bill, or ask one of your fellow Senators to propose a new bill, making it illegal to use microtargeting advertisement campaigns in elections.

That type of legislation will bring us back to a more Democratic and level playing field, because the social media platforms are where the persuasive influence, domestic and foreign, is happening, and if you legislate that social media will not allow anyone to microtarget Canadians, perhaps during the period leading up to an election or even better, never, then you will truly stamp out a central tool of anti-Democratic domestic and foreign influence. If you want to get fairer and more Democratic elections, the path is not through C-70.

C-70 is more about spying and criminal penalties, about perhaps excessive sharing of personal information of Canadians in electronic contexts, and it needs to be given due consideration outside of the concept of rushing it before an election. Ignore all of the sales pressure tactics.

The next time that someone tries to rush the process, politely but firmly tell that person to stop wasting valuable time on a discussion of rushing things and instead spend time on doing their proper homework on improving the legislation. file:///H/...l%20C-70/Briefs,%20Exhibits,%20Speaking%20Notes/Dave%20Baker/2024-06-14_SECD_SM_C-70_Brief_Dave%20Baker_e.txt[6/14/2024 1:20:14 PM] When being rushed, humans biologically react differently, and due consideration is unlikely to be made.

"Psychologists suggest that, in the face of a crisis, our mental state tends to move from one of relatively restful contemplation towards increased anxiety, worry and anger." 4 "Why does this matter? Because a change in our emotional state is likely to affect the way we make judgements and reduce the effectiveness of decisions." 4 "Stress reduces thinking power." 4 "Crisis encourages narrow thinking." 4 "Time pressure can lead to bias." 4 To properly address a large number of concerning items that the legislation is proposing to push forward will require many months of work and study.

Do not skip this important process. If laws have not been updated for 40 years, then those laws can afford not to be updated for another year or two or three, if necessary to get things right, so that the legislation which will likely last for the following 40 years will be written well. If getting this legislation right means putting in some research time now and some research time in the 45th Parliament, then it is your justifiable right and your patriotic duty to put in this required time.

Even after reading several paragraphs of C-70, I found numerous items which seem like they are not appropriate to put into legislation. I will mention but one item just to make a point that this bill needs a lot more work. It seems that if an outspoken Canadian appears to have an opinion which corresponds to the opinion of a foreign power, that Canadian can be deemed to be a spy.

In the future, will an otherwise outspoken Canadian need to first familiarize himself/herself will all of the global news and all of the opinions of foreign powers just to make sure not to speak in alignment with a foreign power to avoid being targeted? What kind of a chilling effect on the Democratic right to open and free speech might this legislation impose? For the rest of the legislation, I will leave it to others, who are far smarter to me, to come up with briefs that attempt to tackle the

definitions in the legislation and come up with superior wording than what we have now. My goal is to ensure that you have the courage to stand up to any bullies who would unduly rush you. The next time that someone raises the issue of rushing through this legislation, I call upon you to say: "Point of order." "Mr./Mrs. Speaker, I ask you to remind our esteemed colleague that we want to spend the time to get this legislation right.

If our honourable esteemed colleague wishes to derail our thoughtful and considerate evaluation of the legislation with calls to rush the process, then perhaps our esteemed colleague would prefer to find another activity in which to better invest his/her time, while the rest of us get down to work.

Thank you." 1 "Spending on Facebook ads skyrockets amid election, as Liberals outspend all other parties combined," Nicole Bogart, September 3, 2021. https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/federal-election-2021/spending-on- facebook-ads-skyrockets-amid-election-as-liberals-outspend-all-other-parties-combined-1.5572781 2 "‘Weaponized Ad Technology’: Facebook’s Moneymaker Gets a Critical Eye," Natasha Singer, Aug. 16, 2018." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/facebook-microtargeting-advertising.html 3 "For a healthy democracy, Facebook must halt micro-targeted political ads," Web Foundation, January 15, 2020. https://webfoundation.org/2020/01/for-a-healthy-democracy-facebook-must-halt-micro-targeted- political-ads/ 4 "Making better decisions in a crisis ... don’t be rushed into the wrong decisions by emotions, stress, or group think," Peter Fisk, April 10, 2020. https://www.peterfisk.com/2020/04/making-better-decisions-in-a- crisis-dont-be-rushed-into-the-wrong-decisions-by-emotions-stress-or-group-think/