The Procedure and House Affairs Committee met to study the state of civic resilience in Canada, hearing from seven witnesses: Taylor Gunn, Aengus Bridgman, Chris Blask, Sylvain Charlebois, Niamh Leonard, and John Carpay.
Taylor Gunn, a fellow at Carleton University, highlighted the success of the student vote parallel election program, which has given over four million underage Canadians voting experiences since a 2014 committee amendment enabled Elections Canada to support it. He argued that civic resilience is about fostering attachment to each other and to Canada, and recommended leveraging existing assets like the primary reserve and strategic reserve of the armed forces to build social infrastructure, emphasizing in-person engagement over screens.
Aengus Bridgman, director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory, stated that Canada operates in a comparatively unregulated information environment and is lagging behind European partners. He recommended regulating platforms for data transparency and researcher access, and investing in civic resilience infrastructure as the digital citizen initiative sunsets, noting that AI agents are already repackaging Canadian journalism in ways that exploit French-language content. He disagreed with the notion that the information environment cannot be governed, citing Google's cooperation under Bill C-18 as evidence.
Chris Blask, CEO of QuietWire, argued that civic resilience is an infrastructure problem, not a messaging one, and that trust must be built from the community up through local, human-anchored systems. He recommended treating civic resilience as infrastructure deserving long-term backing, investing in community memory and trust systems for municipalities and libraries, and supporting human stewards like educators and librarians rather than relying solely on technology.
Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, used examples from food systems to argue that civic resilience depends on public confidence in institutions, which is eroded when economic pressures are not fully explained. He recommended greater transparency, accountability, and open dialogue, and noted that the industrial carbon tax impacts food supply chains in ways the media often simplifies or ignores, undermining trust.
Niamh Leonard, executive director of the Euphrosine Foundation, proposed creating a Canadian democracy fund to disburse $20 million annually through an arm's-length granting mechanism to support non-partisan organizations working on civic engagement. She argued that the fund would support defence commitments, as the NATO Parliamentary Assembly has urged allied states to invest in democratic resilience, and noted that the European Union is moving ahead with similar initiatives backed by billions of euros.
John Carpay, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, argued that social trust depends on the rule of law and equality before the law, and that equity, diversity, and inclusion ideology undermines this by emphasizing group rights over common humanity. He recommended abolishing the Indian Act, repealing the Musqueam agreement, and respecting the division of powers under section 92 of the Constitution Act, stating that race-based laws and policies breed cynicism and division.
The committee also heard exchanges where members questioned witnesses on topics including voter turnout, the impact of Bill C-18, food security and the industrial carbon tax, and the governance of a potential democracy fund. No procedural debate, motions, or votes occurred during this meeting.
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