PROC meeting 29 · 2026-04-21 — Committee Evidence — LegisWatch

Summary

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs met to study civic resilience in Canada, hearing from eight witnesses: Josh Dehaas of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, David Salvo of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, independent research assistant Ai-Men Lau, Vote16 Canada volunteer Sasha Banka, Digital Public Square CEO Shlomit Broder, and Canadian Forces College professor Shelly Ghai Bajaj, appearing as an individual.

Josh Dehaas argued that government censorship erodes civic resilience by fueling distrust and polarization, and he recommended repealing the Online News Act and subsection 319(2.1) of the Criminal Code, accepting Senate amendments to Bill C-9 that restore a religious speech defence, rejecting the online harms act, and resisting regulation of AI speech. He disagreed with witnesses who supported content moderation, stating that censorship of ideas, even when painful, is unconstitutional and counterproductive.

David Salvo described a hybrid threat landscape of foreign interference, domestic extremism, and online hate that targets diaspora communities and local governance, and he endorsed a non-partisan Canadian democracy fund to resource civil society. He called for legislative mechanisms to ensure algorithmic transparency and user redress on platforms, and for long-term digital sovereignty through sovereign data centres and incentives for Canadian-owned alternatives, noting that Meta’s reaction to Bill C-18 has left Canadians exposed to low-quality content.

Ai-Men Lau drew on Taiwan’s experience to recommend a long-term, sustainable funding strategy for Canadian civil society, as well as culturally appropriate civic education resources for diaspora communities facing transnational repression. She highlighted Taiwan’s Cofacts crowdsourced fact-checking as a decentralized model that is as accurate as professional sources, but cautioned that civic resilience is threatened by economic anxiety and inconsistent funding.

Sasha Banka advocated lowering the federal voting age to 16, citing international examples and Canadian precedents such as Haida Nation and Prince Edward Island’s referendum, where 16- and 17-year-olds voted at higher rates than older youth. She argued that enfranchising youth earlier builds lifelong democratic habits, and that cognitive science shows 16-year-olds are as competent as adults in deliberative voting.

Shlomit Broder presented survey data showing Canadians perceive the country as far more polarized than it actually is, with 66% self-identifying as centrist, and that this misperception lowers trust and satisfaction with democracy. She recommended making civic resilience a national priority through a non-partisan framework and using digital interventions that engage Canadians thoughtfully on contentious issues, rather than relying on censorship or fact-checking alone.

Shelly Ghai Bajaj emphasized that ethnocultural diaspora communities face unique information threats in private encrypted chat apps, where trust in senders can amplify disinformation, and she argued that legal and technological solutions are limited in such spaces. She recommended properly resourcing civil society organizations as trusted intermediaries to build bottom-up resilience through prebunking, digital literacy, and community co-design, and noted that civic resilience requires treating trust as both an input and an outcome of democratic governance.

The committee also heard exchanges in which members questioned witnesses on specific topics. Tako Van Popta asked Dehaas about the harm to civic resilience from the Emergencies Act invocation, and Dehaas said it created immense mistrust by freezing bank accounts of donors to a political cause. Arielle Kayabaga asked Salvo about Canada’s vulnerability compared to allies, and Salvo cited diaspora targeting and local-level threats, endorsing a democracy fund. Christine Normandin asked Lau about Taiwan’s Cofacts model, and Lau explained its speed and accuracy through volunteer-driven, pluralistic verification. Blaine Calkins asked Dehaas about government-mandated censorship, and Dehaas affirmed that all forms of online censorship increase distrust and isolation. Michael Cooper asked Broder about her report on PRC transnational repression, and Broder confirmed that 19 of 25 community leaders reported harassment, but declined to comment on government actions. Amandeep Sodhi asked Ghai Bajaj about diaspora communities’ use of private chat apps, and she explained that trust in senders shapes information processing and that bottom-up approaches are most effective. Grant Jackson asked Broder about the impact of social media on youth mental health, and Broder agreed that young people report disconnection despite being highly online.

AI-generated summary — may contain errors; verify against the official evidence.

Witnesses · 6

Josh Dehaas

Interim Litigation Director, Canadian Constitution Foundation

Opening remarks

Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. My name is Josh Dehaas. I'm the interim litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation. The CCF is a legal charity that defends Canadians' rights and freedoms through communications, public education and public interest litigation. Over the past few years, our biggest focus has become freedom of speech, freedom of expression. Today, I want to talk about how the erosion of freedom of expression in Canada is harming civic resilience and offer five specific ideas on how Parliament can reverse this erosion. First, I want to offer a very brief lesson on freedom of expression. We all know that we have this charter right, but do we really know what it means and why it matters? The concept is pretty simple. Freedom of expression is the idea that governments do not get to decide what people can and cannot say—that is, what ideas we may or may not express. While it's acceptable to put limits on harmful forms of expression like nuisance noise or to prevent immediate physical consequences like violence, a truly free country does not censor ideas. The CCF is doing its best to educate the public about this ancient freedom with…

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David Salvo

Managing Director, Transatlantic Policy and Programming, Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Opening remarks

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is David Salvo. I represent the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a transatlantic civil society organization that focuses on countering extremist, terrorist and authoritarian threats to democracy. I'm based in Washington, D.C., but my work often brings me to Canada. This is not because Canada's democracy is comparatively brittle; there's plenty to keep me busy where I permanently reside. All democracies require constant vigilance. In the face of an increasingly complex threat environment, it's critical to invest even more in civic resilience in Canada. An interweaving nexus of foreign state actors, non-state actors and domestic extremists of all ideological manifestations seeks to divide Canadians and undermine their trust in institutions at all levels of government. Moreover, the information ecosystem that creates the conditions for many of these threats to metastasize is itself becoming more complex and conducive to facilitating real-world harms. ISD's digital analysis shows how crises off-line can translate into Canadian communities' being directly targeted online. A major world event such as the Israel-Hamas war…

Shelly Ghai Bajaj

Assistant Professor, Department of Defence Studies, Canadian Forces College, As an Individual

Opening remarks

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to the members of the committee for the invitation to appear today. I would also like to take a moment to thank the interpreters and the technical support team. I'm an assistant professor at the department of defence studies at the Canadian Forces College, but I appear today in my individual capacity and the views I offer are my own. Over the past four years, my research has focused on threats in the digital information environment, particularly on how these threats impact several of Canada's ethnocultural diaspora communities. My own thinking around these topics has shifted over time, from how we can counter disinformation to how we can build and sustain trust. This reframes matters because it conceptualizes trust as both an input into democratic governance and an outcome of it. My remarks today address three dimensions of this challenge. First, there is the threat landscape. Canada is not immune to the geopolitical and technological pressures affecting liberal democracies more broadly. Internationally, this is unfolding alongside prolonged democratic backsliding, creeping authoritarianism and increasing strain on the rules-based international…

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Procedure and House Affairs

Summary

Witnesses · 6

Bills mentioned