By Didi Rankovic – Reclaim The Net
Canada’s Manitoba province government is looking into changing its election law to include combating various forms of “disinformation,” Canadian media is reporting.
The government, led by the social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) of Manitoba, wants to amend the Elections Act so that it prohibits what might come to be officially considered “disinformation” affecting electoral workers and the system.
While addressing the initiative, provincial Justice Minister Matt Wiebe made sure to mention some “staples” often invoked by “disinformation warriors”: AI, and in particular, deepfakes.
Recent years have shown how in many parts of the world, spurred either by governments or global, and globalist organizations, even information they simply dislike gets treated as disinformation – and slated for censorship.
This push is waning in some corners, but in countries like Canada, it doesn’t seem to be losing momentum.
And now Wiebe is suddenly discovering what “unreal” things deepfakes – a technology present for many years, particularly in the entertainment industry – can achieve.
Of course, Wiebe is concerned about politics and elections, and justifies the focus – all the way to changing the law – on such tech as making it easier to “fake some things.”
This was probably important to underline because Manitoba’s election rules already deal with false information, impersonation, and other acts that can endanger the integrity of an election, and even include fines (up to $10,000) and, jail time.
The difference between the existing law and what this and other officials are trying to now introduce as a bill amending it, said Wiebe, is that while candidates already can’t “explicitly” lie about opponents – this would not expand to “protect” election workers and, the system.
The timeframe for proposing the bill is currently not known, but in the meanwhile, Wiebe’s stance is supported by Manitoba’s chief electoral officer Shipra Verma.
Verma veered into the territory when those pushing for more stringent disinformation rules and trying to define them, end up further muddling the issue.
Now Verma speaks about the need to outlaw “objectively” false information about election officials, the equipment (ostensibly a reference to voting equipment), the process, etc.
But even seemingly straightforward terms like “objective” can be bent to political will, and interpreted to suit a political option.