Please send your letter calling for these changes and enforcement system now using the form on this page, and please help spread the word by Liking and Tweeting this page.

Political party leaders across Canada need to work together and pass a law to:

1. Prohibit anyone and any entity from having a social media account that is anonymous and does not identify the person or entity behind the account (the way to protect whistleblowers who want to anonymously report wrongdoing is not through social media posts but instead by establishing a best-practice whistleblower protection system).
2. Prohibit Internet, social media and all other companies from allowing the posting on their site, and prohibit TV, radio and telecommunications companies from allowing the transmission of, a fake audio or video (especially that imitates a politician or public official), or that concerns a politician or public official, an election or by-election, a policy-making process or any other political process.
3. Prohibit media and social media companies from publishing election-related ads during the six months leading up to an election if the ad is paid for with foreign currency (such as Russian rubles).
4. Require media and social media companies to report every election-related ad to the head of the election law enforcement agency during the six months leading up to an election so the ad can be reviewed to determine if it makes a clearly false claim about a party or candidate.
5. Require media and social media companies to report to the election law enforcement agency who placed and paid for each ad, and how much was spent on the ad, so the agency can determine if the amount spent on the ad violates the legal limit (including the amount spent on having employees or contractors or bots share, like or retweet the ad).
6. Require candidates, political parties and third party interest groups and individuals to report to the election law enforcement agency and each ABCT every election-related advertisement, and the text of any mass-distributed phone call/robocall, email, text or other form of electronic/digital communication to Elections Canada and the Commissioner of Canada Elections during the six months leading up to an election so the communication can be reviewed to determine if it makes a clearly false claim about a party or candidate, including who placed and paid for each communication (with that information required to be included in the communication), and how much was spent on ad or other form of electronic/digital communication, so that it can be determined if the amount spent violates the legal limit (including the amount spent on having employees or contractors or bots share, like or retweet the ad or other form of communication).
7. Between elections, all the 150 or so agencies, boards, commissions and tribunals (ABCTs) in each province and at the federal level (and the smaller number of ABCTs in each territory) that currently enforce specific laws that apply to each different government policy area should be empowered to rule on complaints about false claims in their specific area of expertise, and to order removal of false online claims, and to penalize whomever makes the false claim.
8. Require the government to establish an independent commission (whose members are appointed by non-governmental bodies like the Canadian Judicial Council) to conduct a public, merit-based search for the head of the election law enforcement agency and each ABCT, and to give a shortlist of nominees to the leaders of parties that have politicians in the legislature, and require the leaders to choose from the shortlist one person to head the election agency and each ABCT.
9. Give the head of the election law enforcement agency and each ABCT the power to order clearly false, illegal ads be deleted from media and social media sites, and require the head of the agency to issue these orders within a few days of receiving the information about each ad, and.
10. Give the head of the election law enforcement agency and each ABCT the power to impose significant fines on anyone or any entity that posts a false claim or ad and on media and social media companies and advertisers who violate the rules (the fines must be large enough to discourage attempts to violate the rules).

Like media companies, social media companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter know who pays for each ad on their site, how much they spend, and what each ad says, and they also know who posts on their site. As a result, they can, if required to do so, report this information to the election law enforcement agency or to an ABCT. If the heads of the election agency and each ABCT are appointed after a merit-based search by a fully independent commission, and with the unanimous approval of all party leaders in the House of Commons, the heads will have the independence and impartiality needed to make fair rulings about whether election- or issue-related social media ads are true or clearly false, and to verify whether the amount spent on an ad is more than the legal limit.