Ottawa-Forest fires raging all over Canada are one of the reasons why public security should be added to the mandate of CBC/Radio-Canada, according to a new report published by a research center from McGill University.
The report indicates that other public media around the world integrate preparation for national emergency situations and the response to crises in their role. He recommends that this aspect of the mandate of CBC/Radio-Canada will be formalized and reinforced.
“In Canada, forest fires and floods have become a daily reality in the past five years,” said Jessica Johnson, who is the main researcher at the center for the media, technology and democracy.
“They have always been a reality if you lived in highly wooded regions. But today, smoke from certain regions affects the whole country and even our neighbors, ”recalled the co -author of the report published on Wednesday.
On Monday and Tuesday, special meteorological bulletins on air quality were published for many regions of the country, Environment Canada recommending that residents limit their time spent outside and monitor smoke exposure symptoms.
Thousands of people in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta were forced to leave their homes in spring and summer due to forest fires.
The report indicates that previous research on the false information disseminated during forest fires in Canada has revealed that, on social networks, “influential right and anti -end groups accused the environmental terrorists and the government of being responsible for fires, which has still fueled distrust of the media at a time when it was essential to have exact information”.
In an interview, Ms. Johnson said that, “if erroneous information circulates online and tell people that it is a hoax and that it is not necessary to evacuate, it puts the lives of people in danger”.
Disinformation also arouses more general concerns. Facebook, a platform on which many people count to learn, blocks current content in Canada. Some Canadians are increasingly turning to generative artificial intelligence to learn, even if these systems can make mistakes and provide false information.
“We have lost many reliable sources, in addition to the arrival of unreliable information sources,” said Johnson.
While some countries have changed the mandate of their public media in recent years in response to the climate crisis, others have done so for security reasons, such as the Baltic countries, given their proximity to Russia, she explained.
The head of the recent public inquiry into foreign interference concluded that disinformation and mesinformation are an existential threat to Canadian democracy, said Johnson.
“When you put it all end to end, you realize that public media is no longer a simple asset, but that they are an integral part of the communication infrastructure,” said Johnson.
The importance of local information
During this year’s federal elections, the Liberals promised to increase the financing of CBC/Radio-Canada by $ 150 million per year at first and to make a certain number of modifications to its mandate. This includes “the clear and consistent transmission of vital information in emergency situations”.
According to Johnson, it is important to ensure that CBC/Radio-Canada is not content to repeat the information provided by the government, but that it is able to request accounts from the government.
Another key element is to ensure that the public broadcaster has the capacity to carry out the mission entrusted to it, in particular at the local level.
Johnson has given the example of the inhabitants of a region affected by a forest fire, which should be able to find information on any evacuations concerning their community, instead that the media focuses on the general information of Canadians across the country.
She pointed out that, in certain regions of the country, CBC/Radio-Canada is “practically the only media present in the nearest city or city”.
An option, in the opinion of Ms. Johnson, would be that CBC/Radio-Canada has joined forces with local independent journalists, a model that has been put in place in the United Kingdom and “could be an excellent model for Canada”.
Join the whole population
The evolution of technologies also involves taking into account technical questions: Internet and mobile telephony networks can be interrupted, and many people no longer have a television or radio.
“I think it is the responsibility of the government to do this work, whether it is research, to determine if we are really ready and to determine who must participate in a discussion to ensure that we are ready.”
The CRTC, the Canadian telecommunications and broadcasting regulatory body, announced Tuesday that it launched a consultation on how to improve the public alert system in Canada. It requires mobile, cable and satellite service providers, as well as television and radio broadcasters, which they broadcast emergency alerts.
The report of Ms. Johnson and her team concludes that Canada’s needs for preparing for emergency situations are evolving, which means that “CBC/Radio-Canada may have to be restructured in order to serve the country differently from that of which it had to do it in the past”.