Manitoba government introduces election bill to ban 'deep fakes' and other misinformation during campaigns

Steve Lambert · The Canadian Press

· Posted: Mar 11, 2025 9:09 PM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

The Manitoba authorities enactment guardant a measure Tuesday aimed astatine cracking down connected predetermination disinformation. It proposes respective provisions against deliberate attempts to undermine assurance successful elections and the usage of altered images of candidates and predetermination officials.

"This is keeping up with the times. It's enhancing immoderate of the authorities that we have," Justice Minister Matt Wiebe said.

The measure is partially a effect to a study past twelvemonth from main electoral serviceman Shipra Verma. She called for an enlargement of the provincial Elections Act, which already forbids radical from disseminating mendacious accusation astir candidates, impersonating predetermination officials and more. Penalties see fines of up to $10,000 and a twelvemonth successful jail.

Verma called for authorities to besides prohibition objectively mendacious accusation astir predetermination officials, the electoral process, the instrumentality utilized successful elections and more.

If passed into law, the NDP government's measure would prohibition intentionally misleading information, successful the clip starring up to an election, astir elector eligibility, the behaviour of elections officials and the radical who supply ballots and vote-counting machines.

There is besides a proviso to prohibition alleged "deepfakes" — altered physics images oregon audio recordings — aimed astatine affecting predetermination results.

The measure would besides springiness the commissioner of elections the powerfulness to determination quickly. The commissioner would person the close to contented a "stop notice" and the idiosyncratic down the suspected disinformation would person 24 hours, successful astir cases, to comply.

The punishment for not complying would beryllium up to $20,000 per day.

The authorities has worked to guarantee the measure differentiates betwixt incorrect accusation and accusation that is deliberately mendacious and designed to mislead, Wiebe said.

Many of the applicable sections of the measure are worded specified that offenders are radical who merchandise worldly "knowing that the connection is false, oregon having a reckless disregard arsenic to whether it is false."

The measure besides contains a alteration aimed astatine ensuring the nationalist has a mode to kick astir governmental ads. Political parties would beryllium required to acceptable up a publically disposable codification of morals connected advertizing that would see a process for handling complaints.

Wiebe said that proviso is based connected advertisements by the Progressive Conservatives successful the 2023 predetermination that promoted the information they had, portion successful government, rejected calls to hunt a Winnipeg-area landfill for the remains of 2 execution victims.

The ads cited information hazards successful the landfill, and were met with disapproval adjacent wrong Tory ranks. Interim enactment person Wayne Ewasko precocious issued an apology for the mode the landfill determination was handled.

Wiebe called the ads "deeply harmful" and said the measure volition guarantee transparency.

The measure would besides grow the fig of days for beforehand polls and, connected predetermination day, let voters to formed their ballot astatine immoderate returning bureau successful the province.