Transcript: The future of democracy — CIBC Family Office Webinar Series

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[A multi-generational family walking through a fall forest. Two grandparents with their grandchild. An advisor in his office, talking with some clients. A multi-generational family smiles at the camera. A man puts a ballot in a ballot box].

[The Hon. Navdeep Bains

Vice-Chair Global Investment Banking 

CIBC Capital Markets]

It's important to note where Canada stands relative to other countries. And if you look at the Economist, it does this annual Democracy Index where it examines 167 different countries and looks at a bunch of different metrics around pluralism, around political culture, civil liberties, etcetera, and ranks countries based on authoritarian regimes on one end and full democracies on the other side. And the numbers are pretty compelling. It paints a very stark picture of around one third of the world is basically under an authoritarian rule and only, only 6.4% of the world's population lives under what they call a full democracy. And Canada's part of that 6.4%. 

So, you know, even with all the doom and gloom and all the challenges we're seeing domestically, and I know we'll talk a lot about what's unfolding in the Ukraine. We're still very fortunate that we've got a strong, robust democracy here in Canada. But we can't be smug about it. We can't just assume that the challenges that we're seeing in other parts of the world, particularly in the U.S. that we've seen play out with their politics run polarization doesn't impact us. And so we've got to be thoughtful about how we can improve our system.

[The Hon. Lisa Raitt

Vice-Chair Global Investment Banking

CIBC Capital Markets]

You know, I think that we're doing fairly well in Canada when it comes to democracy. But I would say that the dangers for democracy really do kind of mimic what we've been seeing happening in the world. Democracy has been challenged by a couple of things. It first has been challenged by disinformation. Disinformation that flows to us through social media, through Facebook, through rumors, it's more than just getting on the telephone and talking about the latest gossip. I mean it truly is beamed into our brains every second of every day. And as a result, this information can have a significant impact on democracy because your sources of information in some cases are just simply wrong because people are wrong, but in other cases, they’re nefarious. 

The second thing that I think is incredibly important in terms of democracy, which Navdeep has far more experience in and more knowledge of. And I always look forward to hearing what he has to say on it. But it has to do with digital and cybersecurity. And that is something we have not got our heads around whatsoever. I know that I think Nav tried to get a digital charter through the House of Commons when he was still there.

These things are incredibly important because it is the new world frontier when it comes to, not just safekeeping of personal information, it's everything. It's absolutely everything. And with the changes in AI, democracy can really start to lose its attractiveness. If you're not employing the cyber issues appropriately and you see that your institutions are failing so easily and so quickly because of a cyberattack.

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