Reflections on Judicial Independence in a Shifting Information Landscape

In this post, Hannah Bindman, an Ottawa native who recently graduated from the University of Cambridge with an MPhil in Criminology, shares what she took away from our 2025 Conference on Democracy, the Rule of Law, and Independence, combining personal reflections with key moments from the discussions. 

The 2025 CIAJ Conference on Democracy, the Rule of Law, and Independence, held from November 18th-20th, brought together judges, journalists, academics, lawyers, and policy experts to examine the pressures facing democratic institutions and the erosion of public confidence in the legal system. Across the three days, the program addressed a broad range of issues, from comparative perspectives across the Americas to questions about judicial independence, media responsibility, and the role of civic education in maintaining democratic stability. These conversations unfolded against a broader global backdrop in which authoritarian tendencies and regimes are gaining ground, and trust in legal and political institutions continues to decline; therefore, they felt increasingly relevant. I was fortunate to attend the second and third days of the conference as a recent graduate. This summer, I completed an MPhil in Criminology, during which I conducted a research project on how online communities disseminate harmful or extremist narratives across mainstream social media platforms. After spending months immersed in these digital environments and, like many people of my generation, simply spending too much time online, I found myself particularly attuned to the discussions on misinformation and disinformation that opened the second day.  

The first event was a conversation between the Honourable Marianne Rivoalen, Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal for Manitoba, and the Honourable Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, at that time, a judge on the Court of Appeal of Quebec, examined how targeted falsehoods about courts and judges circulate online and how they can weaken public trust. Justice Hogue, who chaired the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions, which recently released its final report, drew on that experience to describe the speed with which misleading narratives take hold and the difficulty institutions face once such narratives move beyond their point of origin. Many of the most consequential disinformation campaigns within recent Canadian politics have been orchestrated by foreign actors rather than emerging organically within domestic political debates. Justice Hogue noted that during the foreign interference inquiry, the most significant effects stem not from traditional techniques such as illicit financing or direct political pressure, but rather from targeted online campaigns aimed at specific individuals. Some, such as the attacks on MP Michael Chong following his motion condemning the treatment of Uyghurs in China and fabricated allegations about former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that circulated on fringe websites, demonstrated how quickly false narratives can take hold and how difficult it can be to trace their origins across multiple platforms. Chief Justice Rivoalen connected these dynamics to recent incidents in which inaccurate portrayals of judicial decisions were amplified by political figures, sometimes leading to threats against judges and confusion about the courts’ fundamental role.  

Ending on a solutions-focused note, the session also pointed to international approaches that illustrate how different jurisdictions confront similar challenges, offering potential avenues for Canadian institutions to consider. Finland, for example, relies on a national strategy centered on media literacy education, treating critical information assessment as a civic skill embedded in early schooling. Sweden’s Agency for Psychological Defense, positioned outside direct government control to avoid concerns about censorship, monitors and contextualizes manipulation campaigns while coordinating responses across public bodies. The United Kingdom combines sustained public communication with rapid-response mechanisms for clarifying falsehoods during acute incidents, supported by curricular efforts to teach students how to recognize online manipulation. Canada’s approach will inevitably draw on some of these elements, particularly improved public communication and sustained media literacy efforts, adapted to its own legal and institutional context. 

The later panel on democracy and the media extended these questions by examining how Canada’s fractured information environment shapes public understanding of its institutions. Sabreena Delhon, CEO of the Samara Centre for Democracy, outlined findings from the Centre’s Verification Project, including (1) the SamBot initiative, which tracked how political candidates experience online abuse and (2) the Verified project, which analyzed misinformation across platforms. Her data showed how a small number of highly active accounts disproportionately drive political discussions on spaces like Reddit’s r/Canada—now one of the few venues for sharing news after the Meta ban—and how YouTube election content often draws heavily from foreign sources, with Indian outlets playing an unexpectedly large role.  

Journalists Terry Glavin and Yves Boisvert situated these trends within the long-term decline of Canada’s legacy media. Glavin offered a sobering catalogue of the scale of the contraction: hundreds of community newspapers shuttered since 2008, the evaporation of foreign bureaus, and the transformation of once-vigorous national publications into thin, syndicated shells. With fewer than sixty full-time Canadian journalists covering foreign affairs, the information advantage of foreign state media and propaganda operations is growing, while generative AI systems, some of which are themselves shaped by foreign governments, further accelerate what he termed an ongoing “crisis of epistemology”. His diagnosis was pessimistic: a degraded media ecosystem creates fertile ground for disinformation and a public sphere where belief easily substitutes for verified facts. Boisvert offered a more tempered view. He acknowledged the structural weaknesses within the industry but argued that public trust in courts, at least, remains stronger than the profession sometimes assumes, and that a relatively small number of extreme voices may distort perceived levels of public cynicism. Both agreed, however, that media institutions must take seriously the responsibility of asking why trust has eroded and how it might be rebuilt. 

From both panels, I was left with the lasting impression of how deeply the health of democracy, and the independence of the judiciary depend on the conditions under which information circulates. The first session highlighted how targeted falsehoods directed at courts or individual judges can erode public trust long before institutions have the capacity to respond, while the second showed how a weakened media ecosystem and fragmented online platforms make such narratives easier to spread and harder to correct. Both panels pointed to the need for clear, timely communication from legal institutions and for a citizenry equipped to navigate a volatile information landscape. The through line across the discussions was that judicial independence is not only a matter of constitutional design but also of public understanding, and that strengthening democratic resilience will require sustained investment in media literacy, transparent communication, and institutional practices that help Canadians recognize what trustworthy information looks like. 

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