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| Kyla Lee |
Among the changes are a complete ban on distracted driving, including so much as touching the dials or knobs of your vehicle; a national school-zone speed limit; and lowering the blood alcohol maximum to 0.05.
The problem with these news stories? None of them are true.
This issue highlights a greater problem in Canadian legal society. Not only are people not sufficiently aware of the division of powers, but they also are not paying attention to legislation that has been tabled, debated and passed.
I’ve even seen lawyers and people involved in the legal industry bamboozled by these false news stories. However, a critical thinking lens and understanding of the division of powers would make clear that it is not possible for the federal government to create distracted driving laws or laws around speed limits in school zones. This is, of course, because only the provincial government has jurisdiction over road and highway safety, other than with respect to criminal driving offences.
The virality of this and the way in which it tricked so many people that I know led me to think about what caused this misconception in the first place and what we as lawyers can do to guard against false rumours confusing other people in the future.
For my part, I created a series of TikTok videos that I shared widely on social media to alert people to the misinformation. Thankfully, these videos got a high number of views. But the views themselves did not solve the problem. Although I made it clear in my videos why these laws would not be within the legislative competence of the federal government and how no bills were tabled in the last parliamentary session that would have made such changes, I nevertheless had people in my comments telling me I was wrong. Their source? ChatGPT.
As an avid user of artificial intelligence myself, I certainly have no problem with people relying on ChatGPT to help them understand issues. In my practice, I frequently rely on it to assist with understanding calculations and scientific concepts that arise. I use an AI-powered dictation system for a lot of my writing. And I have tested a number of legal research AI applications, though none have delivered quality research at this point.
But if people are placing more trust in an AI chatbot than a practising lawyer focusing specifically on driving-related offences, we have a long way to go.
We, as lawyers, share a collective responsibility to train large language models on correct legal information. These models only learn based on what they scour from the Internet and what they are told through repeated questioning and challenges to what they are saying. When the models themselves are spreading misinformation, it is our responsibility to protect the public from that misinformation and to the administration of justice to correct them. Thankfully, ChatGPT now appears to be updated on the fact that there are no federal changes coming to driving laws in Canada.
But my quiet voice in a sea of social media and Internet content is not enough to correct every legal misstatement and misunderstanding that arises from “Attorney ChatGPT.”
Lawyers should be taking the time to ask these models questions about their areas of practice, review the answers that are given and correct the model. It is also incumbent on us to do more to educate the public about how laws are passed in Canada.
With how prevalent social media is today, it is not difficult to film a short video, write a quick Twitter thread or make a post on Bluesky explaining pieces of legislation relevant to our practice. The public is reading legislation and misunderstanding it. Their misunderstanding is what led to this rumour about federal changes to driving laws in the first place. Had the public been better informed about legislation that was debated and passed by Parliament, they would have known that no such law was enacted.
Even now I see it on TikTok as Bill C-2 has been tabled in Parliament. TikTok creators who do not have a legal background or an understanding of how bills are passed and debated have said that this is already the law in Canada.
There’s a lot to say about Bill C-2 and its shortcomings, but if we are starting to spread our information about the bill from a position where people believe it is already the law, we are failing the people we are trying to inform.
It used to be enough as a lawyer to simply educate your clients, educate juniors and educate your colleagues. But as our world depends more and more upon information received from online sources, we bear the burden of educating the public in as many ways as possible. Any less would undermine confidence in the administration of justice and the legal profession.
Kyla Lee is a criminal lawyer and partner at Acumen Law Corporation in Vancouver. Her practice focuses on impaired driving. She is host of the podcast “Driving Law,” and a weekly video series, “Cases That Should Have Gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, But Didn’t!” and the author of Cross-Examination: The Pinpoint Method. She is called to the bar in Yukon and British Columbia. Follow her at @IRPLawyer.
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