Bill C-76 (Historical)

Elections Modernization Act

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make certain consequential amendments

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to establish spending limits for third parties and political parties during a defined period before the election period of a general election held on a day fixed under that Act. It also establishes measures to increase transparency regarding the participation of third parties in the electoral process. Among other things that it does in this regard, the enactment
(a) adds reporting requirements for third parties engaging in partisan activities, partisan advertising, and election surveys to the reporting requirements for third parties engaging in election advertising;
(b) creates an obligation for third parties to open a separate bank account for expenses related to the matters referred to in paragraph (a); and
(c) creates an obligation for political parties and third parties to identify themselves in partisan advertising during the defined period before the election period.
The enactment also amends the Act to implement measures to reduce barriers to participation and increase accessibility. Among other things that it does in this regard, the enactment
(a) establishes a Register of Future Electors in which Canadian citizens 14 to 17 years of age may consent to be included;
(b) broadens the application of accommodation measures to all persons with a disability, irrespective of its nature;
(c) creates a financial incentive for registered parties and candidates to take steps to accommodate persons with a disability during an election period;
(d) amends some of the rules regarding the treatment of candidates’ expenses, including the rules related to childcare expenses, expenses related to the care of a person with a disability and litigation expenses;
(e) amends the rules regarding the treatment of nomination contestants’ and leadership contestants’ litigation expenses and personal expenses;
(f) allows Canadian Forces electors access to several methods of voting, while also adopting measures to ensure the integrity of the vote;
(g) removes limitations on public education and information activities conducted by the Chief Electoral Officer;
(h) removes two limitations on voting by non-resident electors: the requirement that they have been residing outside Canada for less than five consecutive years and the requirement that they intend to return to Canada to resume residence in the future; and
(i) extends voting hours on advance polling days.
The enactment also amends the Act to modernize voting services, facilitate enforcement and improve various aspects of the administration of elections and of political financing. Among other things that it does in this regard, the enactment
(a) removes the assignment of specific responsibilities set out in the Act to specific election officers by creating a generic category of election officer to whom all those responsibilities may be assigned;
(b) limits election periods to a maximum of 50 days;
(c) removes administrative barriers in order to facilitate the hiring of election officers;
(d) authorizes the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to provide the Chief Electoral Officer with information about permanent residents and foreign nationals for the purpose of updating the Register of Electors;
(e) removes the prohibition on the Chief Electoral Officer authorizing the notice of confirmation of registration (commonly known as a “voter information card”) as identification;
(f) replaces, in the context of voter identification, the option of attestation for residence with an option of vouching for identity and residence;
(g) removes the requirement for electors’ signatures during advance polls, changes procedures for the closing of advance polls and allows for counting ballots from advance polls one hour before the regular polls close;
(h) replaces the right or obligation to take an oath with a right or obligation to make a solemn declaration, and streamlines the various declarations that electors may have the right or obligation to make under specific circumstances;
(i) relocates the Commissioner of Canada Elections to within the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, and provides that the Commissioner is to be appointed by the Chief Electoral Officer, after consultation with the Director of Public Prosecutions, for a non-renewable term of 10 years;
(j) provides the Commissioner of Canada Elections with the authority to impose administrative monetary penalties for contraventions of provisions of Parts 16, 17 and 18 of the Act and certain other provisions of the Act;
(k) provides the Commissioner of Canada Elections with the authority to lay charges;
(l) provides the Commissioner of Canada Elections with the power to apply for a court order requiring testimony or a written return;
(m) clarifies offences relating to
(i) the publishing of false statements,
(ii) participation by non-Canadians in elections, including inducing electors to vote or refrain from voting, and
(iii) impersonation; and
(n) implements a number of measures to harmonize and streamline political financing monitoring and reporting.
The enactment also amends the Act to provide for certain requirements with regard to the protection of personal information for registered parties, eligible parties and political parties that are applying to become registered parties, including the obligation for the party to adopt a policy for the protection of personal information and to publish it on its Internet site.
The enactment also amends the Parliament of Canada Act to prevent the calling of a by-election when a vacancy in the House of Commons occurs within nine months before the day fixed for a general election under the Canada Elections Act.
It also amends the Public Service Employment Act to clarify that the maximum period of employment of casual workers in the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer — 165 working days in one calendar year — applies to those who are appointed by the Commissioner of Canada Elections.
Finally, the enactment contains transitional provisions, makes consequential amendments to other Acts and repeals the Special Voting Rules.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I have another question that I wanted to ask you.

In the first mandate of this government, Bill C-76 was introduced, which, by the way, the Conservatives voted against. That bill had a lot of teeth in order to combat foreign interference.

Could you comment on some of the measures that were included in that bill that were opposed by the Conservatives?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

I'm going to direct my questions to Professor Turnbull.

Although there has been a lot of focus as of late on Beijing's election interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections, during the 2015 election there was also foreign interference and foreign money that was directed to third party organizations that were registered.

For example, in 2017, I wrote to the commissioner of Elections Canada with a complaint in which I had identified that a total of $693,023.50 had been transferred from the Tides Foundation, which is based in California, to eight different third party groups: The Council of Canadians, the Dogwood Initiative, Ecology Ottawa, Équiterre, Greenpeace Canada, Toronto350, the West Coast Environmental Law Association and the West Coast Environmental Law Research Foundation. None of that was reported by any of those eight third party groups. They did spend a total of $317,426.80 in the 2015 election.

In short, when Elections Canada responded, they said effectively that there was nothing they could do because of certain loopholes that existed in the legislation at that time. The government did move forward to amend the Canada Elections Act, with really significant amendments in Bill C-76. I know that you appeared—I think at this committee—on Bill C-76.

The Chief Electoral Officer, in his report on the 43rd and 44th elections, does in a section speak about some of the issues around third parties, in which he notes that some of these loopholes still exist—at least two.

One is that there's a melding issue. That was an issue with respect to my 2017 complaint, in which funds donated to a third party, even from a foreign source, can be treated as melded and as part of the general revenue of the third party. A second loophole is that a third party can accept contributions from another entity and report having received those funds from that entity, even though those funds may have come from another source.

That's a long preamble, but I think it's important to provide some context in terms of loopholes or gaps that exist within the Canada Elections Act.

I know that you have studied the act and you've appeared as a witness. Do you have any recommendations on how we can strengthen the Canada Elections Act to stop the flow of foreign money?

Democratic Institutions

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Mr. Speaker, the member should try to educate himself on the difference between evidence and allegations.

The member used the term “mounting evidence”. Those were his words. There is no evidence to date. As a matter of fact, the RCMP has said that it does not have any active investigations ongoing. What there have been are allegations. If the member is unaware of the difference between allegations, information and intelligence versus evidence, he should really take the time to educate himself on that.

What I think is even more remarkable about the member's speech is the massive misunderstanding of the reality of the situation when he opened his speech by saying that the government has done virtually nothing. That is categorically false. As a matter of fact, this government is the only government that has ever done anything on this issue.

I will inform the member what we have done since 2015. We introduced Bill C-76, which was a bill that tightened up financing rules and tightened up on opportunities for foreign interference specifically. The Conservatives, who this member seems to be cozying up a lot to lately, actually voted against that.

The other thing we did was install a special panel of experts who have the ability to monitor, in real time, what is going on during a writ period. They have the opportunity to assess, make decisions, inform parties, gather intelligence from political parties and take action when necessary. That is a panel that never existed before. Most importantly, after the election is over, a third party prepares a report based on the panel's information. That third party concluded, both after the 2019 and 2021 election, that the elections were done in a free, fair, open and transparent manner and were not influenced by foreign interference.

Finally, on the member's issue about the public inquiry. Perhaps the member did not hear my answer to the impromptu question from the NDP member just before him, but I laid it out very clearly. On the experts that the member gave a lot of credit to in his speech, and he sang the praises of CSIS saying that we have to respect its processes, I can tell him that CSIS came to the PROC committee and specifically told us that the place to do this is not in a public inquiry. We have the established organizations, such as NSICOP, which is another thing this government put together, that specifically looks at, and has the ability for parliamentarian oversight over, highly classified information. That is the best place that we were told it should go.

However, notwithstanding that, and understanding the incredible position and incredible attention that Canadians are seized with on this issue, the Prime Minister went a step further and said that even though our experts were telling us that a public inquiry is not the best place, we understand that we need to put this in a non-partisan environment and will allow a special expert, the former governor general David Johnston, to determine what the best path forward is. As I said to the previous member, if it is determined that the best way forward is through a public inquiry, the Prime Minister has already said that we will accept that recommendation and proceed with it based on his advice.

Procedure and House Affairs

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when the Conservatives were in government, they did absolutely nothing, and we have done a number of things since then. We brought in NSICOP. We brought in a special panel that oversees elections. We brought in Bill C-76, which tightens up foreign interference and which they voted against.

Democratic Institutions

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, nothing could be further from the truth. Since we have taken the reins of government, this government has been consistently proactive in taking foreign interference seriously by giving CSIS new threat-reduction measure powers and by ensuring we crack down on foreign funding, which could be used to meddle in our elections, through the introduction and passage of Bill C-76 and through the creation of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, which has all recognized parties doing important work together to protect our democratic institutions.

That is the record of this government. I am proud of it, and we will continue to ensure that we do everything possible to protect—

Opposition Motion—Instruction to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Yukon today.

I would like to start today by speaking directly to the seriousness of these allegations, the seriousness of foreign interference generally and what the government has been doing.

I would say to the member who spoke just before me that the claim that we have done nothing is absolutely ludicrous. I would remind the member that on December 18, 2020, the then minister of public safety mailed a copy of a public report regarding election interference specifically as it relates to China to every single member in this House of Commons. I am sure that she received and reviewed it, as did all Conservative MPs, yet they have the gall to stand up in this House and suggest that we are being secretive or that information is not being shared with them.

In addition to that, what has this government done? We created NSICOP, which specifically allows parliamentarians and senators to review highly classified information. We passed the Election Modernization Act to help tackle foreign interference, Bill C-76, which Conservatives voted against. We created a panel of experts to monitor in real time what was going on with respect to foreign interference during an election and gave them the ability and the power to act on it.

We put in tighter controls on advertising and online platforms. We closed fundraising loopholes to keep foreign money out of elections. We enhanced the integrity of the voters list.

Foreign election interference has been going on for about 10 years. Now, as a result of the real concerns that Canadians have, and rightly so, it is at least being talked about a lot more in the mainstream, as we have seen in other countries.

The Prime Minister and indeed this side of the House are seized with what is going on. We take this very seriously. That is why the Prime Minister empowered NSICOP and NSIRA to specifically look into the issue of foreign interference and why he has appointed an incredible Canadian, David Johnston, to look at the issue and recommend to the Prime Minister the best course of action to move forward, which very well might be a public inquiry. This government has already said, in advance of knowing what any of those recommendations might be, that we will accept and implement them.

Therefore, for the member for Thornhill to come in here and suggest that this government has done absolutely nothing about foreign interference and has been secretive is just completely untrue.

I find it very interesting that we are getting this lecture from the member for Carleton, the Leader of the Opposition, and his MPs about sending staff to committee. It was the member for Carleton who, in 2010, said this to the CBC. I will read it out again because I think it is just so telling, and the video is widely available for anybody to go back and review.

He said:

...ministers answer questions on behalf of the government and not staff. We are not going to be changing 300 years of history all of a sudden at the behest of the coalition parties. We are not going to have the staff members appear in question period to answer on behalf of the government. We are going to do it the old-fashioned way, the way it has always been done right up until the last several months. We are going to keep ministers, the guys in charge, responsible for their duties.

I always get a kick out of the use of that terminology, “the guys in charge”. Of course the member for Carleton would phrase it like that.

That was the member for Carleton when he was in government. He was answering a question as to whether staff, in particular, Dimitri Soudas, the then prime minister's director of communications, would go to committee.

I think the hypocrisy here is literally oozing out of that side of the House and dribbling down towards the aisle here when I listen to what is coming from over there.

At the time, the NDP, I believe with other political parties, were able to get through a motion to require Mr. Soudas to appear before committee, yet he never did. Do members know who appeared? Stephen Harper sent John Baird, one of his ministers at the time, to deal with the situation.

In response to Mr. Easter asking why he was there and not the person who was called to the committee, Mr. Baird said, “the government believes the opposition is playing politics with parliamentary committees and is not respecting due process and fair play.”

Does that sound familiar? “They are conducting random interrogations without due process or any rules of fairness. That might be how things work in the United States Congress, but it's not the Canadian tradition. In Canada the constitutional principle is ministerial responsibility.” That is what John Baird said when Stephen Harper defied the request of Parliament for Dimitri Soudas, the director of communications in the Prime Minister's Office, to appear before committee.

This new-found approach from the Conservatives is to suddenly be so incredibly hypocritical. I will not even hold it against the new members who have come along since 2015. However, in particular, the member for Carleton was not just an MP who happened to be around the House at the time, but he was actually leading the file. Is he suddenly standing here saying it is completely appropriate now?

I asked the member for Thornhill, just before my speech, why it is okay now, and she was totally unable to give an answer. Her answer basically was that the chiefs of staff have already come forward from the government. What she is basically saying is that we should never have set the precedent, because now Conservatives are running rampant all over it, using every possible opportunity. Where does it end from here? That is the question.

Every time Conservatives want to drum up a fake scandal, they are going to run in here and use the same language they are using now. No one is doing China's work better for them than the Conservative MPs right now, who are sowing the seeds of distrust in our democratic institutions. That is what is happening right now, and it is Conservative MPs' responsibility for all of it.

This comes down to politics, and I am not the only one saying this is politically motivated. Push aside all the people who are Liberal, NDP and non-partisan. Push them aside for a second and let us just talk about Conservatives who are calling out this rhetoric. Fred DeLorey, the campaign manager from a year and a half ago, is on nightly. It is like he is lining up to get on every talk show or every panel he can on CTV and CBC. He is everywhere right now, basically saying that the Conservatives are just trying to score political points.

Vern White, a former Conservative senator, has referred to what is going on as “BS”. That is what he actually said. He is a former Conservative senator because at some point he came to the realization that this political party is way further to the right than where it had been when he was appointed a senator, if we can believe that. Former senator Hugh Segal, who represented my area and whom I have an incredible amount of respect for, has also—

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

The government takes the issue of foreign interference very seriously. All of our legislation demonstrates our commitment to this issue. Consider for example Bill C‑59, which granted the Canadian Security Intelligence Service new powers to reduce threats caused by foreign interference. Another example is Bill C‑76, which targeted foreign funds that could pose a threat to our democratic institutions.

My colleague is quite right to ask questions. That is the purpose of this House. The point of this place is to shed light on how we carry out these duties. At the same time, it is fair to point out that, for the government and for everyone else, partisanship is not good for debate.

I hope we can set partisanship aside as we move forward.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the opposition for this opportunity to speak to this motion. Protecting Canadians means protecting the country's institutions. It is an important responsibility for all governments, but some are trying to exploit the freedoms we enjoy as Canadians to sow division and compromise our democratic values.

It is for that reason that this motion is so important. I assure all members in the chamber that this government takes foreign interference with the utmost seriousness. The threats that it poses to our economy, to our academic and research institutions, to our critical infrastructure and, indeed, to our democratic institutions, including most especially our elections, is of paramount importance and work in which I hope all members will be united.

Although I have identified these priorities, they are indeed the pillars of our democracy. The people who who work within these institutions, Canadians who contribute, is sacred.

I understand that there has been a substantial amount of heat and passion in this subject matter. At times I think it has been regrettable to see that the discourse has strayed far too much into partisanship. I do not believe any of us benefit from that. It is my sincere hope that we would be able to have a debate on this motion, on the merits, on the principles, on civility and respect, because only together united can we fight against foreign interference and protect our institutions and our democracy.

There are two primacies to this motion. One is that we need more transparency. I am going to speak to that and about the ways in which this government is raising the bar and shining a light on the way in which we protect our national security. The second is the questions around what this government is doing to fight against foreign interference.

Let me start with the latter. Since taking the reins of government, we have been very proactive in putting in place the people, the resources, the technology, the powers and the authorities to equip all of the agencies that work within our national security and public safety apparatuses to protect our institutions.

By way of example, that includes legislation like Bill C-59, which gave CSIS new threat reduction measure powers to address and mitigate; in other words, reduce threats that may be caused by foreign interference or other hostile activities that could be used to undermine our democratic institutions. We put that legislation into place.

This government also introduced Bill C-76 to crackdown on foreign funding that could be used to interfere with our elections. It has become a useful tool to deter and disrupt those efforts as a way of safeguarding our democratic institutions.

Very recently, I launched a public consultation that will see the creation of a foreign-influenced transparency registry, so we can promote legitimate diplomacy and foreign activities on Canadian soil, while at the same time deterring and stopping any efforts that go beyond legitimate diplomatic activities here at home.

Even as we have done that, this government has raised the bar on transparency. We have done that through the creation of a number of new committees and agencies.

The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians is there to study matters related to security and intelligence. This new committee was created by our government to increase collaboration between all recognized parties in the House of Commons and with the Senate.

Under the leadership of one of my colleagues on the government side, many recommendations were made in a unified, cohesive manner to fight foreign interference. The government is in the process of implementing some of those recommendations.

What is more, we created the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, or NSIRA. The purpose of this agency is to review all the work that is done by our national security agencies. It has access to top secret information so that it can review our agencies' national security and public safety activities, in order to assure everyone that the work is being done properly or, if not, to provide meaningful recommendations that will benefit everyone.

By creating these bodies, we have raised the bar of transparency. We are benefiting from their work. We are doing so in a way that is bipartisan. In other words, we are finding ways to collaborate across the aisle in this chamber.

In addition to that, vis-à-vis our democratic institutions and specifically our elections, our government created the critical election incident public protocol, as well as the CEIPP panel, which is made up of our top, non-partisan, independent, professional public servants. They are there to ensure that during the course of an election that all the checks, balances and protections are doing their job to preserve the integrity of our federal elections. That is precisely what not one but two independent panels confirmed after they examined the circumstances of the federal elections in 2019 and 2021.

In short, they certified that those elections were free and fair, libres et justes, and my hope is that Canadians will take assurances in those conclusions, not to give rise to some sense of complacency but rather so we can be sure we are on the right track when it comes to putting in place the mechanisms necessary to shield our democratic institutions from foreign interference.

We need to do more. That is why, in addition to all of those mechanisms, just last week we announced the appointment of David Johnston, a former governor general appointed by Stephen Harper, a Conservative prime minister, and an individual with unimpeachable qualities and characteristics, to fulfill the role and to give us concrete advice on what the next best practical steps ought to be, given some of the questions around the 2019 and 2021 elections.

This builds on the two reports that were filed by James Judd and Morris Rosenberg, two former public servants with distinguished records, in a non-partisan, independent way, contributing to the dialogue in this important area with tangible, concrete recommendations on which the government has committed to act.

Indeed, in the case of Mr. Judd, we have acted on all but one of the recommendations. With regard to Mr. Rosenberg's report, we have heard my colleague, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, who has committed to implementing those recommendations as well.

In the event that there are any questions about Mr. Johnston's qualifications, which I again believe are unimpeachable, let me quote from a number of Conservatives who have said the following.

I believe it was Fred Delorey, the former national chair of the Conservative Party campaign in 2021, who said that there was nobody better qualified. I believe it was Stephen Harper who said that David Johnston was the best of Canadians.

We can place trust and confidence that he will, without any pride or prejudice toward political parties or partisanship, put forward the best possible recommendations when it comes to the important subject matter of fighting against foreign interference.

I will say a few concluding words about the work that is being done by PROC, another forum in which the government is putting forward witnesses to again shed light on the way in which we are doing the work around foreign interference and national security.

Most recently PROC heard from the Prime Minister's national security intelligence advisor, the deputy ministers from Global Affairs and the former deputy minister from Public Safety, as well as from my colleagues, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. All of them were able to certify that the federal elections in 2019 and 2021 were free and fair, but acknowledged that foreign interference was a significant challenge that required a proactive posture, one that continues to study, very thoughtfully and carefully, the types of tools and mechanisms we need to put in place to combat against those hostile actors who would try to undermine our democracy.

Our government will continue to co-operate with that committee. It is important that we demonstrate a willingness to work with all parliamentarians so we can offer evidence and advice and put our collective minds together to navigate this challenge.

Beyond Parliament, it is important that we engage Canadians.

I want to take a moment to underline that in the conversations I have had with a number of communities around how we create new tools, including the foreign agent registry, expressions of concern have been articulated to me, concerns that we do this work in the right way, that we do it transparently, and that the ways that we draft and craft our laws are done consistent with the principles that are espoused in the law and in the charter. That has to be the bedrock of the way in which we put pen to paper when we draft our legislation. It is technical work. It is complex work.

It is challenging to define and get the parameters right for how these authorities are triggered, used and then accountable in the use of those authorities, to be sure they are exercised reasonably and then accountable thereafter in the public reporting of it all.

With respect to Bill C-59, that is precisely why, when we created the new threat reduction powers for CSIS, we did so concurrently with the creation of NSIRA, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, so we could be accountable and transparent, so if any questions were raised legitimately about how these powers were being used, we could make the necessary course corrections to maintain trust and confidence in all Canadians when it came to the way in which we did the work around national security.

The Conservatives have gone to some length at times to be political and to be partisan, and that is regrettable. I do not believe that any of us profit from trying to score political points. We are a democracy. This is a chamber that sees some vigorous debate every single day, and it is a privilege to be part of those debates. Through those debates, my hope is that we are able to refine our ideas and advance them for the national interest.

However, when it comes to foreign interference, whether from the People's Republic of China, Russia or any other hostile actor that would attempt to undermine our institutions, it is important we take a team Canada approach.

We all have a vested interest in protecting the rules, principles and values that underpin our democracy. My sincere hope is that we will be able to continue to do this work in a way where, yes, there is fierce debate but it does not stray into partisanship and into the unnecessary politicization of an issue that should transcend it, so that we can do whatever is necessary to protect our democracy from all the threats that lie on the horizon.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm sorry that I had to be away from the committee for a few minutes, but I'm glad to be back. I'm glad to still get my turn to speak to the amendment I put forward.

Again, it is quite reasonable to ask the campaign directors to come before the committee as additional witnesses. We've had a whole host of credible witnesses. In terms of our study, we've heard from the majority of witnesses, some of them more than once, and they've given us some very compelling testimony. I don't think it gives the Conservatives what they're looking for and I think that's why they continue to push us to have to debate this topic.

This is really clear-cut. Our government has been acting on foreign election interference since 2015. We know that the past government, prior to that, did absolutely nothing on foreign election interference. That's a fact. I've never heard a Conservative say otherwise. In fact, in the House, we heard an exchange between Minister LeBlanc and the leader of the official opposition. Minister LeBlanc said:

When my friend, the opposition leader, was the minister responsible for democratic institutions, he did nothing when intelligence agencies raised the issue over 10 years ago.

Mr. Poilievre's response was:

Mr. Speaker, we did not have to, because the Communist dictatorship in Beijing was not helping the Conservative Party to get elected.

I don't know how anyone can hear remarks like that and not fully understand that the Conservative motivations here are clearly partisan.

When we heard Minister LeBlanc at the committee today, he made reference to this statement, calling it a “perverse” sense of how a minister would take their responsibility. For the leader of the official opposition, who was formerly responsible for democratic institutions, to say such a thing really speaks to the true motivations of what the Conservatives are trying to do. They are well known for this as a party, because they have done this over and over again.

We've seen this. It's not that surprising. Many Canadians know that this is the new Conservative Party of Canada, a party that is constantly becoming more extreme, trying to stoke more division and trying to question our democratic institutions, and they won't let any of the facts get in the way of their partisan games.

We also know what Mr. Poilievre said this week in English, and this will be a direct quote, contrary to what Mr. Cooper said in our previous meeting today. Pierre Poilievre said, “They are so concerned about how the Prime Minister is acting against Canada's interest and in favour of a foreign dictatorship's interests”. He then said in French—I'm quoting the English—“we've never had an intelligence service so worried about a Prime Minister and his collaboration with a foreign power”.

For me, this is morally reprehensible. It's disgusting. It reeks of partisanship. It is really calling into question the motivations of our Prime Minister, who, like all of us, stood for office and is doing this for the benefit of the country and is giving so much to this country.

It is utterly disgusting. I don't even have words to describe how I feel about it. It actually makes me sad to think that this is the kind of politics we have in this country today.

When you add in the comments that Mr. Cooper made earlier to Minister Joly, which I found very offensive.... I really wish Mr. Cooper would realize just how gender-biased his remarks were and how disempowering that would feel. I can't put myself in the minister's shoes, but I can say we totally expect tough questions, of course, to ministers when they come before this committee. Holding the government to account is the responsibility of all of us, and it's something we all take very seriously, but when you are a complete and total jerk about it, and are offensive and are basically putting on display for everybody that you're gender-biased and discriminatory in your perspectives, you're just embarrassing yourself. It would be nice for him to actually “man up” and apologize for those comments.

Anyway, I'm sure we'll keep waiting for that to happen. I'm hopeful that he will find in his better judgment, at some point in the near future, a way to come back to us and hopefully apologize for those remarks.

Look, I've spent a lot of time talking about how much our government has done on foreign election interference and I've been very careful to also say that we should never allow ourselves to think that we've done enough. We need to evolve and do more. With respect to the threats from our adversaries, we've heard the same thing from multiple witnesses. I think every member of the government who's come before this committee, whether public servants or ministers or deputy ministers, has said the same thing: Canada needs to take these threats seriously. We are doing that, but we also need to constantly reflect and consider how we can strengthen the many different strategies we have currently.

I think it's important to give an overview, a more condensed summary. It would be really nice to hear some acknowledgement of that. It would really go a long way in our debates and conversations on a study that's so important, if parties....

I don't have a lot of hope, obviously, for the Conservative Party, because I've just given you quotes about how hyperpartisan they're being about an issue, on the one hand claiming they want to get to the truth and then, when they hear from the security experts and intelligence experts who are the most prominent figures in their fields—who are coming and telling us the things that we should be doing—not being willing to listen to that. They're not taking those things into consideration, and then they're even ignoring what they're being told and what the reports are saying. They're ignoring the facts.

I think my job is to continue to confront their partisanship with facts and information, which we have plenty of. I don't think that's being unreasonable. I think that just extends our debate, of course, and I think we need an acknowledgement that our government has been doing a lot on foreign election interference. Just because the Conservative Party woke up to this recently doesn't mean that our government has been inactive.

Going right back to 2017, we passed the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act and then formed NSICOP, with members from all parties. We all know this. We all have members of our parties who sit on that committee of parliamentarians. That's just one thing. I realize if that were all we had done, fine, you could perhaps criticize, but....

I'm not saying that we can't be critical. We should be critical, and that's fine, but when you're ignoring the facts, that's not being informed based on the information we've been given.

I think to respect the process, we really need to review those facts until, in my view, people acknowledge that those things are all real, positive, sizable steps forward in protecting our democracy.

I mentioned the 2018 ethics committee report on threats to democracy and the substantive government response to that, which came shortly afterward. We established the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security with a budget of $155 million and we announced the rapid response mechanism at the 2018 G7 summit. Those are three sizable things. The ethics committee wrote a report of more than 100 pages, and the government responded. Then the government did some things that relate to foreign election interference, one of them being setting up the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, giving it a budget to do its job and setting up the rapid response mechanism with other G7 partners. I think those things have to be acknowledged. They are significant.

Then in 2019, there were many more steps taken. There was a major report that a committee did in 2018, and then some things were immediately done that year. Then in 2019, a whole host of other things were done. Before the 2019 election, there were six or seven major steps taken. One was the announcement of the plan to protect Canadian democracy. I mentioned this before, but I am referring back to it to say that four-pillar plan really represents an all-of-government approach.

If we look at the details of that plan, we could actually check off the things that have been done as a result of that plan. Conservatives always seem to say that the Liberals just talk about things and they don't do anything. No, these things got done. You can't deny that. I can give you very specific examples, and I'd be happy to do that. Mrs. Block, I see you shaking your head, but these things got done. Again, I'm not saying that they're perfect, but I'm saying none of these things were in place before our government came to power.

This isn't a rose-coloured glasses moment for me. These are real, tangible steps that have been taken. We set up the SITE task force, which includes CSIS, the RCMP, the rapid response mechanism and the Communications Security Establishment, CSE. We passed Bill C-76, the Elections Modernization Act, which added protections for third parties to funnel funds into partisan advertising, in addition to a bunch of other things.

It's important to keep in mind, of course, that Bill C-76 was tabled in the House in 2018, and it took until almost the end of 2019, I believe, to actually get passed through the House. That Elections Modernization Act added a whole bunch of things that I think are really significant. I went through some of those in my previous comments, but just to summarize, a whole bunch of things were added to strengthen our process.

We also passed Bill C-59, which was tabled in the House in 2017. That's an act respecting national security matters. That act gave CSIS and the CSE new threat reduction measures. Again, when we had CSIS come before us, the director said they do intervene and use threat reduction measures. Obviously those powers were given to them through an act that our government tabled in the House of Commons. It took two years to get through the House and came into force in 2019, but it shows significant progress. Between 2017 and 2019, there were multiple legislative things that took place. There were numerous bodies that were set up, including the SITE task force. Again, the critical election incident public protocol and the panel were also established before the election.

We also have examples like the Canada Declaration on Electoral Integrity Online, which was a commitment that all of the major social media platforms and online platforms made. That's another sizable undertaking. It's not as though we just threw that up and people just agreed to it. A lot of work went into it. Again, for the opposition parties to keep claiming that we've done nothing just shows ignorance of the facts.

The other thing I was really happy to read about earlier this morning, which I just happened to dive deeper into, was the digital citizen initiative through Canadian Heritage. Again I would like to take time tonight to demonstrate to you this all-of-government approach that involves multiple departments all working together on foreign election interference—both primary prevention and early intervention, which involves educating the public. It involves people being more aware through things like the digital citizen initiative, which really is trying to educate people on digital literacy. That was composed of 23 projects over nine months, and it reached 12 million Canadians. That's 12 million Canadians who learned about digital literacy—in other words, how to question the content that they consume online, which we know is the most common way in which people consume information today. Those 23 projects over nine months reached 12 million Canadians. That's a significant undertaking. It didn't just happen overnight. Lots of work went into that. Canadian Heritage led that work, and it had an impact.

We can ask ourselves how much of an impact it had and we could ask what else we need to do on that front. I would suggest that we need to do more. What's interesting is that if I look at budget 2022, I see more resources for initiatives like that as well. Again, I'm being critical of my own government and reflecting and asking what we haven't done yet, but when you're not operating in the realm of reality or fact, then how are you making a judgment? I'm looking at the information we've been given and informing myself based on that. It seems that at least the Conservative members don't seem willing to do that, which I think again reeks of partisanship, because it's just wilful ignorance of the facts. We have to look at the information we've been given and the testimony of the security experts and intelligence experts whom we've heard from.

Another initiative was the Get Cyber Safe program, which is a national public awareness campaign to inform Canadians about cybersecurity. Not only did we do digital literacy training; we also did a major public awareness campaign. That was led by the Communications Security Establishment, and it's an important part of an overall strategy that links it to another major strategy of the government called the national cyber security strategy. This, I feel, demonstrates very clearly how there's kind of a whole-of-government approach.

I've described so far how we've launched a four-pillar plan called a plan to protect Canadian democracy. We set up the SITE task force, which includes CSIS, the RCMP, the rapid response mechanism and the CSE. We passed two bills. We set up the public protocol and panel for the writ period, within the election period, and we did a declaration on election integrity online, the digital citizen initiative and the cyber-safe initiative. That was all in 2019, before the election.

Again, for anyone to claim that we didn't do anything or that we weren't taking foreign interference into account or taking it seriously, that just shows ignorance of the facts. In 2020 there was an independent assessment done. We all know that was done. An independent person named James Judd was appointed and produced a report. I have it here. There are some really good analyses and suggestions, most of which have been followed through on. The vast majority of them seem to have been implemented, and obviously the government has to assess what the best way forward is.

There's evidence that the report was taken seriously, that the independent advice of Mr. Judd was taken into consideration and that there were measures, mechanisms and initiatives implemented based on those recommendations. Again it shows responsible leadership from a government that took the independent advice into consideration. It demonstrates how the government is taking this threat seriously, so I just don't understand how anyone can claim....

Maybe we could find consensus in some way if the Conservative Party of Canada would just live in reality and come to terms with some of the facts about the things that our government has done. Maybe a member of that party could pipe up today on a point of order and say they recognize that the government has done a lot on foreign election interference and they all now want to reflect on how we move forward and what else we can do. Then we could have a constructive, non-partisan, committed conversation, because I really believe that when it comes down to it, we all really do care about our democracy. We want to protect the health of our democracy. I know I do. I really care about our democracy, so for anyone to claim that our party, our leader, I or anybody else does not take this seriously is just deeply offensive. It is deeply offensive, and I won't stand for it, because it's not true, so cut it out. Let's work together. Let's work together on the things that we know we need to do.

We have 16 recommendations from the newest independent report from Morris Rosenberg. Morris Rosenberg wrote a really substantive report. I would say it's even better than the first report after 2019, the Judd report. I feel as though the Rosenberg report has even more substance in it, more things we can do or consider doing. I know the Prime Minister has already made an announcement asking Minister LeBlanc and the Privy Council to, within 30 days, look at all of the reports that have been done, say they are going to implement them and come up with an implementation plan. To me, that shows a responsiveness. It shows that there was an independent assessment done. It shows that we care and that we're considering that independent advice.

I don't know how parties like the Bloc Québécois can criticize, because they didn't even show up for the briefings during the last election. I mentioned this earlier, because I'm dumbfounded by this little fact that was in a footnote. I came across this and thought, first of all, that it's difficult to understand how the Conservatives, the NDP and others can claim that they didn't know about things and almost claim ignorance when they were part of these briefings, but then, on the other hand, the Bloc never came to the briefings. It just seems very rich for them to then accuse the government of not being transparent enough. They didn't even come to the briefings on foreign election interference in the 2021 election. It's clearly said in the report that Rosenberg wrote.

Again I feel frustrated by the fact that our opposition parties don't really want to work on this issue, in my view, but just seem to want to push some political agenda they have. I hope we can get through that logjam and come to terms with the fact that there are facts in the matter and that we should be taking those into consideration.

I mentioned 2020 and 2021. I am establishing a timeline and a pattern of responsible leadership. I know nobody wants to listen to that, it seems, but that's the truth. Responsible leadership involves having all of these different initiatives to tackle foreign election interference, and as the threats to Canadian democracy are evolving, our government is responding to each step along the way. You can see it, year over year.

That's not to say it's perfect. I'm not claiming that, and we have to seriously look at it, but that's exactly what we've been doing. With every step, every year, there is a track record of progress. If you're denying that there has been progress, I don't know how we come to terms with moving forward on a study when you won't look at the information and facts we have been given.

That is our job, as a committee. Our job is to come to these studies and do this work in good faith for the benefit of Canadians. We're not benefiting Canadians when we deny the facts and the information that we've been given. To me, we're avoiding our responsibilities, in a sense. We're not taking this work seriously if we're not willing to look at the facts. It's unfortunate, but that's what we're seeing today.

In 2021, our government worked on updating the Canada declaration on election integrity online, and that got updated. It was done again for the commitment for the online platforms. I think Rosenberg quite rightly says it's great to have that declaration, but social media companies.... I could quote the quote if you would like, but I remember it off the top of my head. I will paraphrase it, so I apologize to the folks in the committee if they remember verbatim what Rosenberg wrote. He basically said that online platforms, even though they have signed this declaration, are still the major source of misinformation and disinformation, and those platforms are where Canadians are consuming a lot of that information.

Could we criticize and say that maybe the declaration doesn't go far enough? Maybe we need to do deeper work with online platforms around foreign election interference and the dissemination of disinformation on their platforms. We've talked a lot in different committees about this issue of disinformation being so widespread and how much of an impact it has on Canadians.

Yes, we can see that there were instances of disinformation in the last election, both foreign and domestic. There was quite a lot of it, I'm sure. If we were to have our experts in this area come before us, they would showcase many examples of online campaigns that featured information that was not quite accurate or that put a spin on things that could potentially influence voter behaviour and voter intentions.

It is very difficult for us to establish a direct link. We've heard that. One of the challenges that we all have to come to terms with is that we don't know the extent that disinformation out there is impacting Canadians' sense of disenfranchisement and perhaps their level of anger and frustration with Canadian democracy and their feelings toward different parties and their policies. We don't know the direct causal links, because people consume so much information and get so many different impressions upon which they then base their decisions.

A lot of that is not even conscious for many Canadians. You see something, you react to it, you relate to it in a certain way, you associate it with something else and you internalize it. Some people are able to block it out. Other people are not. How does that resonate with you over time? Everybody is slightly different. Ms. Block may not react to things the same way that Ms. Gray does or Mr. Barrett does, or anybody else on this side does. We're all quite different in how we internalize the information that we're consuming, whether it's online or not.

The point I'm trying to make here is that even though a declaration on election integrity online has been a positive step and has been updated and social media platforms at least have expressed a commitment to protecting our elections, perhaps we can go a lot further and a lot deeper on that work. I'd be happy to get into a constructive debate on how we move forward in relation to foreign election interference by tackling the challenges that come naturally with online platforms having so much power in our democracy today.

This goes right back to the 2018 report, which was done by the ethics committee. I note that Mr. Fergus served for quite some time on the ethics committee, and I know it's done great work. I notice that Mr. Fergus participated in some way in that report, even though I don't think he was on the ethics committee at the time.

I've looked at the report. I haven't had the time to read all 100-and-whatever pages, but I look forward to reading it. I read the government response. The government response is very substantive. The recommendations coming out of that report really dig into online disinformation. Even the title of the report is all about looking at how our whole democracy is shifting, with online platforms disseminating so much information that people consume and having more power over the Canadian public because of where people are getting their information.

To me, it highlights the importance of this area. We could be digging into that, and I would invite that. Out of this study, we could have some very serious conversations about how to move forward, and I would be really happy to deliberate on that with my opposition colleagues and talk that through with the very substantive reports that we have. We can use them as background information to make some determinations as to what we can do.

In budget 2022 in particular, our government made additional commitments. Again, this showcases a track record of progress. Our government, after 2021, didn't just rest on its laurels and say it couldn't do more or become passive in this regard in any way. We made additional commitments and rolled out new supports and measures to tackle foreign election interference. I have mentioned some of these before, but I'll quickly condense them into a very short summary here.

We committed to expanding the rapid response mechanism and offering more resources to it. When I think about G7 countries all tackling the very same issues in terms of threats to their democracy, I really think that they're going through the same things. The more we share information and collaborate and the more we strengthen our early warning systems for foreign election interference by working with our G7 partners, the better. I am sure everyone here agrees that this is a positive step. First of all, our government setting up the rapid response mechanism in 2018 was a good thing. I am sure everyone agrees that collaborating with G7 partners on identifying foreign actors and their strategies to intervene in or interrupt our elections in any way is a good thing. I'm sure everyone agrees that adding more resources and expanding that initiative is also positive. I'm sure everyone would agree with that.

I would also note that we enhanced cybersecurity activities to protect against disinformation. That's also a positive step moving forward.

We funded more research to support public institutions to continue to look at foreign election interference and understand how they can protect themselves.

We also added resources to the Privy Council Office to coordinate, develop and implement government-wide measures. That, to me, is really positive. The Privy Council plays a key role in all of this. We heard today from Minister LeBlanc, and we've noted it before in terms of the public protocol and how important the Privy Council Office is in coordinating, developing and implementing government-wide measures.

I also mentioned the 2023 independent assessment. Again, the Rosenberg report has 16 recommendations. I'm sure all the members of this committee have read those recommendations and are considering them. When I asked Minister LeBlanc today when he was here, he was very clear about saying yes, we will be implementing what is recommended in the Rosenberg report. Obviously there's a process there to look at what's been recommended. Perhaps the government will say, “Well, on one or two we may take a slightly different path”, but the point is that many...and it is the same with the Judd report. Many of the recommendations were implemented.

Again, it shows a very clearly laid out track record of concern for Canadian democracy, for progress, for taking tangible, important steps forward in ensuring that we're protecting and doing our utmost to protect Canadian democracy.

Lastly, for this timeline overview that I'm giving, we have the Prime Minister's announcement, which we've all heard about by now. I'm sure many of the members took note of the more important and sizable next steps that the Prime Minister outlined.

He had a conversation with NSICOP's chair, our good colleague, David McGuinty, who I think is a fantastic chair and a really great parliamentarian. I've benefited from many conversations with him since I got here in 2019, and I really think he's doing a great job. I know he takes his role on that committee very seriously. I trust that he's doing his utmost to recommend and implement strategies and measures that will help protect Canadian democracy from foreign interference.

I note that the Prime Minister, in his remarks, asked the chair of NSICOP and the head of NSIRA to start work on foreign election interference, and I think that's a really good thing. I think that work is starting very soon.

We also note that there's an appointment that will come soon, in the coming weeks. I think it was pretty clear in the remarks that the Prime Minister made that an independent special rapporteur will be appointed to assess the situation and make recommendations on protecting and enhancing Canadians' faith in our democracy. That special rapporteur will independently look at what we need to do, assess all of the allegations that have been made and the information that's out there that Canadians are concerned about right now, and identify gaps in our systems and our mechanisms that have been set up by our government. I trust that will be a non-partisan, impartial process that will give us that outside perspective that's not coloured by any partisan politics and will offer really good, thoughtful, fact-based suggestions on how to move forward. Whether a public inquiry is a recommendation or not, we'll have to see. I think, again, based on the testimony that we heard, that there are a lot of people who don't agree that a public inquiry is the best way forward, and I take them very seriously.

I know that my colleague Mr. Gerretsen, when he was here earlier today, spoke to the fact that the previous campaign director for the Conservative Party in the last election, Mr. DeLorey, said that he didn't think that a public inquiry was the best way forward, and I have his remarks here.

He said, “A public inquiry is not the best way to address the issue of election interference. No meaningful solutions will come from it.”

I feel like I should read that again. I'm not sure anyone's listening. He said, “A public inquiry is not the best way to address the issue of election interference. No meaningful solutions will come from it.” He then said, “A multi-partisan committee, working with security officials, is a better way to identify and address the problems and find lasting solutions to protect our elections for the future.”

For me, this corroborates what we heard from security and intelligence professionals like Jody Thomas and David Morrison, who pointed to the fact that these highly sensitive documents and information that would need to be reviewed need expertise to be interpreted, because they come with so many caveats, are only part of a picture and are sometimes misleading. We require trained professionals.

Also, there are some significant risks to Canada's national security and the individuals who make up that community. Let's not forget that the national security community is made up of real people who are doing work on behalf of Canadians as well. We can't hang them out to dry because the Conservatives think we should be exposing all of the intelligence that the national security community has.

If Fred DeLorey agrees with security and intelligence professionals, perhaps the Conservatives could consider that even one of their own—not just anybody, but their previous national campaign manager—is agreeing with the national security and intelligence professionals, all of whom seem to be saying the same thing, which is that you're not going to get what you want out of a public inquiry.

We all agree, and I think everyone agrees, that this issue is important to the public. They need to be aware that it's an issue. They need to be aware of what the government is doing. They need to be more aware on an everyday basis to know what to watch out for. That's why there is that initiative around raising online awareness—the public campaign that I talked about—for Canadians who are reading and consuming information online. How many of us are consuming information online every day?

My daughter did something the other week. She said, “Daddy, you spend a lot of time on social media.” I said, ”No, I don't”. I was in denial about it. She's a smart kid. She's 11 years old. She pulled out my phone and went into the screen time portion of it. I had spent 11 hours of screen time in one day on my phone. It wasn't all on social media, but can you imagine?

How much information are we consuming online on a daily basis? I've seen evidence to suggest that Canadians, on average, are spending over an hour on social media alone. It really is important to consider how online information consumption is impacting the public and how important it is to make people aware of what they're looking at, to improve digital literacy and raise awareness around what foreign election interference looks like for the Canadian public when it's done online.

What the Rosenberg report shows is that the main examples of things that qualified as attempts at interference coming from foreign state actors were disinformation campaigns online. It highlights the importance of how this is shifting Canada's democracy and shifting that overall threat environment that we need to take seriously, and we are. Nobody can doubt that we are. You can, if you want to ignore all the facts, but I would suggest that if you do some reading and look at the lived reality, you would be able to have a good, thorough debate and discussion based on the information that we have at our fingertips.

The Prime Minister's remarks also included a number of other tangible next steps. One was that the Minister of Public Safety will launch the consultation on a new foreign influence transparency registry in Canada. This is something that every party has said might be a really good thing to do. Australia and some other countries have done it, and the United States has too, if I'm not mistaken.

If our government is starting to move forward on a consultation process, this is another substantive step that shows we are taking this seriously and that we really want to keep up with the threats to our democracy and ensure that we are protecting Canadians and our democratic institutions as well as we can.

Also, the Minister of Public Safety was tasked with immediately establishing a national coordinator position for countering foreign interference. This is another important step. I already mentioned the importance of the Privy Council Office in terms of coordination across government, but having a foreign interference coordinator in Public Safety is also an extremely positive next step, because we know that every government institution, every ministry, every part of government needs to be protected from foreign interference. It's not just our elections. What we've heard from the Rosenberg report is that a lot of the public protocol focuses just on the writ period and that we should be extending our focus outside of the writ period into the pre-writ period. In a minority Parliament, what is pre-writ? It's all the time. It's the whole time. An election looms at every moment.

Taking the report and the independent assessment that Rosenberg has done seriously, in my opinion, the Prime Minister has quite rightly tasked the Minister of Public Safety with establishing a coordinator position on foreign interference as another positive next step forward.

Last, in terms of this timeline, the other really big tangible step forward that the Prime Minister made was to task Minister LeBlanc and the Clerk of the Privy Council with reviewing all of the reports that have been done on this topic. NSICOP is one. The Rosenberg report is another, but any other reports that have been done should be reviewed. The way it was phrased in the Prime Minister's remarks was that there should really be a comprehensive review of recommendations and within 30 days an implementation plan should be in place.

That is responsible. It's a very compressed timeline for the number of recommendations that are in those reports. It starts to move from basic recommendations to how we are going to actually implement these things. That is important.

I did strategic planning for a living for quite a number of years, and that's how I would approach it. I would identify recommendations and a strategic plan and then quickly develop implementation plans and then divide those up into implementation plans or action plans for each of the ministries and then have ministers who are accountable for those take them on, with timelines attached to them.

To me, that's how you get things done. You don't just wave a wand and say, “Oh, we're going to make this happen.” You actually have to do a comprehensive review of all of the recommendations that are in those reports, pull them all together, and then decide and deliberate on which ones make sense and which ones may not, because there's always an opportunity to decide what the best way forward is.

A good role for our committee to play that would be really constructive would be to look at all of the reports and recommendations ourselves and then be recommend things out of our study and our work that Minister LeBlanc and the Clerk of the Privy Council could consider. That would be a great contribution to the next steps that Minister LeBlanc has been tasked with developing in the next 30 days. That would be a really positive next step.

I would wrap up here by saying that I've established a timeline of progress and tangible steps that have been taken on foreign election interference. It's clearly laid out in the Rosenberg report, so no one can say they don't have this information. We all have the information that I've gathered. I've taken the time to do that. I would invite other members to look at the facts, the timelines and the information.

If members would like, I'd be happy to send them an overview of what I've worked on here, to make sure that they feel they have the information at their fingertips. We can make sure that in the future, we all start our conversation from the point of view of facts, evidence, living in reality and looking at the information and the progress that's been made, which has been substantive. I don't think there's any questioning of that.

That's it for me, Madam Chair. I really appreciate the time and the attention of my colleagues.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to begin our discussions this afternoon.

I must express my deep disappointment with the way we ended our last meeting three hours and twenty minutes ago. Mr. Cooper's comments were not befitting a parliamentary statement or the man I know. I offer him the opportunity to interrupt me at any time on a point of order to apologize to Minister Joly for his intemperate comments. I think it is important to do that. It's been over three hours since he made those comments, and I still haven't seen an apology on social media.

Let's get back to this amendment proposed by my colleague Mr. Turnbull. One of the reasons why it is important to focus on the individuals on the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force and invite the participants that my colleague is proposing is that this is a very important institution that was set up to combat foreign interference. In addition, members of all recognized political parties in the House of Commons can become members. All parties except the Bloc Québécois have taken advantage of this.

Not only did these parties have access to secret information related to foreign interference, but they also had the opportunity to speak with experts and the other members of this task force to ask questions, to bring forward their concerns, to pass on information that they or their candidates heard, and then to compare that with the information provided to the task force by the national security experts. That is very important and very helpful.

This is part of a long record of actions taken by our government after the 2015 election. We took these steps because it was clear long before that that state and non-state actors were trying to interfere with our elections and our democratic institutions. It is unfortunate that the former Conservative government did not take steps to reassure and protect Canadians from this.

The Harper government's former minister of democratic institutions offered an explanation this week. He said he didn't take action because the supposed government of China wasn't taking a stand for his party and therefore it wasn't in his party's interest to take action. This is ridiculous.

Not only did we create the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force, but we also created the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. This is important because unlike all of our allies with whom we share security intelligence, especially those who are in the Five Eyes alliance with us, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, we were the only country that did not have a group of parliamentarians to review, question and receive information on the activities of our intelligence and security services.

Early in its tenure, our government created this very useful committee. I did not have the privilege of being a member of it, but I know that several people around the table had that privilege in previous Parliaments. From what I could gather without people divulging information, it was an interesting experience, to say the least. I imagine there were a number of issues that were discussed. Canada is facing real risks. We need to take action and our government has done that.

In 2018, we also introduced the critical election incident public protocol and launched the G7 rapid response mechanism.

In addition, two very important bills to counter the effects of foreign interference were introduced and passed. These were Bill C‑59, which became the National Security Act, 2017, and Bill C‑76, which became the Elections Modernization Act. And to complete all that, we created and supported the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.

All of these institutions and tools are designed to protect Canadians and their freedom from foreign interference. That is so important. That is why my colleague Mr. Turnbull's amendment is so important. It would give us a chance to bring forward the people who know what happened in the 2019 and 2021 elections.

When people come here, they won't be able to disclose secret information. That makes sense. However, they will give us as much information as they can, as will the people who came before the committee last Wednesday and Thursday. We had a chance to ask questions of excellent officials from the Communications Security Establishment and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, deputy ministers from Global Affairs Canada, people responsible for public safety, and the national security and intelligence advisor to the Prime Minister, Ms. Thomas.

These are dedicated experts whose sole purpose is to ensure our protection, and they find every way to do so. What was their conclusion? They acknowledged that information had been leaked in the newspapers, but they said that this information was not intelligence and did not paint a complete picture of the situation. They were careful to explain to us that while incidents may be reported, an incident does not necessarily represent the truth.

They said we need to put this in context first. Last week, I reminded people that text without context is just pretext. That means you have to look at the big picture. The so‑called findings that are published by some journalists do not present the big picture that would allow us to determine whether the findings are legitimate or not.

I can imagine my colleagues asking me why I don't want the chance to look at this information to get the full picture. This suggestion raises a couple of weaknesses or problems.

First, to get the full picture, you have to rely on national security information, which by its nature cannot be discussed in public. Second, I don't have that security clearance and I don't think most people around the table do either. However, the good news is that there is a committee whose members have that security clearance, and that is the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. These parliamentarians, our peers, our counterparts, have the security clearance to access this information. So why not entrust them with this study so they can have all the information?

Some will ask how Canadians can trust this work since it is not public. This is assuming that the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians does not publish reports. That is not true, because it does so regularly. I had the opportunity to read one of its reports. I have not read them all, but I have read at least one report in its entirety. I learned some things. That report painted a pretty important, comprehensive enough picture of the situation to allow me to draw conclusions.

We, as members of Parliament, need to have confidence in our sisters and brothers who serve on this committee. These people deserve our trust. They have undergone a very serious background review to ensure that they deserve the highest possible security clearance. I have confidence in them. That committee is the right place to have those kinds of discussions.

I said that my colleagues might ask me why we would not investigate ourselves here in the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. The first answer is that we don't have the security clearance.

Secondly, and I say this with great sadness, I don't think Canadians who watch our deliberations in committee or in oral question period see the best of us. They see that we are too partisan, that we ask questions that we don't want answered, that we ask questions without giving others time to answer, and that when we get an answer, we don't accept it and we talk about something else. That's a shame. We are capable of doing better, but at this point I am not convinced.

I'm going to digress for a moment, if I may. Last night my goddaughter visited me with her brother and her parents. I took them to the House of Commons after the parliamentary session, and we chatted. They are 14 years old. They talked about oral question period yesterday. They were not impressed with the attitude of some members of Parliament, who were not up to the task. It's sad.

My goddaughter, whom I love dearly, knows the difference between the various political parties, but the vast majority of Canadians do not distinguish between Conservatives, Liberals, Bloc, NDP and Green Party members. To them, we are just politicians, and they see politicians that are not up to the job. So how can they trust us when we can't even ask a question and let people answer without braying like donkeys? That is what I had to say.

The third reason is that we have allies who share information with us. This is a very serious matter and it is important that there be a parliamentary committee to oversee these issues. However, none of the other parliaments, whether in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand or the U.S., conduct public inquiries using top secret documents; they leave that to specialized committees. That's the main reason I think this committee is not the right place to get to the bottom of this, which I assume is the goal of everyone around the table.

For these three reasons, I think this is the wrong place. Everyone says they are taking into account these leaks, which are not confirmed or corroborated by the experts and officials who have appeared here. This information, if it is legitimate, is by definition partial, incomplete. Witnesses have even denied some of the things revealed by these so‑called leaks.

I remember the first day of our debate, during which my colleague from St. Albert—Edmonton said that one could not question the credibility of the journalists who published this information. I agree with him. I'm going to assume that these people are acting in good faith. They are professionals, journalists. They are going to reveal information that was presented to them.

However, I started reading the report issued by the distinguished Justice Dennis O'Connor on the events surrounding the Maher Arar case. What is the conclusion of this report? The so‑called information leaks were not information leaks.

The judge was very tough on some people, some of them bad apples at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Communications Security Establishment, and on journalists who didn't take the time to verify their information, young journalists at the time, like Bob Fife.

I think it is important to remember this, because a great injustice was perpetrated against Mr. Arar. Not only did it destroy him physically, because he was tortured for a year, but we were complicit in it. Maher Arar claimed to be innocent and Judge O'Connor concluded that he was.

Not only do I have the great privilege of serving on the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, but I also have the privilege of serving on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. We will be talking about foreign interference there tomorrow, but we will approach it from a different perspective: We will look at its effect on diasporas in Canada.

I am not an admirer of everything the government of the day in Beijing does, but we have to be very careful about pointing fingers at China. Reputations are being destroyed with information that officials in our institutions responsible for the safety of Canadians say is not true. These officials have seen the big picture and have received information from both our allies and their employees, agents, Canadians who, in some cases, put their lives on the line to provide us with this information. All have come to the conclusion that what we are reading is not true.

Sometimes you have to trust the experts. If we only want to play partisan games, there are advantages to talking about these things as if they were the Good News, the kind found in sacred texts.

These claims are not entirely true according to the experts. I find it very frustrating that every time this is discussed, these claims are talked about as solid, truthful information, when they are far from it. The experts have told us that this is not the case, but the temptation to play political games is too great. The temptation to manipulate news and rumours to try to find political advantage is great.

We have to rely on what we have the capacity to do at this committee, and we have to do it while respecting the rights and privileges of others. One does not want to unnecessarily damage the reputation of others without justification.

I have colleagues of Chinese descent, who were either born in China and came to Canada when they were very young, or who have parents, grandparents or great-grandparents who were born in China. It's very hurtful for them when, on social media, people lose it and say anything.

Some of them have already received often hateful, sometimes threatening messages. This does not only affect the Chinese Canadian community, but almost all Canadians of Asian origin or with Asian ancestry. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to confuse people. I hope my colleagues do not do this, but some Canadians do not hesitate to do it. That's when we realize that there are consequences to what we are doing.

We have to be very careful and use words very carefully. We should not assume that everything leaked to the media is true, especially not when we ask questions of those responsible for national security and those people tell us that the information is not true. With the big picture, these officials were able to see that this information didn't hold up and that it didn't paint an accurate picture of the situation.

I remember the early days. In the newspapers, it was claimed that Canadian Security Intelligence Service officials had told the Prime Minister that electoral candidates had to be withdrawn because they were under foreign influence. However, experts said that this did not make sense and that the service did not do such things. Two days later, the reporters changed the story and said that part of their report was not true. Yet the damage was done and everyone believed the worst, when it wasn't true in the first place.

This really does sound like what Justice O'Connor had called a real injustice. You have to be extremely careful before you come to these hasty conclusions, and that's why we have intelligence agencies that cross-check all the information.

I recall Mr. David Vigneault, Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, saying that news reports were not intelligence sources. The Service has to put this in a broader context. They often receive information, but they have to be patient and put it all together before they draw conclusions, because they can't present the Prime Minister with partial or incomplete information. As much as possible, they must give him justifiable information. It is because of the vast experience of the service's staff that it has this ability.

It is really important to remember the wrongs done in the past. Justice O'Connor's report is lengthy, but it is important to read it. I don't want to say that it makes you feel uncomfortable, because it's more about wisdom, the wisdom of asking yourself if the information you have in front of you is complete enough to draw conclusions. That's very important. My mother always told me that you have two ears and one mouth, so you should listen more than you should talk.

I think it's the same with the information we're reading. We need to try to get a more complete picture. If we're not able to access that information, we have to trust those who are charged with doing that work. We had all the best sources in front of us. We had access to these people to ask them questions, and I think they answered them very frankly. Without giving away any secret details, they gave us a bigger picture of how they came to their conclusions. They determined that the information that was reported in the newspapers was very incomplete, and that the conclusions that many of them had reached were not correct, but wrong. That's one of the reasons I don't want this committee to get it wrong.

I am proud of our record on intelligence and national security issues. As I said, several important new tools have been made available to the government to combat foreign interference. They are not necessarily complete, but they are always being reassessed to see if there are new ones that could be put in place to protect Canadians, which is very important.

Before I conclude, I would like to say this: It is 5:23 p.m., and it has now been four hours since my colleague made disparaging remarks about the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He did not take advantage of my offer: He could interrupt me at any time on a point of order to apologize. It is disappointing that he has not done so to date.

I hope my colleagues will at least acknowledge that they have all these important and appropriate tools to get to the bottom of this and access all the information. It would be much more appropriate for them to use these tools to educate themselves. When they investigate foreign interference, they will come to the same conclusion as our experts, the men and women charged with protecting us.

I will stop here and hope that people will be convinced of the wisdom of my words. I also hope that my colleague will use this break to burnish his image, do the right thing, and apologize.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Democratic Institutions

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind my colleague that, like him and all members, we take foreign interference very seriously, including as it relates to potential foreign interference through funding.

That is why the government put into place Bill C-76 to crack down on that threat. In addition to that, we set up two independent panels made up of our top public servants who verified that the elections in 2019 and 2021 were free and fair.

Now we will continue to work with public servants as well as with the independent expert in the special rapporteur to do this work together.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Okay, it was Monday, and he was 45 minutes late. Now I remember. We have to do something about that.

On Monday, at one point in his press conference, the Prime Minister said that the institution needs to outlast every single member of Parliament. That needs to be the focus of everything we do when it comes to analyzing, assessing and making recommendations about how to protect our democracy.

We have to remember that the institution absolutely must outlast every single one of us, so when we play politics—as Mr. DeLorey, the campaign manager for the Conservatives, is suggesting the opposition party is doing—and when we spend so much time going down that road, quite frankly, in my opinion, we're not doing that service. We're not doing everything we can to ensure that our democracy will outlast every member of Parliament.

I like to think that everybody here agrees with that. I would never cast aspersions otherwise and suggest they don't. I don't think it's in our best interest to be having these heated exchanges to try to score political points. It's much more incumbent upon us to find solutions and to work together.

This brings me to why I support Mr. Turnbull's amendment, as opposed to the motion. We're respecting the domain in which the conversation can be had. We can have a conversation in this room about public information and what was known to the public.

Mr. Cooper and others from the Conservatives are hell-bent on trying to drag staff before this committee, but even if those staffers, whomever they are, have various levels of clearance and are able to discuss information, they will not be able to say anything more than what we heard from Jody Thomas, which was it's important that we respect the fact that different pieces of information have to be treated differently, and we can't have open conversations in a forum like this about classified information. Her main concern when she came before this committee was about having similar open conversations in a public inquiry.

When we talk about ensuring there is an opportunity to have these conversations, I think what we should be having in this room are conversations that have more to do with the public aspect of this. What did those campaign managers experience? Those conversations are the ones we need to have in this room.

I would like to hear from Mr. DeLorey. I'd like to hear from the campaign managers of all political parties about what they experienced. That's public information. To Ms. Blaney's point, if we want to try to strengthen our institutions, we can get real recommendations from these individuals, which we can then relay back through a report to the House and to the government on how they can make changes. I think that is what we can do in this venue. We can't drag staff before this venue, even if they are in a position to answer the questions, and ask them to answer questions that Ms. Thomas has said are outside the scope of what can be discussed in a committee like this and in a public forum like this.

I want to find ways that we can further strengthen the institution. I want to hear from Mr. DeLorey. I want to hear from the campaign managers of all the political parties so they can make recommendations to us.

I also think this was very interesting. Ms. Thomas made a point, and this is what I wanted to address after what I heard Ms. Blaney speak about a few moments ago. These were Ms. Thomas's words; I wrote them down. She said that intel often doesn't convert into evidence. I think that's very important.

We heard from Mr. Morrison, the deputy minister of foreign affairs, a couple of weeks ago as well. I'll get into what he said about this. He specifically went on about it. He was trying, in any way he could, to caution the committee about going down this road and being careful about information that is received. He made very clear the difference between intel and evidence. More importantly, all of them made very clear how you get from intel to evidence and how you get from intel to arresting somebody for doing something.

I want to read to you what Mr. Morrison said in committee. I think this is very important and that it has been glossed over by the committee. He said:

...I will not be commenting on any individual media reports, but I wish to acknowledge—as members of the committee are well aware—that there is an active debate going on right now about how reputable media organizations could be reporting that highly classified intelligence documents describe how a foreign power did this or that to influence the most recent Canadian elections, including by engaging in patently illegal activity, such as funnelling money to candidates. How could that be going on while, at the same time, others, including me, maintain there was no foreign interference detected in 2019 or 2021 that threatened Canada's ability to have a free and fair election nationally or at the level of individual ridings? How can these two sides of this ongoing debate be reconciled?

I believe much of the answer lies in the questions recently addressed on social media by professor Stephanie Carvin of Carleton University. These same questions form the crux of a recent interview given by former clerk of the Privy Council Ian Shugart, who, as you know, was a member of this panel in 2019.

This is where it really gets interesting. He said:

The key questions are these: What is intelligence, and how is it used? Without repeating all the points made by Dr. Carvin and Mr. Shugart, let me simply say that intelligence rarely paints a full, concrete or actionable picture. Intelligence almost always comes heavily caveated and qualified in ways designed to caution consumers such as me from jumping to conclusions, while at the same time helping us at least to gain a little more awareness.

An example would be a report based on “an uncorroborated source of unknown reliability”. In layman's terms, I would call this a report based on rumour.

Those were Mr. Morrison's words, and I found them really interesting because, during my opportunity to question him at that meeting, I specifically asked him about his thoughts on that. I remember painting an example. I said that he might have various reports based on “intel”—for what that's worth—come across his desk. Then he assesses that intel and makes the decision on what to move forward, what not to move forward, what to act on and what the proper course of action on each piece of intel is. He said to us that some pieces of intel end right there.

To Ms. Blaney's point earlier in the debate when she was talking about intel, I think it's really important to remember that, first of all, not all intel is real, not all intel is true, not all intel converts into evidence and not all intel even goes anywhere beyond a report about intel. As he said, there are many caveats. You have to look at the source. You have to look at the context in which it's being said. You have to look at the reliability of the information, and then they make decisions and move them on.

One thing we also heard them say repeatedly.... The RCMP said this when they were here at the same meeting: It has no active investigations going on right now. I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to read between the lines that intel comes in, decisions are made with respect to that intel and then action is taken. We heard that no action was being taken. To me that says that any intel that may have been picked up through a leak by Global or somewhere else was not actionable. I'm making those assumptions because they can't even confirm or deny any of that, but I'm at least able to read between the lines.

From my position, this doesn't in any way suggest that Canadians shouldn't be concerned. That's not the case at all. I think Canadians should be concerned. A certain part of me is glad to see that we are having these conversations—although not necessarily that we're running around in circles—and, more importantly, that Canadians are having these conversations on this very important issue. That says to me that Canadians are aware of this, they're paying attention to it and they care about it. I think that's very important.

What I'm looking to get out of this is how we ensure that Canadians are getting what they want and what they need. How do we ensure that they get information in a public forum, that they get feedback and that they get the confidence they need while still respecting the classification and highly sensitive nature of the work that CSIS and the other agencies do? That's where the line gets drawn. All members are concerned about foreign interference. I think the line is between those who want to actually do something about it and those who want to use it for political opportunity.

I genuinely feel as though the NDP and the Bloc want to use this opportunity to do what's best, so I'm not against the idea of having the public weigh in and making sure the public is aware of what's going on. I just don't think a public inquiry into a Global News article is the right way to do it. I think the right way to do this is by putting the information in the hands of those who are tasked to do it.

To that end, I'll go back to Minister LeBlanc's comment, which I referenced earlier. He said that we've done a number of things, and indeed we have. I think it's important to reflect upon them in the context of this discussion.

The first is that we established the National Security Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP. This is a committee of parliamentarians—Liberals, Conservatives, Bloc and NDP—and some senators who have the opportunity to review information that has come forward, review all intelligence and work hand in hand with CSIS and NSIRA to get to the bottom of this and get questions answered. They do have to do this in a manner that respects the confidentiality of the information.

The unfortunate part about it is that it has to be done in a way that respects the classification of the information, but NSICOP does report to Parliament. I'm sure my colleagues sitting around the table have taken the opportunity to read all of the NSICOP reports that have come forward from the committee and made sure that they're fully aware of everything that's contained within them, because there's a lot of good information. Just because NSICOP has to evaluate information behind closed doors does not mean that it cannot make recommendations. It does not mean that it cannot report to Parliament and provide insight into what it has come to conclusions on. NSICOP does do that.

To suggest that NSICOP is not the right venue because the information just goes into a black hole that nobody ever gets to see isn't true. What happens is NSICOP and its members—in particular the parliamentarians and senators who sit on that committee—will review the information. They get to ask questions of those who gathered the information. They get to dive deep into it. Mrs. Romanado mentioned that Mr. Ruff is one of the members on that committee. I believe Mr. Motz, a Conservative, is too—or at least he was previously.

These are individuals who had the opportunity to put their eyes on this information and then, working with the committee, make recommendations back to Parliament. They've done that and have reported to Parliament already based on what they have been able to gather through that intelligence-gathering exercise.

That's a perfect venue for this information to be analyzed. That's why Mr. Fred DeLorey, the Conservative campaign manager from 2021, agrees with that assessment. He agrees with the fact that that's the best place to assess the information. I'm inclined to support him on that. I never thought that I would have such a close alignment on what we should do with the Conservative campaign manager, but I do. That's the one thing we established.

I will remind members of this committee that NSICOP, which was created by the government and which Stephen Harper, the former prime minister, was not interested in, is unfortunately a committee that the Conservatives have a history of playing politics with. Look back to the previous leader, the member for Durham, who by all accounts looks like a centrist now. What did he do? He pulled his members from that committee out of defiance, in order to somehow suggest that they were not going to keep their membership on that committee because it doesn't serve Canadians.

Conservatives have a history of playing politics with NSICOP, and unfortunately we're seeing that again. As I indicated in a previous intervention, maybe a week ago, it's unfortunate, but Conservatives seem most interested through this exercise in just ensuring that they have sound bites and opportunities to continually bring up this issue through a public inquiry. In my opinion, they're more interested in the politics of it than in genuinely coming to any kind of solution. That's why I find it very troubling that they would treat this committee in such a partisan way.

The other thing this government did, which I think is really important to point out, and this was in time for the 2019 election, was to establish a group of independent experts who would review in real time and have the authority to respond in real time to foreign interference that was occurring during a writ period. I think this is very important, despite the fact that Mr. Cooper, when the witnesses of the panel were before this committee, was berating them at length and treating them as though they had done something that in my opinion they hadn't. I think we're very lucky to have a group of experts in the field of foreign interference who include bureaucrats, top civil servants, who by nature of their employment are non-partisan and whose interest is in ensuring that our democracy remains free, fair and transparent during election periods. It always makes me worried about foreign interference specifically in an election period, because the policy-makers, the members of Parliament, are busy in the election campaign, working on connecting with constituents in their ridings, running around doing the incredibly time-consuming work and, by default, they don't have the ability to also be monitoring this stuff very closely.

Knowing that we have this panel monitoring this in the background, a panel that Mr. DeLorey and other campaign managers could funnel what they're seeing on the ground back to and reply if necessary, knowing that this is going on, I think, is something that all members of Parliament should take great pride in, namely, that we have individuals who are trying to safeguard our elections while the elections are ongoing. Having that panel in place, something that this government brought in, is extremely important.

What's more important is that after the election is over, a third party works with the panel and provides a report. That won't stop Mr. Poilievre from making comments, as he recently did, that the only thing we did was hire somebody to write a report and, at the same time, making disparaging comments with regard to these dedicated public servants who have worked for decades, suggesting they're somehow corrupt or politically motivated. It doesn't stop him from attacking them, but the reality is that we do have individuals who care deeply about our democracy and through their work and through the work that's being reported back, we were able to learn that no interference occurred that jeopardized our election and that our election and its results were free and open and occurred properly.

It's incumbent upon us to reflect on the fact that they do incredible work and that we're obligated to ensure that we give them the supports they need moving forward. Rather than dragging in and trying to dig up dirt and making more unsubstantiated claims, why aren't we focusing on that? Why aren't we focusing on talking to the panel and asking what we can recommend to the government to allow them to do a better job? That, in my opinion, is what our job as policy-makers is.

I talked about NSICOP and about the special panel that was set up for the writ period, but we even did something before that, and that was Bill C-76. Even before any of that, we brought in Bill C-76. One of the things that Bill C-76 did right off the bat was to make it easier for individuals to vote. This was in response to the minister at the time, who happens to be the Leader of the Opposition now, who, when he was the minister of democratic institutions, brought in legislation that made it more difficult for Canadian citizens to vote. When you try to limit the ability of people to participate in democracy, I think Canadians should be taking great notice of that as well. I think many of them did, and perhaps that contributed to why the Conservative Party lost the trust of Canadians and Mr. Harper wasn't re-elected.

However, the reality is that Bill C-76 did more than just undo some of what Mr. Poilievre did through his legislation when he was democratic institutions minister. Bill C-76 also tightened up rules around financing and, in particular, foreign interference and foreign financing, to make sure that we could limit that to the best of our ability, because we don't want individuals funding our elections who are not from within this country. What I find really interesting about Bill C-76 is that the Conservatives voted against it in 2018, despite the fact that they sit at the table, throw their arms up in the air and raise all hell about foreign funding in elections. We had a bill, parts of which made it more difficult for foreign actors to participate in the funding of our elections, and the Conservatives voted against it, yet they sit here today from a place of all high and mighty suggesting that they are the authority when it comes to looking out for democracy.

It really goes back to my point, and Mr. DeLorey's point too, about how Conservatives are just using this as political theatre. They're using the opportunity here just to try to ensure that, at all costs, they can do whatever they can to try to smear the government. They don't appear to care about what the genuine impact is on our democracy—at least not from my perspective.

Madam Chair, I talked about the three main things that we have done since we came to power: Bill C-76 with respect to foreign funding, NSICOP, and the expert panel we established for the writ period. These are three major things this government has done when it comes to combatting foreign interference.

I find it very rich, as I think I read from Mr. Poilievre's intervention a couple of days ago, that he says we haven't done anything. That's simply not the case. We've done more than what I've just indicated, and we're proposing to do even more, because there is a legitimate concern out there right now, whether it's fuelled by Conservative rhetoric or by unsubstantiated reports or by Global News articles based on what could be just rumours. As a witness before this committee said, there is genuine concern out there. As Canadians, if there's anything to be concerned about, we should obviously take concern.

I'm actually really happy in some regards about the Conservatives, who have finally come on board and said, “Hey, maybe we want to have something to say about foreign interference too, because we voted against Bill C-76, we stripped our committee members from NSICOP and haven't really shown an interest in this”—and now they do. That's great. They're here. They're here at the table, better late than never, and it's great to see Conservatives interested in foreign interference.

The question is, how do we make it better? How do we change the processes we have in place, because we always have to be changing, as the threats are always going to change? Is a public inquiry the best way to do it? Are we going to get out of the public inquiry anything of substance, according to Mr. DeLorey? No. According to all the experts who came before this committee, we won't. But what we can do is work with NSICOP and with the legislation that's already in place. We can identify where we can improve it.

One thing I forgot to mention about the public inquiry, and I think Mr. DeLorey said this himself.... Gosh, I never imagined that I would say the name of a Conservative campaign manager so many times in this speech, but here we are. He hit all the points and hit the nail right on the head. The other issue that I heard him bring up, and I've heard others bring it up, is with respect to the time a public inquiry would take. If there were to be a public inquiry—which Ms. Blaney seems to be in favour of—the average public inquiry takes two to four years. What are we going to get in terms of recommendations? Will it even report before the next election, if the NDP stays true to its word on working with this government? I guess if we're on the short end of those two years, we would get that just before the election, but if we are on the long end of that, it would be after the next election.

Notwithstanding that fact, Madam Chair, so much can happen between now and then. New threats come along and suddenly this public inquiry is almost out of date because it's not even addressing the threats of the day. There's the issue of time, which I think is something we need to be very concerned about.

These aren't my words; I didn't come up with that. I didn't go and research how long the average public inquiry takes and what the pros and cons are. I'm genuinely listening to the experts. As a matter of fact, if I'm being totally honest with you, Madam Chair, because I do like to do that, I'm going to come clean with you. It's time to do that. When the idea of a public inquiry first started floating around, there was a part of me that said, “Hey, why wouldn't we do this?” It kind of made sense. I really had an open mind about it. I thought it might be something that would put a lot of.... Why wouldn't you do that, if it's so easy and if it would provide Canadians the comfort they're looking for?

Then I started listening to the experts, and expert after expert—and top security advisers, NSICOP, the people who had been on the panel, the people who are tasked with holding this information and gathering this information—started to say, “No, no, you can't do this in a public forum because we can't give the information to the public as it would jeopardize our sources.” I started to think to myself that maybe that does make sense. It's never an easy position to take, because you want to be as open and transparent as possible, but the reality is that, according to what they were saying, you have to be careful with that information. Quite frankly, they even said.... I think Ms. Thomas said at this committee that she couldn't share any information with a public inquiry that she couldn't share with this committee, because this is an open forum. That makes sense. Then I started to change my mind. I thought that makes sense—it's obviously not going to be the most comforting thing for people to hear, but it does make sense.

Then I started to hear people like Mr. Fred DeLorey, the former campaign manager for the Conservatives, say exactly the same thing. I thought it kind of makes sense and I understand. I know it doesn't put Canadians' minds at ease with respect to what's going on with the entire situation, but it certainly does make a lot of sense. It made a lot of sense to me when I heard them talk about that. I very quickly came to agree with what the experts were saying.

I find it interesting that expert after expert will come before the committee and tell us that, yet there are members of the committee who are just so blatantly willing to disregard it, with all due respect to my NDP and Bloc colleagues, and just toss aside the information. You have people coming before you saying, “This is vitally critical information.” This is me reading between the lines. “If we share the information with the public, we can burn our sources; we can reveal our sources; we can jeopardize the integrity of being able to work with our allies.” Can you imagine if our allies knew that we would hold a public inquiry and just share all of the information? Our allies would say they are not sharing anything else with us ever again, and that kind of makes sense.

Ms. Blaney brought up the point when she was speaking earlier—and I heard her colleague Mr. Boulerice say this as well when we were on a panel together—that you can put some information in closed session, and some information in public, and you can operate it like that. The problem is that the vast majority of the information you need to hear, notwithstanding the fact that people don't have the proper security clearance to hear the information, would have to be held in such a manner. So what's the point of having a public inquiry if the majority of the information that's being shared and talked about in that inquiry is not accessible to the public? This is where it goes back to the comments from Mr. DeLorey and from the experts and from all of those before about why it's so important that the information be treated and used in the right venue.

I think it's very important for us to reflect on that, and I think it's also important for us to reflect on this concept of interference not being new. Perhaps the manner in which interference occurs now is changing; it's evolving. It has probably changed a lot in the last 20 or 30 years with the Internet and the ability to influence situations and influence public opinion. It's something that has certainly been talked about a lot more and in different venues, but it is not something that is brand new. Foreign interference is something that has been going on in one form or another for a long time, and governments have been seized with this for a long time, both Liberal and Conservative governments throughout our history.

The part of this that becomes very alarming is more specifically with respect to how we can allow it to happen in a way that perhaps is much more covert and therefore so much easier to hide. That's why we have put in place the mechanisms we have, the mechanisms of allowing the members of NSICOP to look at all of the intel so they can see it themselves in an unclassified manner and, for the first time ever, a panel that monitors in real time.

This is the point I was trying to make. With the advent of technology, we see the ability to interfere more quickly and in a much more covert manner. That's why we need rapid response mechanisms that are able to deal with this in real time. That's where the panel comes in, but the panel has to review the information. Quite often it's in a classified manner. Then the panel has to report back to the public after the election. That's what we see them do when they bring that information forward later on, and they can provide it to us in a manner that does not jeopardize the classification of the information that went into making it. It is important to reflect on the fact that foreign interference in some capacity or another is not something that is brand new.

I will now turn, Madam Speaker, to the last meeting we had, at which we did have the individuals who came forward to the committee—we had Foreign Affairs, and before that we had CSIS, and it started off with Elections Canada. I think it is important to reflect on the number of times Elections Canada has come to this committee. They are interested in working with us in an open and transparent way. That's a vehicle for us to give recommendations as to how we can make changes and how we should suggest changes. We need to be doing more of that.

To Mr. Turnbull's amendment here, what he's basically trying to do, in my opinion, is to say let's strip the politics out of this. Let's put aside the political rhetoric, let's have the individuals who were receiving the information, any who were on the ground in the last election and who would have been subject to receiving information from their candidates in terms of foreign interference, and let's hear what they have to say. It's actually a really good group to listen to, not to hear their partisan spins on everything but just to hear about what they were experiencing at the time. That's what Mr. Turnbull's motion is attempting to do, Madam Chair.

We know the Conservatives want to bring forward every staffer they think they can get a sound bite out of. They want to drag them before the end of this table and subject them to the same aggressive attack style that Mr. Cooper had with government officials. If he is willing to do that to non-partisan public servants, we can only imagine how he would treat an individual who came before the committee who actually worked in the office of a minister or of the Prime Minister.

We're not going to gather much intel and much information from them in order to make recommendations. We would be better off if we were to have information about what was going on in the last election on the ground. His amendment specifically says to invite the 2019 and 2021 national campaign directors of each recognized party in the House of Commons and the security-cleared party representatives to the security and national intelligence threats election task force during the 2019-21 federal elections. That would provide more insight for this committee if the objective of the committee really is to get down to understanding what was going on and how we can provide meaningful input into ensuring that there are substantial recommendations that we can make through a report back to Parliament and to the government on what they can do.

When we reflect on how we've gotten to this point, Madam Chair, I know I talked about NSICOP and the special panel and Bill C-76. We've also heard from a number of experts at this committee. We've heard from Global Affairs and CSIS, who came before the committee and provided us with as much information as they could. They confirmed that there were no active investigations going on, or at least the RCMP in the same panel did.

We also heard from the RCMP and CSIS in their panel, specifically that their job is to collect secrets and keep secrets. They are very interested in protecting their sources. I think it is very easy for us to point fingers and try to suggest that there's some kind of nefarious activity going on. I know that the opposition wants to try to suggest that the Prime Minister is covering something up. But the reality is that any information that has been relayed back to us, at this end of the table, by the experts who have come before has been that they have no information that suggests there was any foreign interference. That's what we heard Ms. Thomas and others say at this end of the table.

Madam Chair, I think I have made the majority of the points that I wanted to contribute to Mr. Turnbull's amendment. I think that he brings forward a good amendment in terms of trying to gather information that we can genuinely use and that can be useful to us in order to provide our recommendations.

I will perhaps end my discussion today where I began, and that is with respect to the manner in which I've been witnessing members of Parliament treat other members of Parliament and disparaging their character. Specifically, I reference Mr. Calkins' attack on Mr. Dong and the manner in which he treated him, the manner in which he attempted to stir political division—or to fundraise or to do whatever he was doing—by suggesting that a sitting member of Parliament is an agent of Beijing. I think it's extremely unfortunate.

I think Mr. Berthold can defend Mr. Poilievre's claims and what Mr. Poilievre said of the Prime Minister. I think he can do that. I think he can skate around and try to explain away what Mr. Poilievre said—which he already did in this committee—but I don't think he can explain away what Mr. Calkins said. I think it's extremely unfortunate when we go down that road of accusing other members of Parliament, basically, of treason, of working on behalf of another entity by calling them an agent of Beijing. They're saying that their loyalty is not to Canada, their loyalty is not to their constituents, but rather their loyalty is to a foreign country. And that's exactly what Mr. Calkins did.

I think it's extremely unfortunate that we would tolerate this. I think it's unfortunate that Mr. Calkins has not come forward and explained that, apologized for it, retracted it and deleted the video that he posted regarding that. I think it's extremely unfortunate that his colleagues who sit at this table don't try to, at the very least, say that it was wrong for him to have said that. I think that if they're genuinely in this, not for the political gain of this, they would do that, unless of course they felt the same way and therefore felt as though they didn't need to say that.

I really hope that when my Conservative colleagues contribute to the conversation today they could address that point. They could address why, according to the minutes of the agenda, Mr. Calkins' name doesn't appear to be on any of them since a number of meetings ago. Is that in order, Madam Chair? It's a printed document. His name wasn't on the document from the minutes, so I think that's in order.

I think it's very telling. I think the Conservatives are nervous about the fact that he said that. I don't think it's appropriate. They need to own up to it. It would be great if one Conservative colleague on that side of the table could actually do that. I think it's important for us to respect the fact that we are all honourable members. To suggest that somebody is working for another country, I think, is extremely unfortunate.

With that, Madam Chair, I've said my bit for now. I do have more to add, but I think for now that may be all I have to say. Were members expecting a little bit more? Is everybody good? Okay.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm very sorry about that. I hope I didn't cause the interpreters any discomfort or injury. That was never my intention. I got a little carried away, there. It's probably from sitting through the many hours of this committee and doing all this research. I apologize.

I keep coming back to this point: The truth really does matter in our democracy. What we've seen is, these misinformation campaigns have an impact. They are a real threat. We need to be evolving our approaches and strategies to combat them.

In this particular case—where we have Conservatives claiming things that are, quite frankly, not verifiable or corroborated by any evidence—we have to be very careful and cautious. We have to hone in on the key questions, here. Are these misinformation campaigns having an impact on Chinese Canadian voters' intentions, as has been claimed?

I think the answer in this report, again, is another corroborating piece of evidence, in addition to expert testimony. They came to the same conclusions through independent means. When you have multiple pursuits that are independent of political influence coming to the same conclusion, you have to go, “Okay, maybe those are approximating the truth pretty closely.”

That's the conclusion I'm drawing from all of this, which I think is quite rational. I pride myself on operating on the principle of sufficient reason, which is this test: If you say something that conflicts with my world view, argument or position on something, and I think it has merit—even if it has partial truth—I will take it into consideration. I will try to understand how I can benefit from that and change my perspective based on that. In this particular case, however, I feel as if opposition parties are just denying the facts. They're saying, “No, we're going to believe the allegations flying around and not look at the facts and information.” That's why I'm very animated about this, Madam Chair.

It's a shame that it's in my constituency week. It's not that I'm opposed to doing great work on behalf of Canadians in a constituency week. I would be doing that whether we were in this committee or not. It's just that I'm diving into extensive reports on this topic during a constituency week. I would rather—as Ms. Blaney said, the other day—be meeting with my constituents. I feel they are very important to meet with. I've had to cancel meetings for the day. All of that is fine. If opposition members would rather do this, then it's fine. I will continue to bring facts and information to this conversation. My arguments will be based on that.

I'm going to get back to this report. There are a few other findings, here, that I want to share. I think they're important ones.

Another key finding, on page 66 of this report, is that, “Canadian voters do not consider China to be a top electoral issue during the 44th Canadian election.” They did an analysis of all the federal election issues. China, or foreign affairs related to China, was not one of the top issues in the last election. Again, it's not me saying this. It's an independent report that surveyed all the different issues. I think it's interesting to conclude that. People are claiming things like, “This had an impact on the election”. We've had some extreme cases and claims made by Conservative members of Parliament and the leader of the official opposition related to this.

Other times, we've had more, I would say, benign claims that it's going on. Again, the argument is this. If independently verified groups have done work to say that China and foreign affairs related to China weren't a top election issue and we can also see that the relative response and engagement of the online misinformation campaigns that were state-sponsored had no verifiable impact at all on voter intentions or behaviour and were a very small slice of what was happening during the election, then why would anyone ever try to claim that somehow the overall election results were changed as a result of foreign interference, when we know that the vast majority of it was online? That, to me, goes to the heart of some of the arguments and perspectives that we've heard.

Another finding: “We see no evidence that China-related issues were consequential for the election, nor that the content circulated on social media had any influence on opinions at a national level.” That's another pretty telling conclusion, which I think speaks volumes to how disappointing it is that we're continuing to do this.

Finally, maybe I'll just quickly summarize some of the recommendations. I think there is some real importance to these, and there are only four. Bear with me for a few more minutes and I will wrap up by summarizing these conclusions.

One of them is to develop a community of practice focused on tackling misinformation in Canada. This is the type of recommendation that I would put a lot of weight into and say, yes, this is something the PROC committee could be recommending. It's something that probably coincides with some of what we've heard from the experts in this committee. This relates to that fracturing of the information ecosystem that I talked about at the beginning, which is one of the key vulnerabilities.

If you developed a community of practice that includes government bodies, researchers, media organizations and civil society organizations all working together, that would really help combat that fracture in the information ecosystem. In other words, that coalition or the community of practice, which would share best practices, could really leverage all of the expertise and the reference points and perspectives that people have in order to enhance our ability to tackle this in a really comprehensive way. That, to me, is a really solid recommendation. I think we should heed that advice from these professionals and recommend that in our future report.

Another one is to engage in strategic countering of misinformation. I found this one really interesting as well, because the focus here is on strategic. I think they've concluded throughout this report that there are certain things that spread and have more influence than others, and there are certain segments of the population that are, perhaps, more vulnerable or more predisposed. There are social media platforms that are targeting information based on critical issues, based on polarizing issues. There's the amount of exposure one has. There are a whole bunch of factors, and I don't think they are saying that a spike in misinformation during the election period is the biggest threat. I think they're actually saying the biggest threat is the ongoing ubiquitous nature of misinformation throughout Canadian society, which is being consumed every single day and polarizing the views of our population over time.

To me, both of those kinds of observations would require us to be very strategic about where to focus resources. What's having the most impact on Canadians and what is the biggest threat to Canadian democracy and our electoral process? To me, I think that is another really worthwhile recommendation.

The third one is, “Increase public resilience to misinformation”. I think this is one that our government has done considerable work on, but I think we could certainly benefit from a lot more. This, again, is that public awareness piece, the digital literacy skill building of the public to be able to identify misinformation when they see it, which is not easy. I, myself, have moments in my political career where I'm looking at information online and wondering if I should I really share it. Is that a view that...? I don't know. It's questionable. We need to be promoting that critical lens.

There are a whole bunch of aspects of developing public resilience to misinformation that I think we could do. There are some more specifics in this report.

Lastly, the fourth recommendation is, “Extend initiatives to limit and counter misinformation to non-election periods”. This is something Morris Rosenberg had mentioned in his report. He basically says that we should be looking at foreign interference outside of the caretaker period during the writ. Outside of elections, we should be monitoring and tackling this stuff.

I would say the government has been doing that, but I think we need to step it up. Based on these conversations, I think we could probably all agree that we should be doing that. I think there's a lot of opportunity there to dig in deeper. Outside of election periods, we could look at all the misinformation that's being circulated.

Here's another quote: “The threat to democracy may lie more in the slow, steady erosion of factual agreement, institutional trust, and social cohesion than in a flurry of election activity.” I think that's where we need to focus. That's the true threat to Canadian democracy. It's not just during election times.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be monitoring and doing all we can to prevent foreign interference during election times, but we have set up the processes for doing that and they are working. Could they be improved? Yes. I think we have said that from day one. We're open to that and all of us, I think, take that responsibility very seriously.

I think it involves continuing to adapt our efforts and include more strategies that will work and tactics that are better suited to that evolving threat environment. That includes non-election periods. That would be now. We should be monitoring and trying to combat misinformation online all of the time.

There are some specific recommendations here. One of them is, “Governing bodies may also wish to examine whether a regulatory regime in place during elections should be broadened to cover non-election periods, including but not limited to ad transparency, algorithmic audits, and limits on the use of foreign funds for advertising and partisan activities.”

Our government has done work on that.

Again, I'm not saying we can't improve things, if there are additional things we can do. We should look at those. Bill C-76, the Elections Modernization Act, prohibits third parties from using foreign funds for partisan advertising, and prohibits foreign entities from spending on partisan advertising both during the pre-election period and during the election period. It requires online platforms to publish a registry of partisan advertising. There are significant things we've already done on foreign funds for advertising for partisan purposes. The algorithmic audits and algorithmic transparency are things we've been talking about, and government has had quite a few conversations about them in open forums. I've gone to several events to talk about that with colleagues and debate that topic, and we could be looking at that.

There's lots to do, and there's a lot of benefit to working together, but I don't see how we get past the impasse we're at when opposition members won't agree to being fact-based, and look at the reality of what the government has done, and also look at the independent reports that are corroborating some of the big findings we have all heard now over and over again. It's not as if people can claim they haven't heard, or they didn't know, when they're going out saying misleading things. They know there is credible evidence of all the things our government has done to combat foreign election interference.

We've heard from the national security and intelligence community about all of the independent mechanisms. It said the last two elections were free and fair. We've heard all of this corroborated in multiple ways. The things that are being claimed are just, you know....It calls them into question. It's really disappointing, when you feel, as a member of Parliament, you're putting your best foot forward and want to do good, meaningful work for the benefit of the public, and we end up having to play partisan games. We're roped into it in a constituency week, when we should be with our constituents. I'm sure many of us would rather be working in our communities, meeting with our constituents today.

I'm happy to talk about this, and I have lots more to say. I have quite a few other really substantive reports that corroborate what we've heard from all of the experts, both the folks on the panel, the critical election incident public protocol, and all of the national security and intelligence experts. We've had it mentioned again by Conservative senators, and the former Conservative campaign manager from the last election. We've heard it from the former CSIS director. We've heard it over and over again. Hopefully, we can base ourselves in some factual information, move forward with this study, and get wrapped up with some really solid recommendations that the government can use to protect our democracy from these very serious threats.

With that, Madam Chair, I will wrap up here, and cede the floor.

I look forward to hearing from my esteemed colleagues.

Thank you.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague knows well that this government takes the work of fighting against foreign interference very seriously. That is why we introduced Bill C-59, which gave CSIS the threat reduction measure powers it needed to address and mitigate that risk. That is why we introduced Bill C-76, to crack down on foreign funding that could interfere with our elections, but with the corresponding transparency to create the NSICOP and NSIRA, all of which ensures that we can be upfront with Canadians so we can defend our democratic institutions.

The Conservatives should rise above the fray and see that this is not a partisan issue—

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Kudos to Mr. Nater for getting that in. I'm sure he won some points with somebody somewhere.

Anyway, I'll go back to what I was saying, which was that we have this four-pillar plan and I've only spoken to one of the pillars so far, but there are three other pillars to speak to.

I was just speaking to two pieces of legislation that enhanced both CSIS's and CSE's abilities to combat foreign election interference, but also how Bill C-76, the Elections Modernization Act, also enhanced our government's ability to tackle this very important issue.

The second pillar of the plan was improving organizational readiness. It says, “Government departments and agencies were briefed on how to identify threats, emerging tactics and systems vulnerabilities in order to strengthen security practices and behaviours.” That's important. Again, that all-of-government approach means actually educating and training people across government departments, which was done. Those briefs, that training and that capacity and awareness development did happen, and I'm sure it continues.

It continues, “Political parties and election administrators were provided with technical advice”. This one I find particularly interesting: “Political party representatives were also provided with classified briefings on threats.” This is interesting because Rosenberg refers to this in his report, which clearly demonstrates again a willingness and ability to work on these issues across party lines and to make sure that all parties have adequate information, that they're briefed, that they understand the threats and that they can weigh in on those discussions.

I'd also like to refer to the fact that, in terms of organizational readiness in 2018, our government established the Canadian centre for cybersecurity with a budget of $155 million over five years. CCCS is responsible for monitoring threats, protecting national critical infrastructure against cyber-incidents and coordinating the national response to any incidents related to cybersecurity. That organization didn't exist prior to 2018 and was established by our government. Again, it's another example of a body, an entity, that works across government and is tasked with one piece of the overall ecosystem approach or whole-of-government approach.

I think we can all agree that cybersecurity in the age of disinformation and data monopoly, referring back to the ethics report that was done in 2018, highlights how vulnerable the Canadian public is to disinformation. The use of online platforms for the dissemination of that information certainly has a real impact and changes the threat environment for anyone looking at national security and the seriousness of foreign election interference.

The other pillar that I'd like to refer to is combatting foreign interference. Our government established the security and intelligence threats to election task force. This is the SITE task force. It's the coordinating body and is comprised of the Communications Security Establishment, CSE; the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS; the RCMP; and the rapid response mechanism housed in Global Affairs.

SITE builds awareness to threats to Canada's federal election processes and prepares government to assess and respond to those threats. Each agency brings its unique information and expertise to the table to support the panel by providing up-to-date intelligence and information. The SITE task force has met regularly since 2019 and now meets on a monthly basis. It met daily during the 2021 election.

I think it is really important that the security agencies that are tasked with monitoring and collecting intelligence and identifying threats to Canadian democracy have been doing their work since 2019, meet regularly, meet on a monthly basis and then, during the elections, have daily meetings.

The information they are collecting is being relayed to government officials outside of the caretaker period, and then within the caretaker period, it feeds right into the panel. I don't know how anyone can claim that our government hasn't taken foreign election interference seriously.

That is not to say, Madam Chair, that we shouldn't be constantly improving and evolving our systematic approach and our comprehensive approach over time. That is what our national security advisers and experts have been saying to us, which is that we need to continue this work in a non-partisan way, in a serious way, in a way that respects Canadian democracy, and in a way that really tries to protect information that's highly sensitive and classified and to make sure that we don't put at risk our reputation with Five Eyes partners or other institutions.

I also want to speak to the fact that our government set up the rapid response mechanism with G7 countries at the 2018 G7 summit in Quebec. Its purpose is to strengthen the coordination across the G7 countries in identifying, preventing and responding to threats to G7 democracies. The rapid response mechanism supports the SITE task force in providing regular briefings to the panel of deputy ministers. You can see how, if you actually draw a picture of the flow of information, the rapid response mechanism basically shares information and coordinates efforts across the G7 countries such that we should find out about foreign threats to Canadian democracy in advance.

It's an early warning system, to my understanding, that feeds right into the SITE task force. That SITE task force then relays that information and briefs deputy ministers on the panel during an election, so this works as a comprehensive set of mechanisms that can identify threats to Canadian democracy.

I'd also like to say that, within the plan our government launched in 2019, which was the plan to protect Canadian democracy, again we acknowledged the need to work with external partners. Those include academia, industry and civil society to support information integrity in elections. These partners often have a unique role to play, it is safe to say, but it's an important role because they provide a unique perspective on the evolving threat environment. They help educate the public, and they alert the public to attempts at interference both before and during the campaign.

It is important that within a whole-of-government approach we also consider the fact that there are external partners that also play a very important role.

The other pillar, the fourth pillar, is building a healthy information ecosystem. One of the things that are obviously important is the degree to which Canadians get information online today. Our government launched the “Canada Declaration on Election Integrity Online” in 2019, and it was updated in 2021 prior to the election. Again, these are actions our government is taking. These are relevant to our work and our study and are exactly the reason why, if we actually look at the facts and information and if members opposite are actually concerned about what's being done, we have to acknowledge and affirm that lots has been done.

The commitment by online platforms and the Government of Canada to “safeguard elections from malicious interference and create a healthier online ecosystem” was endorsed by Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. Again, that was updated before the 2021 election.

I'm not claiming that's the be-all and end-all of election integrity online. I think there's a lot more work to be done. However, I would say that going right back to the 2018 report, when there were many recommendations made about how to protect Canadians from consuming disinformation online, it's great to know that our social media platforms were in agreement and endorsed that declaration, and that they were willing to do it again before the 2021 election.

There's also something that was implemented called the Canadian election misinformation project. This is on page 20 of Rosenberg's report. They did an analysis of the role that social media platforms play in spreading false information. They found that “notwithstanding more assertive moderation and election integrity policies, large social media platforms continued to be home to widespread misinformation.”

This is an area where we could do a lot more, deeper work, calling witnesses and looking within a writ period—but also outside of a writ period—at how we ensure that Canadians aren't consuming vast amounts of misinformation online. Our online platforms are saying that they're committed to that, but the independent research is saying, no, those online platforms, although they're committed to that, still continue to be home to widespread misinformation.

There's a whole area of our work that we need to take seriously that doesn't involve calling political staffers. It involves calling more witnesses who are relevant to the study, and some of the experts who have written these fantastic reports that I have here.

I have one really good one on misinformation and disinformation during the 2021 Canadian federal election from March 2022. It's relatively recent. It's from the media ecosystem observatory, made up of McGill, the University of Toronto, the Max Bell school of public policy and the Munk school. All of them are collaborating on writing these insightful reports that demonstrate that we need to do more work in that area.

I think there is an opportunity there, so why are opposition parties not focusing on that, when these are clear indications coming from experts? It's clear work that needs to continue to happen in order to protect Canadians, yet members on the opposite side don't seem concerned at all with that. Maybe that would be something that we could focus on in our work to come.

The thing that is really not sitting well with me is the fact that we keep hearing these very false assertions made over and over again. I think we have to be really honest with ourselves. We have to be honest and say, if you really want to step outside of the partisan antics, get down to the truth and take foreign election interference seriously, let's stop playing games and trying to win political points by calling political staffers who don't have expertise in national security. Let's start listening to the experts who have come before this committee. Instead of repeating three or four times the same motion with slightly tweaked language, so that we're here debating it over and over, ad infinitum.

I can do it forever. I'm happy to talk about this topic, because I'm reading and consuming information and I care about it. I'm happy to continue talking about this if that's what opposition members really want. However, I don't see why we would waste our precious time. The public has elected us to do important work, and we want to protect Canadian democracy. It's clear from everything I've said so far that our government has a track record. I could paint you a picture of it. It's so clear to me.

I could lay it out in a diagram for any of the opposition members. I just don't see why they would continue to deny the real facts and information that are clearly laid out in multiple reports. There's lots of information to substantiate what I'm saying.

I'm not making this up. I think the Conservatives have a duty, if they are going to make false claims, to back them up with evidence, because they are not doing that, in my view. They are just spouting off things that they think will win them some political points or a little uptick in the polls or something.

I really believe there is a need to continue to adapt our approach to foreign election interference. I think we have heard that loud and clear. If there's a silver lining in all of the partisan antics, it's to say, okay, well let's do deeper, more meaningful work in this area. I think the Prime Minister has made that clear in his announcement and press conference, at which he gave us some substantive actions—some more substantive actions, I should say—that our government is now taking.

I think just before I get to that I would like to point out a few other things. I want to sum up.

An independent review was conducted after the 2019 general election, and changes were made. Removal of a reference to the specific election in order to make the protocol continue in perpetuity, hopefully.... I think the protocol, its panel and that work are all essential. I think we can all agree. I'm sure it could be strengthened, but it should continue, so that change was made.

The change was made to align the protocol with the caretaker convention.

Explicit provision for the panel to consult with the CEO of Elections Canada as appropriate...that change was made after 2019.

Provision for the ability of political parties to alert security agencies of incidents: Listen to that. The Conservatives keep saying that their concerns weren't taken seriously. Well, our government set up the panel and the protocol and then amended them based on James Judd's independent report that was done and the assessment that was done to add a provision so political parties could alert security agencies regarding incidents. That was added by our government.

They are not even listening, Madam Chair. The Conservatives have tuned out because they don't like what I'm saying. They don't like hearing facts and information that substantiate very real truths and claims about what our government has done on this issue.

Another one is recognition of the panel's ability to examine domestically driven interference. That change was also made. The original protocol and panel focused exclusively on foreign election interference. We know that domestic interference is also important, and the panel was expanded to include domestic-driven interference.

Recognition of the panel's ability to receive information from other sources at its discretion was also added. An independent review of the protocol no longer includes an assessment as to whether to establish the protocol on a permanent basis because, of course, our government made it permanent.

I also want to mention budget 2022. Again, this all goes to the false claim that we have heard over and over again by the Leader of the Opposition and the members of the Conservative Party who are making false claims every day they are out there in the House and saying—