Canada-China Relations Committee on April 19th, 2021

[Anne-Marie Brady]

Parliaments can talk to each other separately of the Five Eyes signals intelligence conversation. Just because parliaments happen to have this other relationship through Five Eyes doesn't mean that every interaction we have is with Five Eyes. I'm talking to you from New Zealand and I have nothing to do with Five Eyes. MPs can talk to each other. I think that would be very valuable, because we love our democracy so much. We love freedom of speech, and freedom of association and privacy are important too.

How do we get the balance right? That's something I think we can work out for ourselves.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you, Mr. Bergeron.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Now we'll go to Mr. Harris for six minutes, please.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to both of our guests tonight. I appreciate your presentations.

Professor Brady, you did a presentation to the New Zealand government on interference with elections in 2017, I think. Can you tell us a little bit about the nature of that interference? What form did it take, and is it something that we can or should be looking out for? What can we do about it, if there is anything?

[Anne-Marie Brady]

For each national election and also each local government election, the New Zealand Parliament does an assessment afterwards to see how it went and if there were any concerns about it.

My government held two separate inquiries into foreign interference, with an overall review of those elections in 2017 and then local body elections in the years that followed. We found that CCP proxy groups or individuals had given donations to our local and central government politicians.

This is why the public conversation is very important. You can be sure that our MPs and our mayors were not willingly receiving money from the CCP. They did not understand who their partners were. They do understand it better now. In our report to the electoral commission this year, we did not see any donations like that for the central government elections.

We saw inappropriate donations, and there are several investigations in our Serious Fraud Office at the moment into particular cases of this. The process of doing these cases has led to better education. We also saw in the Chinese-language media in New Zealand that in previous years there was an attempt to get the Chinese public to bloc-vote for a certain party that had a candidate who was very much a CCP proxy. We also saw some disinformation within the Chinese-language media about the elections. We also saw disguised political advertising, which breaks our electoral law.

The problem is that we have very weak measures to deal with these problems. We need to go back and look at our electoral legislation. We need to put Chinese-language speakers into our electoral commission.

We need to change our press laws too. One of the hardest things to fix in New Zealand, which we haven't yet worked out how to fix, is how our New Zealand Chinese diaspora are being targeted by the CCP, which regards them as a resource and a tool for their foreign policy. They are mostly the victims of these activities. Also, their media must now follow the same censorship guidelines as domestic Chinese language media.

Our government hasn't yet worked out how to remedy this problem, although I would highlight that yesterday our foreign minister did something very good: She praised a non-CCP, non-united front ethnic Chinese community group in her important speech on New Zealand-China relations. We need to provide better support for our local Chinese communities and show that they're diverse and not all as much under the control of the CCP as they would wish.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Ms. Brady.

Mr. Juneau-Katsuya, can I ask you a question?

Back in 2007, Mr. Judd, a former director of CSIS, said that about half of the time with CSIS was spent in dealing with Chinese interference. Do you have any reason to believe that there is any less interference now, or is it more? Why is it that we hear very little about people ever being charged with acts of clandestine activities? We hear about intimidation, but we don't hear much being done about it. Could you elaborate on those aspects?

[Michel Juneau-Katsuya]

Yes. Before I go, I would like to support what Ms. Brady has said. Exactly as she described, we observed it from the Chinese government right here in Canada in previous elections as well.

As for prosecution and the problem of investigating, first, it has increased. We see much more interference taking place. Many more agents of influence have gained very strategic positions at all three levels of government: municipal, provincial and federal.

When it comes to prosecution, one problem that exists is within our own system. Prosecution lies within the responsibilities of the RCMP. CSIS cannot prosecute, and unfortunately CSIS does not play well with the other kids in the schoolyard. They don't share information that well. They don't share information as they should be sharing information, and the RCMP has lost the ability to investigate spy activities because they have been out of the game since 1984 with the creation of CSIS.

We have to readjust this. The parliamentary committee on security and intelligence that was created is one way. The problem and the weakness is that every five years we have a new bunch of people on the committee, with a new bunch of analysts joining them.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

I have only 15 or 20 seconds left. I can't really ask you another question, except I am very interested in knowing whether there is an increase in the percentage of activity that's devoted towards Chinese influence as compared to other forms of influence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

How about yes or no?

[Michel Juneau-Katsuya]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Okay. There you go.

Thank you very much, Mr. Harris. We'll now go on to the second round, and we have Mr. Williamson for five minutes.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Brady, could I ask you to expand on New Zealand's laws surrounding a registry of state media, foreign agents and lobbyists—where these laws exist, where they don't, and how they are working?

[Anne-Marie Brady]

You are really testing me today.

We are still having this difficult conversation on it within our government. Also, the problem that New Zealand has is that we only have three years for our Parliaments. In 2017, suddenly the conversation of Chinese political interference became something within the public eye as a result of my paper going public, and it confirmed what our SIS was saying. When our new government was formed, it took six weeks for them to form a coalition government. They had to do their own assessments. That took six months, and it was difficult, because it completely challenged our existing thinking about China, which had been seeing China as this economic partner, and there was also a kind of hopeless sense that there was a problem we couldn't do anything about.

What my country decided finally was that national security trumps economic security. In other words, without national security you have no economic security, and everybody needs to learn this lesson, from our businesses to our universities.

Then it took another year to start this inquiry into foreign interference, and there was a big battle to make it a public conversation.

It's a slow journey. At the end of the first inquiry, which lasted over one year, our Minister of Justice said we will be passing more legislation. I think you know from your own process in Canada that, exactly because the problem as Monsieur Juneau-Katsuya has talked about is so bad in our society and so endemic, it takes a long time to address. However, we are addressing it and we are slowly passing legislation on, for example, looking at overseas investment in New Zealand. Now there's a national security requirement.

I can forward a paper I've written recently that shows the legislative change. Because we are democracies, we have to have this public conversation about it. We don't just arbitrarily change our policies. It's our strength and also our weakness and vulnerability, which the CCP will play on.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

That's right. Thank you.

I hope Canada will catch up to the work that New Zealand is doing. At this point, we're having that conversation as well, so I understand exactly where you're coming from.

Mr. Juneau-Katsuya, you said that CSIS doesn't play well. How can we change that?

The Americans don't seem to have this challenge the same way we do. We see more activity there, more of both collaboration and arrests.

What do you think needs to be done to get everyone working together so that the security side is working with law enforcement so we're not just seen as a paper tiger?

[Michel Juneau-Katsuya]

We definitely need to share information. We need to receive the briefings from our experts who are following the situation and they need to be allowed to share more information. There's a certain control, and probably an old Anglo-Saxon reflex of having a stiff upper lip and not talking too much.

Let's start with our elected officials. They should be briefed a little bit better not only on the challenges coming from China, but coming from any foreign interference and any foreign influence—coming from anybody. Starting right there would be a great start. Then go to the business leaders, involve them, work with them, and share more information among agencies.

One of the big flubs that we had was with a little case, a Russian case in Halifax. CSIS refused to share information with the RCMP, and the RCMP had to go and improvise all the way. This is a big challenge that we have currently.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

We've also seen this with some tragic consequences, going back to the Air India bombing, of course, where information wasn't shared.

[Michel Juneau-Katsuya]

Oh, yes.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Does this require a legislative change? I'm not sure just urging them to share would.... Do you think another oversight body is needed or that a law needs to be changed to require this better behaviour?

[Michel Juneau-Katsuya]

No, it's not necessarily a change in the legislation but a change in the leadership and the stewardship. They need to be capable of accepting that one day they might have to testify.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Williamson.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

We'll now move to Ms. Yip.

Ms. Yip, you have five minutes.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thanks to both of you for coming on. I know the hour is getting late.

Mr. Juneau-Katsuya, I have a question for you.

In response to the NSICOP report, national security expert Stephanie Carvin said the fact that director David Vigneault publicly named China marks a big shift in the intelligence community, calling it “a huge change”.

What are your thoughts on this, as well as the director's recent public speeches acknowledging the threats that the CCP poses to Canadians, and how Canadians need to be aware of this and take measures to protect themselves?

[Michel Juneau-Katsuya]

I think it's about time we called a cat a cat and a dog a dog.

Probably in modern history China represents, for Canada, the most formidable opponent and threat to our democracy, to our economy, and to our Canadian citizens of Chinese descent or from other origins.

The Chinese government perceives the relationship with others doing business not as we understand it. For the Chinese government, they are basically at war, and everything goes when at war. They are ready to do what they need to do, which is to bribe, to cheat, to lie and to bully, because the name of the game is to win—that's it, that's all.

At the end of the day, if you really want to understand how the Chinese government works, learn the game of Go, because the game of Go is basically a question of acquiring territory and having influence on the board. It has nothing to do with luck; it has to do with strategy. They are the most formidable strategists, and the use of influence is greatly important.

The change of policy and the change of direction from the director of CSIS in finally naming China for what it stands for should also be a guidance or a sign for the government and elected officials that we need to stand up to China. Unfortunately, internationally, there is dissension. Internationally, we do not necessarily work together. For us, we just see the Huawei cases. When we started to weaken, some other people came from behind and tried to fill up the emptiness that we left behind. We need to be capable of co-operating internationally and definitely of trying to start working together in Canada as well.

One of the great problems that I've seen within the public service, for example, was in our conflict with Huawei. Shortly after the trouble started, with court procedures and everything, we saw the Global Affairs department consider a Chinese company, Nuctech, which is equally as problematic as Huawei, to secure our embassies and our consulates for several million dollars. It's like the right hand is not talking to the left hand. We do certain things in government, but we lack the support of our public servants. I'm talking about Global Affairs. If one department should have had knowledge of what was going on, it was these guys. I think a kick in the butt was missed here somewhere.