Canada-China Relations Committee on May 31st, 2021

[Cherie Wong]

I'm hesitant to say “skewed”, because I have a very strong perspective, so I may not come across as a very impartial examiner, but I can tell you that many members of my community have had very violent confrontations with Chinese language media journalists who are pushing the limits. They were asked not to film their faces, but the journalists shoved the cameras into their face. That type of behaviour is also observed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you, Ms. Kwan.

We'll now go on to Ms. Stubbs for five minutes, please.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thanks, Chair. I appreciate it.

Thank you to both of the witnesses for being here. It's overwhelming, isn't it? One hardly even knows where to start with questions.

Cherie, I'm struck by your repeated point, and, Kyle, by yours too, that this state infiltration by China's communist regime is not new and has been going on since the 1990s—the intimidation and and threatening of people in China and around the world. It must feel like authorities and governments don't grasp the seriousness of this when, as individuals, you're sent between the variety of law enforcement agencies and different offices and offered a tip line. You see events like in the U.S. where they've made arrests under Operation Fox Hunt, and our government says that it needs to do more, but it's hard to identify if those things are happening.

Cherie, can I ask you a question about the discussion of all of this? Like others have said here, I think this is really new to a lot of Canadians—and shamefully, maybe for all of us—but I think it's really our obligation as members of Parliament to be asking hard questions about this and getting to solutions like you have proposed.

Do you have any comments about what could be the conflation of legitimate questions about the safety and security of individuals and national security threats posed by the communist regime with anti-Asian racism? Do you have any views on what that does to the conversation or to efforts to try to get at the facts and to solutions?

[Cherie Wong]

As someone who is Asian, who is a dissident of the CCP and who is a Canadian, I have often been asked to choose sides and told that I can only do one and not the other.

I think, first and foremost, that we need to draw a difference between the Chinese communities, the ethnic Chinese communities, versus Hong Kongers, Tibetans, Uighurs and so on. They have often been conflated as one, and it's really harmful.

Put a difference between these communities and the CCP. In fact, the Chinese people are victims of the CCP regime. We are living such a horror because of the CCP, so holding the CCP accountable needs to be a separate discussion from conflating it as an anti-Asian racism issue.

This geopolitical tension has definitely triggered a rise in anti-Asian racism, and this why we have to be very careful in the terminologies that we use and the intentions, but also know that intention is not everything. Sometimes the action itself will be enough to hurt the community, and that's why always [Technical difficulty—Editor] centre the communities' needs, centre the dissident communities' needs in all of your policy decision-making, because we're the ones who have been bearing the brunt of these kinds of attacks, harassment and influence.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thanks for that answer.

You outlined a number of possible solutions for policy-makers to take in your opening comments. I wonder if you might want to expand on what the benefit would be of a national registry for foreign agents. What would a “transparency scheme”, as you called it, actually look like? How would it work? How would it benefit people's safety and security?

[Cherie Wong]

I think one of the members previously mentioned that Canadians don't really understand foreign state actors and don't really know who they are. This is why we need a transparency scheme: to point out who they are, to point out these organizations who are receiving funding from state actors. After knowing that information, Canadians can make informed decisions. This means municipal actors, school boards and federal MPs like yourselves. During an election campaign, you don't know who's coming to volunteer, but having that public access to a list will help you identify the foreign actors. This could be expanded to, say, making a registry, a list, of known human rights abusers, of military actors, and encouraging the innovation in Canada to not collaborate with these actors. But we need public information in order to take real action.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Chair, do we have any more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

You have 15 seconds.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

I was just going to ask Kyle if he wanted to expand on other solutions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

In 15 seconds.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Yes.

Sorry about that.

[Kyle Matthews]

Just look at the case of York University and Queen's. They got in bed with a Chinese company, an AI company that's repressing Uighurs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you very much.

Next is Mr. Fragiskatos for five minutes, please.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll ask questions of Mr. Matthews. Before I do, though, I didn't think I'd need to put this on the record, and perhaps I don't as it should go without saying, but I will put it on the record.

Every MP I've had the privilege to work with over the years is loyal to this country. That, of course, includes MPs of Chinese heritage. I think it's a privilege to work in this place, Mr. Chair. I defend colleagues across the aisle. This isn't only about Liberal colleagues I have the chance to work with; it's about all MPs and all parties. We hold a loyalty to Canada and everything we do is for our constituents. I put that on the record this evening, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Matthews, thank you very much for your very interesting presentation. You used the term “digital authoritarianism”. I don't think you're the first to use it, but it's still something that piques my interest. Can you expand on what you mean by that when you say that China is pursuing exactly that type of an agenda?

[Kyle Matthews]

It's a new term that has arisen in the last year and a half, but it's basically the authoritarian use of emerging technologies—AI, facial recognition, algorithms, looking at machine-driven communications—that really is authoritarian in every sense of the word. It's going to control. You have no privacy. Everyone is being surveilled. It's being rolled out. It's being tested on the Uighurs. Human Rights Watch did a massive report on algorithms imposed on apps to capture the facial images of Uighurs. We're seeing emotional technology to read emotions. It's this whole set of emerging technologies. It's hard to abuse those in democracies because we have civil society and journalists and opposition parties, but in a one-party state, the government can tell engineers or whoever designs these to do exactly that, and there's no ethical rollout or any consideration.

That's what's happening. I wrote a piece for opencanada.org about this and what Canada should do. I'd be happy to share it with the group. It's an emerging issue. My institute is doing more and more work on this. I know Global Affairs Canada is starting to get involved in it as well.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

I'll be happy to look up the piece on Open Canada, but perhaps in two and a half minutes you could summarize the main essence of the thesis in that piece.

What should Canada do to counter exactly that? Are there efforts being carried out by China to have Canadian firms, perhaps universities as well, assist in its effort to bring about a digital authoritarian approach?

[Kyle Matthews]

There's definitely a lot of interest to capture research at Canadian universities, as well as American universities, on certain technologies that are going to be used for military purposes or for controlling populations. I put on a conference three years ago with the AI community and had an AI firm in Kitchener-Waterloo that was aggressively approached to sell stuff to China on facial recognition. They decided not to. They thought it would be misused, that none of the safeguards were....

There needs to be some kind of democratic consensus and alignment to stop the use of these technologies for nefarious purposes. We need to have export controls in Canada so that our technology is not misused for this. I think we need norms and regulations. There's a whole lot of talk about having a digital Geneva convention to limit the use of AI-powered drones and killer robots in war fields. It spans from privacy surveillance to automated weapons.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

I think I have just over a minute remaining.

In your opening testimony, you pointed to firms that have been involved in producing some of the technologies that are now being used in the persecution of the Uighur minority and the genocide of the Uighur minority. Could you elaborate on that? Do they have a presence in Canada?

[Kyle Matthews]

Huawei has been found guilty of surveillance of Uighurs. Tencent has been found guilty. The UN had to push them out of the 75th UN anniversary because of that. Human rights groups raised concerns. The i5 Tech is also involved in Canadian universities, including Queen's and York. So is Hikvision, a facial recognition technology company, that got a major deal with the European Parliament to put in facial recognition cameras to detect COVID heat from people's bodies. It turns out they were involved. The EU had to cancel that program and that budget because the company was involved in monitoring the Uighurs as well. It's pretty expansive.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fragiskatos.

Let me thank the witnesses very much for their appearance this evening. It's deeply appreciated.

I'm now going to suspend for five minutes for the clerk to connect the next panellists, and also for a five-minute health break. If you can get back sooner, that's even better.

I should tell you the clerk is advising me that we have to stop at 9:30. We have a hard stop at 9:30. I'll see you in five minutes or less.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I call the meeting back to order.

We are continuing the meeting.

I would like to welcome the last panel of witnesses.

We have the Honourable David McGuinty, Chair of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, and Sean Jorgensen, Director of Operations at the Secretariat of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians.

I thank you both very much for being here.

Mr. McGuinty, you may now proceed with your opening remarks. You have up to seven minutes.

[David McGuinty, Chair, National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for your invitation for me to appear this evening.

It is my pleasure to tell you about the work of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP).

In English, it's known as NSICOP.

As this is my first time before your committee, I will provide a brief overview of NSICOP and proceed with outlining our 2020 annual report, as well as our 2019 review of foreign interference. I will also touch upon the recommendations we made about ensuring the integrity of our elections.

As you know, NSICOP was established in 2017 and is composed of parliamentarians from both houses. All members hold a top-secret security clearance and are permanently bound to secrecy under the Security of Information Act. We cannot, under any circumstance, claim parliamentary privilege in a case of unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

The primary responsibility of the NSICOP is to conduct reviews of the national security and intelligence community and its constituent agencies. NSICOP reports are unanimous and non-partisan.

Our 2020 annual report focused primarily on threats to our national security, including an attempt to answer the following two questions. What has changed in recent years? How has the pandemic contributed to these threats?

Security and intelligence organizations described five main threats to Canada's national security when the committee began its work in 2018. They were terrorism; espionage and foreign interference; cyber-threats; organized crime; and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

I will focus on espionage and foreign interference, and cyber-threats, as likely being of most interest to this committee, but I encourage you to consult the full report.

Espionage involves the theft of information, while foreign interference involves the use of clandestine means, or threats to promote a certain objective. However, the perpetrators often pursue them in tandem.

The committee conducted a review of foreign interference in Canada in 2019. It found that foreign interference posed a significant threat to the security of Canada, and that continues to be the case today. The pandemic has also created opportunities for foreign states to target Canada's health sector, most notably in the area of vaccine development.

Turning to malicious cyber-activities, there are a wide array of threats facing Canada. I note that the committee is currently conducting a review of the government's cyber-defence. Russia and China remain the most significant, sophisticated and state-sponsored threats, targeting government and non-government systems. State actors also conduct online disinformation campaigns in Canada and among our allies.

Let me now turn to our review examining the threat of foreign interference in Canada and the government's response to that threat, presented in 2019.

The committee agreed to focus its efforts on traditional, person-to-person foreign interference. Of particular interest, we highlighted China's Operation Fox Hunt. It involves clandestine and coercive repatriation activities targeting apparent economic fugitives and corrupt officials, including in Canada. Chinese security officials carry out the campaign in a number of ways, including police and prosecutors working with the RCMP to arrange to meet fugitives to purportedly gather evidence and discuss their cases.

In response to Fox Hunt activities, Global Affairs Canada established an interdepartmental working group that met regularly to discuss the campaign. The RCMP imposed increasingly stringent criteria on PRC investigators, yet activities continued.

We found that the government's response to the threat of foreign interference, which is significant and sustained, was ad hoc and that our engagement with other levels of government and the Canadian public was limited. The NSICOP recommended that the government develop a comprehensive strategy to counter foreign interference and build institutional and public resiliency, which is described in paragraph 297.

With specific reference to the risk of foreign interference in our democratic processes, let me turn to the report of James Judd, prepared pursuant to the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol.

States that attempt to interfere with Canada's electoral processes use a number of methods, including attempts to influence constituency nominations and to promote one candidate or undermine another. They may also include efforts to spread hate or inflame partisan differences.

Mr. Chair, this happens to all parties, across all orders of government.

The committee supported recommendations to re-establish the public protocol well in advance of the next federal election and to extend this mandate to the pre-writ period.

The committee also believed that the government should consider ensuring that the mandate of the protocol include all forms of foreign interference, consider including prominent Canadians as members of the panel, ensure that all parties understand the purpose of the protocol and the process for raising a potential issue, and consider how the panel would inform Canadians about an incident of foreign interference.

Mr. Chair, to conclude, threats to the security of Canada are fluid. They change. These are all things that we, parliamentarians from across the political spectrum, should continue to pay attention to and seek ways to address through our hearings, our work, our work on legislation and our engagement with Canadians.

Finally, Mr. Chair, before going forward, hopefully to questions, I want to remind you and members that these reports, both hard copies that were sent to the members, are 230 pages in length. They comprise 456 paragraphs in one report and 125 paragraphs in another, and all of this work is predicated on 28,000 pages of documentation and dozens of witnesses and experts.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you very much, Mr. McGuinty.

We will now proceed to the first round of questions.

Mr. Paul-Hus, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good evening, Mr. McGuinty. Thank you for joining us today.

The report is quite clear. Also, the public report clearly does not contain the highly secret information. To help you shed some light on this for us, I would like to draw a parallel with what happened in Australia, since you mention it in your report.

The Australian Parliament and political parties were victims of cyber attacks. In addition, a paragraph in your report states that there was a large-scale direct attack, in the middle of the pandemic, in June 2020, against companies, hospitals, schools, and even government officials.

Can we draw a parallel with Canada? Can Canada respond to what happened in Australia?

Could we be exposed to exactly the same sorts of attacks?

[David McGuinty]

Thank you very much for the question.

The simple answer is yes. Anything is possible in Canada. In the main recommendation to the government in 2019, we cited the example of what Australia has done to create a more centralized system and provide coordinated leadership to deal with the whole issue of foreign interference. We brought that model to the attention of the government.

I think Minister Blair circulated a 20-page document in December outlining what the government has done since that report was released. However, based on what we have seen, the simple answer is that anything is possible.