Canada-China Relations Committee on Feb. 6th, 2023

[Sébastien Aubertin-Giguère]

Of course, the minister put forward...

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Your time has expired.

Now it's Ms. McPherson's turn for six minutes or less.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here tonight and sharing this expertise with us. I know it is a late night for this.

I'm trying to understand how exactly this is all working and how the local policing interacts with the RCMP, CSIS and the government and Global Affairs Canada. It seems to me there's a bit of a challenge or a problem in how that information is being shared. I don't know how effective those communications are. I'm really interested in how that works.

To you, Mr. Fisher, if a threat comes in, for example, how do you ensure that Global Affairs and the RCMP are apprised of it? Who takes responsibility for that? How does that work?

Don't worry, gang. I'll get to you next.

[Adam Fisher]

I'd say to that question that, in terms of the flow of information and intelligence between the security agency CSIS, the RCMP, Public Safety, the Communications Security Establishment and others, it's very good and very healthy. There are multiple fora that meet regularly—weekly—to discuss these intelligence matters. I'd say to you that, within the Government of Canada and within the national security establishment, there is very broad awareness and understanding of the threats, general and specific, that we're facing.

When it comes to actually transitioning intelligence to evidence that would allow police and enforcement to lay charges, that is a challenge—and that was alluded to in the previous panel—but there are other avenues and tools we can use.

For example, for the service we have our threat reduction mandate. We may see or perceive foreign influence activity occurring within a community or against a certain official, and within the national security community we would discuss that and talk about what the best method is to address it. It might not be charges. It might be the service using its threat reduction mandate to reduce the threat, which we'll never hear about publicly and we can never talk about publicly, but it occurs and it does occur within the foreign influence activity threat.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Fisher, you did talk about there being a phone number. You were here when I asked the commissioner about how often that phone number has been accessed. I always have a bit of concern because it's quite easy to put a phone number out into the public. It's not always that easy to deal with the calls that come in on that number.

Is the data being collected from that phone number? Do you have the information of who is utilizing it? You have to believe that we're all quite worried, especially when we now hear that there is conceivably.... Of course, we always suspected foreign interference with regard to Russia and Iran.

Is that data being collected? Do the impacted communities have that information? Is this information staying up here and not getting down to the impacted communities, because we're hearing a very different story from people who are living in these communities?

[Adam Fisher]

I will try to answer that in a couple of ways.

In terms of data on our 1-800 number, I would have to get back to the committee on that.

Probably the more useful activity that we conduct is actual engagement with the communities. It's not necessarily a number that they can call, although there is one. It's actively going out into the communities through our regions and the big cities across Canada, sitting down with community associations and leaders, and talking to them—usually in an unclassified setting—about the threats. It's sensitizing them to the threat and letting them know that there's someone they can call if they need to.

In spite of what people might think, the service is not everywhere watching everything. We actually rely heavily on communities to tell us when they see something that's amiss. Part of it is building that connection with the communities. Part of it is educating them with regard to what they need to be aware of and looking for.

We have a number of publications that we put out there that talk about foreign influence activity, the flags people should be looking for, and if they see them, that they can give us a call and meet with us or talk to us on the phone—however they want to interact with us.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Is there a direct pathway if that was perhaps to happen with the local police? Is there is a pathway for that information to get to you?

[Adam Fisher]

Yes. Certainly at an operational regional level, the same kind of connectivity that you see here in Ottawa between the RCMP and CSIS would exist in the field. For example, I think it was mentioned that our INSETs are investigating some of the front-office police stations. CSIS is embedded within these INSET organizations.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Does CSIS have all the resources it needs to do this work?

You might want to be careful how you answer that because this will go to Parliament, of course.

[Adam Fisher]

CSIS is continuously reprioritizing and reallocating internally to face the threats we're dealing with.

The threat environment's evolving. Twenty years ago it was all about counterterrorism. Today you will hear our director say publicly that the number one strategic threat to Canada is espionage and foreign interference. We have adjusted internally to put significant resources into those investigations.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Have the resources been sufficient for the changes?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Ms. McPherson.

We will go now to Mr. Chong for five minutes.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to return to this issue of foreign interference. Three cases were mentioned: the 2019 case with the Canadian Space Agency that involved an employee acting on behalf of a Chinese aerospace company; the 2019 case that was mentioned regarding an Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada employee who was acting on behalf of a Chinese university and an Italian pasta company; and then more recently, the Hydro-Québec employee case that involved espionage.

It seems to me that all these three cases involve espionage and not foreign interference in the form of illegal police stations or the intimidation of citizens and pro-democracy groups and human rights activists, which involves things like targeting democratic institutions, political parties or candidates.

The source of frustration that I and many MPs have is, first of all, we have not heard of any criminal investigations that have led to prosecution with respect to foreign interference in the form of intimidation of citizens and the targeting of political parties or candidates. In respect of illegal police stations, we have not heard of any investigations that have led to charges, yet we hear of this happening among our Five Eyes allies.

Then for the stuff that doesn't rise to the level of criminality, we're not even told who's being targeted. The Prime Minister's brief said that 11 candidates in the 2019 election were targeted by the People's Republic of China, but nobody tells us who the 11 candidates are. We are not even getting information to help equip ourselves to defend ourselves, to defend our institutions, yet other Five Eyes allies are using sunlight and transparency to do exactly that.

Then last year we read about a lack of inter-agency co-operation. The agencies aren't sharing information. CSIS has an active investigation on what's apparently a threat to our national security, calls up the RCMP and says this individual or individuals need to be arrested, and the RCMP refuses. When you put this all together, can you understand why we're concerned about what is seemingly a lack of institutional capacity to defend our national security and our intellectual property?

One question, has this inter-agency rivalry between CSIS and the RCMP that was highlighted in an internal report of last April been resolved? Has the lack of information sharing within the Government of Canada been resolved?

[C/Supt Matt Peggs]

I don't know which case you are specifically referring to and I can only speak from my Ontario perspective, but we're in constant communication with the service and the information sharing back and forth between our two agencies is positive.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

It's a case that dates back several years. It was so serious that an internal investigation was conducted that led to an internal report that came to light in April of last year, so it wasn't that long ago. It was about eight or nine months ago.

In this report it was highlighted that CSIS requested the RCMP to carry out arrests in order to thwart an active threat to our national security and that the RCMP officers involved refused to do so. Clearly, whatever threat was active at the time wasn't thwarted because the RCMP officers involved quit the premise, quit the situation, rather than carry out what CSIS had requested. The report concluded that part of the problem was that the RCMP officers didn't feel they had enough information from CSIS to make the arrest.

This was an internal report. It was pretty public. It was published by the CBC, reported by the CBC, I believe, in April of last year. The simple question is this: Has this inter-agency rivalry been resolved so that, if there were active threats to national security that don't rise to the level of criminal prosecution but require some other techniques, our police and security agencies are integrated and functioning so that these other tools, such as catch-and-release, can be executed upon to protect this country's citizens?

That's my question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Actually, I will ask the witnesses to maybe work that answer into some of their follow-up comments because, Mr. Chong, your time has expired.

We'll now go to Mr. Fragiskatos, for six minutes or less.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here tonight.

Mr. Fisher, in your opening statement, you mentioned a document. I think you said foreign interference and me. I believe it is a document that you were talking about. Is that correct?

[Adam Fisher]

Yes, that's right.

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

Can you expand on that? What exactly is it?

[Adam Fisher]

Yes, absolutely. I think “Foreign Interference and You” is the way it's titled. It's a document that we put out, I believe it was last year. It's unclassified. It's translated into a number of languages. It's meant to sensitize communities to the foreign interference threat. It talks about what to look for. It talks about some of the techniques that our adversaries use in advancing foreign interference, for example, cultivation of targets, elicitation of information. It talks about cyber-attacks that are used as well, as part of foreign influence activity, financing, that sort of thing.

It's available for all, and I think it's on our website.

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

Certainly in principle, it sounds like a very worthwhile thing to pursue. How are the messages contained in that report communicated more broadly to the public? Is that the message, to go on the website to find it? In the age we live in, distraction is all around us. People are very unlikely....

I respect the work that you do, so this is not necessarily a criticism. However, I am a bit perplexed as to how people are supposed to learn about this if they aren't being directed. Are there efforts to engage community leaders, who have wider networks perhaps, so that they can help to spread the message? Otherwise, it just remains on a website collecting dust, so to speak.

[Adam Fisher]

Yes, absolutely.

It's not just a static tool, something that we posted on our website. In our regions, when we meet with community leaders and associations, we bring that document with us and we share it there. We try to publicize it in fora such as this. We're certainly doing more public speaking as well, at very senior levels, with our director and others. Slowly but surely, we're trying to get the word out there. This is just one document that we would bring along with us when we're engaging with communities and partners. We leave it on the table when we leave.

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

As I said, it sounds interesting. It sounds like something that would be worthwhile for Canadians to delve into. I'm even thinking that it wouldn't be out of place if someone was on a community radio station or something like that, talking about what the document contains. Right now, we're telling people to go online to find it. I'm not sure there's a lot of utility with that, with great respect.

Ms. Soper, I have another question for you or Mr. Giguère, if I could, but it sounds like you have an opinion on that.

[Lesley Soper, Director General, National Security Policy, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

I would add, in another context, that we have a researchers' portal that's housed through Innovation, Science and Economic Development. That also provides lots of rich information to the research community, the academic community, about how to safeguard their research. We use that in complement with seminars that we send out to universities in order to meet with students and researchers. We push out the message that way, so it's another.... We try to tailor our products to specific communities who will have an interest in it.

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

Thank you very much.

You won't have much time to answer this.

There is continued interest and focus among many, including I think members of this committee, on the question of a foreign agents act.

This goes to either you or Mr. Giguère from Public Safety.

Is there something already in place in Canadian law that would achieve the same goal, thus preventing that kind of an advance forward—or not? I'm thinking in terms of redundancy. If Canadian law allows objectively for the aims of a foreign agents act already somehow, then all this talk about the need to implement that kind of law might be moot. Do you have any perspective on that?