Evidence of meeting #37 for Canada-China Relations in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was phac.
A video is available from Parliament.
8:05 p.m.
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
Let's do four and a half. I went to the University of Toronto with Michael. We were in the same residence for four years.
8:05 p.m.
Liberal
April 15th, 2024 / 8:05 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, you are responsible for exercising leadership under the act at the national level relating to public safety—in other words, relating to national security. The act says, “The Minister shall coordinate the activities of” the RCMP, CSIS and other entities that you're responsible for and “establish strategic priorities for those entities”.
In light of the fact that two government scientists at PHAC were found to be clandestinely and corruptly participating in a PRC recruitment program and collaborating with the PLA and the PRC, I want to ask you a question. I'm not asking a question about a specific investigation, a specific intelligence assessment or a specific intelligence product produced by CSIS. I'm talking about general activities, under your direction as minister, in establishing priorities in your portfolio.
My question is, have you coordinated and established as a priority any initiatives to review or to look at—whatever you may want to call it—any reviews or any initiatives of general application to ensure there are no other Government of Canada employees clandestinely and corruptly co-operating with the PRC in areas of espionage or foreign interference? I ask that in the context of the 2022 chief science adviser's report. According to the report, there are 1,021 health scientists within the Government of Canada.
Have you established any priorities or initiatives relating to a review of general application to ensure that we don't have other government employees clandestinely and corruptly engaging in espionage or foreign interference activities in the Government of Canada?
8:05 p.m.
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
Mr. Chong, that's a very good question. The short answer would be yes, obviously, as we learn of these circumstances.
8:05 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Could you tell us the general nature of this initiative and what time frames we're looking at?
8:05 p.m.
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
As we've heard from the director and others—and not just at this committee but at other fora as well—there is a sense that there's an increasing aggressivity from some of these hostile state and non-state actors. Obviously the Government of China is one of the best examples of this sort of escalating or increasing interest.
My conversations with security officials in the Government of Canada are always about whether we're doing everything necessary to detect, disrupt and ultimately eliminate these different risks to our national security. My sense is that we are well served by the national security community, and again, I'm learning what is in the public domain.
Maybe the director could provide details, because there's some stuff that I know specifically with respect to China that we're doing, to use that example, but I don't know how much of that is in the public domain.
8:10 p.m.
Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
The specific set of circumstances you're talking about—the infiltration and the potential recruitment or espionage activities of the PRC or others vis-à-vis the science-led research of the federal government—is not just because of the Winnipeg lab issue, but because of other cases that we know of. This has been something of importance to the government.
When the late Ian Shugart was clerk of the Privy Council, he put together a task force on research security across the government to essentially try to do exactly what you were saying needed to be done, Mr. Chong, which was to bring together security and bring together the research institutes of the federal department, these two ecosystems. They need to be talking to each other much more, because as you know, unfortunately you often have silos. The research takes place on one side, and then you have national security on the other side. Now, through the work that was led by the late clerk, we have put together procedures that are more robust.
That might be something that could be shared with the committee.
8:10 p.m.
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
Mr. Chair, we will check, and if we can share, for example, what the late Ian Shugart.... I'd be happy to undertake to share as much as we can on what is, I thought, a very reasonable question.
8:10 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to all of you for being here.
My question is on the dialogue that could be taking place between us and, let's say, Five Eyes allies or other allies to learn from this experience and see whether or not there are other ways we could ensure this doesn't happen again from the experiences of other countries. Obviously, they won't be exactly the same, but there might be advice or actions we could take based on their experiences.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
8:10 p.m.
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
Sébastien and David have a longer perspective on these issues than I would, having just arrived at this particular portfolio last summer, but the Five Eyes ministerial meetings that I've been in.... They're fairly regular now, probably monthly. There's a Five Eyes in-person meeting in early September. I've travelled to the U.K. and Washington to meet my counterparts, and what strikes me is how very similar their experiences are. I had a conversation with the U.S. Homeland Security secretary, who has, I think, 260,000 employees in his department alone, about what they are doing and how they are managing the obvious risk to their national security from people who, as David said, might be compromised or who might represent a particular threat.
We certainly share the Five Eyes countries' best practices and their experiences. I was struck by how my U.K. counterpart, the Home Secretary, is facing circumstances very similar to what we talk about here around foreign interference. Some of the same countries are doing some of the same things in the U.K. that we're seeing happening here, and it struck me that maybe that's the success of this particular community of countries, which are geographically very different. They have the same democratic values, the same basic rule of law. I had not realized the extent to which there are similarities and very complementary circumstances among those five particular countries.
8:15 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
Do you have thoughts on how we can, in our own country, deal with the silo effect you have?
Mr. Vigneault, I brought up universities last week when you were here. How do we propel a meaningful dialogue forward on best practices with post-secondary institutions? Government can set policy and make sure that policy is where it needs to be in terms of government, but universities have a huge role to play in this. There are established practices that have been under way for many years at the university level that might not fit with the needs of the current moment.
8:15 p.m.
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
The question is very good. Modernizing the CSIS legislation is part of being a good partner to post-secondary institutions, businesses and other partners in our federation. I've encouraged the director and others to speak publicly at every opportunity they can about the work they're doing, and to talk to Canadians about the nature of these threats and citizens' resilience. These institutions are great examples, and are absolutely part of what I think can be a constructive mandate.
Peter, with respect to post-secondary education, Sébastien may have specific answers that will be more fulsome than mine.
8:15 p.m.
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, National and Cybersecurity, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
We have a very fruitful dialogue that's been established for many years now with the universities. It's led by ISED, and Public Safety and CSIS participate. It's the perfect platform for educating academics and universities on the threat landscape. It's been a slow evolution, but we're seeing some tangible results, and universities are investing much more in the security of research.
We also have the research security centre up and running, and we have antennas of it all across Canada in large university towns. It provides good, direct access to the main universities to educate them on the threats, and it builds programs with them to better combat the threats. In this case, the more they understand the threat landscape, the more they know about the methods being used by foreign actors and the better they will be able to defend themselves. We're always there; our door is open if they want to ask questions. If they want to learn more, we have, through the centre, established these connections.
