Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 18th, 2018

[Dan Rogers]

You're absolutely right. CSE by mandate and by law can't direct its activities towards anywhere or anyone in Canada. Our foreign signals intelligence program is very much directed at foreign communications.

I can't get into the specifics of the way we do that, but I can say that where we do collect information, it's in accordance with the Government of Canada's set priorities. For us, that means we start from a foreign end for any intelligence activities, and from that foreign end we develop our intelligence products. We start from places where we are able to identify a foreign nexus to something, and then we evaluate from there. We never start from a Canadian or unknown end that is not clearly tied to a Government of Canada intelligence priority or to a foreign organization or individual.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

When you are an entity that tries to target our democracy—a process in general, such as a voting system—you either attack a person so that person will lose because his or her policies go against your interests, or you support a person, who will have to pay something in return because there's no free ride here.

Once you identify the attack itself, do you go further, asking what is behind the scenes of the whole thing, to see what justified this kind of attack?

[Dan Rogers]

Yes. We produce intelligence on exactly what the government requests. In the act, that is defined as the capabilities, intentions...I don't want to get the words wrong, but we look at the capabilities, activities and motivations of foreign states. That's included in the part of foreign intelligence. We seek to find as much rich information as we can about that, to provide to the government or other partners who can take action to respond.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Is CSIS involved in that?

[Dan Rogers]

Certainly, we work with CSIS. We work with Global Affairs Canada, the RCMP and other domestic partners. Within their mandates, they'll use our information.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith]

Thanks very much.

We move to the first five minutes, with Mr. Gourde.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Chair, my first question is for the Communications Security Establishment, the CSE.

A lot of digital information can now be posted on various platforms during an election campaign that lasts 35 to 40 days. In the event of an attack, how fast can you react in order to terminate it? If Elections Canada takes two or three days to notice an attack before issuing a report, the damage will continue in the meantime.

What can you say to reassure me on that point?

[André Boucher]

That's an excellent question.

In actual fact, the CSE already protects the Canadian government. Over the years, we've had to learn to deal with that kind of threat. You're entirely right. If it took us two days to react, we'd be in a very bad way. Consequently, we've put systems in place that can detect and follow a threat at its speed, what we, in our jargon, call working "at cyber speed".

That's exactly what happens with Elections Canada, an agency that we've been working with since 2015. We help it secure its networks and we put the necessary tools, systems and relational processes in place so that the time it takes to react to a threat is measured in minutes, not hours or days.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

You talked about Elections Canada's system, but I'm more interested in the misinformation circulating on certain platforms.

People can deny misinformation, but that takes time, and the harm is already done, not to mention the fact that the denial often reaches only a very small percentage of the audience that heard the misinformation in the first place. We've seen a lot of this in the United States, where information is determined to be fake news three or four days after it has spread. Can we guard against this kind of situation, or will we now have to live with it?

[André Boucher]

The cybersecurity responsibilities we have under our mandate limit what we can do to help you. The best thing we can do is help prevent the problems and ensure that people don't wind up in trouble.

You raise a very valid argument. However, once the threat he has emerged, the Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity unfortunately can't do much about it.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

What would be our limits as legislators if we wanted to amend certain telecommunications-related statutes in an attempt to improve the situation? Our authority is limited to Canada, and our laws don't apply if we're attacked from abroad. So it seems we're limited in that respect.

[André Boucher]

I'm not a legal expert, but I can tell you from experience that we've successfully combined individual and systems protections under our present laws to defend the Canadian government very effectively. I hope that evidence reassures you.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Do you think Canadians can confidently anticipate that democracy will be respected in the next election campaign in view of the situation we have had in the past four or five years?

[André Boucher]

I'm extremely confident, and I'm convinced Canadians should be confident as well. This is the message I give my own children: go vote with confidence because a lot's been done over many years to guarantee our democratic process is sound.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith]

Thanks very much.

The next five minutes go to Ms. Vandenbeld.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much. My first question is for Mr. Rogers and Mr. Boucher, and it goes back to the idea of who is being targeted.

Mr. Rogers, I believe you mentioned that it's more the politicians than the elections themselves who are the targets. Do you also find that female candidates and politicians are being targeted more?

[Dan Rogers]

I can't say that in my experience I know that to be true or false.

I don't know, André, whether you have a sense of that.

[André Boucher]

In fact, the study doesn't go into that level of detail. When we looked at the problem as a whole, we realized we could do something with Elections Canada and the machinery to protect the democratic process. However, where it was worth investing was in the politicians, the political parties and the media, all wide-ranging sectors.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Anecdotally, we've heard a lot of evidence that women and female candidates are targeted, more particularly through the social media platforms. Some gender disaggregated data might be useful to the committee at some point.

[Dan Rogers]

Okay.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Santor, this has to do with our ability to regulate our currency, because data itself is becoming a currency. We've seen the exchanges: You get a free coffee if you give us your email address. Then, of course, the data amalgamators are buying and selling this data on a large scale.

We saw in our study of Cambridge Analytica and SCL that, in some of the data that was found online, they were starting to work on a Midas token, a cyber currency.

What is the threat? If we start looking at data as global currency, and being paid for potentially through one of these cyber currencies, does this undermine our ability to regulate our monetary system?

[Eric Santor]

No, I don't think it does. It's a very interesting question that I'm certain we'll need to be looking at as digitalization proceeds in many different dimensions. But we have full faith and confidence in our currency.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

That's very good to know.

I'd also like to go to the competition issue. As legislators, our purpose is to legislate. With regard to the Competition Act, Mr. Santor, you had said that our competition policy doesn't need to be modified, that it just needs to have some additional tools; although I think heard, Mr. Durocher, you had made some indication that we do need to have some sort of changes in our Competition Act. Did I understand that correctly?

[Anthony Durocher]

I think in my opening statement I referred to following our study on the matter, we determined that the current framework was up to the task.

What really matters is the tools we use. I will preface my answer by saying that the Competition Bureau does not have the mandate to review competition policy. Our job is the enforcement side, and Innovation, Science and Economic Development now has the competition policy function. But certainly, our foremost priority is to make sure that we have the tools to handle the digital economy and we're seeing new issues come up. That's our focus and that's why we're very much prioritizing, consulting and staying on top of developments nationally and internationally.