Evidence of meeting #133 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was gray.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Thank you, Chair.
I would like to thank Mr. Kushwaha and Mr. McAndrews for being here.
I listened with a lot of interest to the openings. It's really interesting stuff. I feel like I could talk with both of you for some time.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
I didn't say how long I was going to talk, Mr. Chair, I said how long I could talk, because those who know me know I like to talk.
It's very interesting, Mr. Kushwaha. You talked about foreign companies as opposed to governments. They're different entities. Government is completely different. What I found really interesting was when you talked about a foreign company becoming an organ of the state, I would say akin to or essentially carrying out a government's bidding.
Is that an accurate framing?
Chairperson, National Security Centre of Excellence
It's a way of saying it, indeed. Please continue.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Yes. Sometimes government does things, and they might be deliberate or they might not be deliberate. At the end of the day, they can result in misinformation or disinformation. I'm going to give you an example. I'm just going to have a quick look here to get the date. I believe it was September 17, 2024. The Trudeau Liberal government actually gave $340,000 to the production of a film that appeared at the Toronto International Film Festival. This was a pro-Russian film, as I understand it.
I don't know that anybody went through this and said, “Okay, this is exactly what we're doing.” If it was, somebody should be fired. If it wasn't, it seems to me like quite a mess-up when we're giving $340,000 of your money, my money and our money to pro-Russia propaganda. Do you have anything to say about that?
Chairperson, National Security Centre of Excellence
I'm not familiar with that particular case or scenario, but it is an interesting piece of information you're providing. Based on what you've shared, I think it's very difficult for us to point to any politically elected individual in that decision-making process. The challenge we have, as I pointed out, is that sometimes it's our civil servants who make these decisions that harm.
Let's clarify that. There are three different types that we characterize as insider threat actors. There are some who are non-malicious, without intent: “Oops, I did this. I had no idea.” Then there's malicious with intent. There's also non-malicious but with intent, and that's the really weird one. I can say that I'm not malicious, but I really thought this would be better, so I did it and, yes, it contravened policy or it didn't have the right outcome.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Right.
What's interesting to me about what you're saying there is that so often in misinformation and disinformation we assume it's a problem that impacts us from elsewhere, that it is external and coming into Canada. However, the example I just gave, and I know that there are other.... We just had a panel about a formerly trusted news source propagating blatant misinformation.
What I find interesting about that is that it's almost like a wake-up call to Canada that—do you know what?—sometimes when we have $340,000 being given to a film that shouldn't be or we have news sources or as parliamentarians we suffer from it.... I don't know that this is just someone else's problem that impacts us. I think we need to look in the mirror.
What do you say about that?
Chairperson, National Security Centre of Excellence
It's interesting. I like the idea of looking in the mirror, indeed. I think it works well at a diplomatic relations level as well.
It's interesting to note that, when funding is received by external parties, we trust them to do certain things for Canadian interests. While they may continue down this path, those perspectives may change as a result of their reporting or whatever work they may do, in this case, a film.
It's a complicated matter that one may need to oversee them. There's just so much funding that we give to so many different entities, NGOs and even supporting entities around the world. It would be very difficult to have that kind of oversight with our small taxpayer income.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
You raise an excellent point there as well, and that is that, so often, people will be very quick to say that this is a problem just on the right, but there's a fair amount of money that comes in on the left. I hate using right versus left. I would call them extremes. We'll just call them extremes.
There is a lot of money that comes in illegally from American NGOs, for instance. I think that a lot of people would find those views as not being within Canadian norms or not within the mainstream, and that funds people who are carrying out extremes in Canada.
This happens seemingly during elections. There's one name. It is the Tides Foundation. My understanding is that money sometimes comes up into Canada, and then that propagates local disinformation.
How do we stop that?
Chairperson, National Security Centre of Excellence
Yes, especially if we are allies, coming from states in the allies, as we call our allies.
I feel your pain, and I will say that it's something that we see. Canada's not the only country that's facing this. When we speak with other countries around Europe, they're facing it. Asia is facing it, as are the African states.
It's unfortunate, and I think it's just more obvious now. It's always been there.
October 10th, 2024 / 4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
I think I'm probably done.
I'm sorry, Mr. McAndrews. I had questions for you as well.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Mr. Bains, you're going to pick it up from there for six minutes.
Go ahead, sir.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to both Mr. McAndrews and Mr. Kushwaha for joining us today and providing some very interesting insights.
As you know, we've had this discussion around misinformation and disinformation. This committee's been studying it for quite some time.
I noticed that you mentioned Finland, and I've heard about Taiwan as well. Previous witnesses have also stated that Finland and Taiwan are examples to follow when it comes to fighting misinformation and disinformation due to their proximity to Russia and China, respectively.
Could you expand on their programs and suggest other ways that we can immunize Canadians from the effects of misinformation and disinformation?
Chairperson, National Security Centre of Excellence
Absolutely. Thank you for that.
In Finland, obviously, as you described, they do have a significant challenge right at their doorstep, and it's not too far from ours as well, if you think about it. They took action immediately. In their model, as opposed to Canada.... Our policy for education may come from a federal level, but it's delivered at the provincial and territorial levels. It's very difficult to appropriately govern from Canada as Finland does.
Similar to their model, we need to come up with methods. I'm not suggesting that this committee does it or that I'm proposing any policy methods to drive from federal down to provinces and territories, but I'm suggesting that something needs to get done to normalize that kind of information, as we normalize mathematics, physics, science and language.
To that effect, Finland did an amazing job on that, teaching kindergartners how to do this by giving them silly examples to real examples, as you would to any child. It helped them grow. Even the elderly and the retired, having a conversation at a coffee shop, who would have difficulty with technology and receiving information from their friends and their neighbours, can then really consider what they're hearing and say, “Do you know what? Let me look that up. I know how to do that, because it's now part of my ecosystem, my living and my being.” It transformed. It took a decade.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Searching for sources is something that could be done at a national level, where some type of a policy could be introduced and delivered to provincial authorities, educational awareness or some type of thing.
Do you think misinformation and disinformation are increasing? You said that they have always been there. Are they increasing or is the sophistication around them increasing? Why are we seeing an increase in this activity, or has it become more obvious to us?
Chairperson, National Security Centre of Excellence
Maybe it's a mix of all of that. If I can make it really simple, I feel like we're all living off of digital devices these days, like laptops, computers and mobile phones. Kids are on them. Adults are on them. It's a great mode of digesting it. Previously, if I wanted disinformation or misinformation and I was in a war zone, I'd get pamphlets from the sky, or if I was sitting in my home, I'd need to turn the television on to a very specific channel—otherwise, I would see snow—to digest some information that would be considered misinformation or could be considered misinformation. Today, it's at my fingertips.
While it seems like there's more, it's just so much more accessible. There is more and there are means to deliver it faster. With the ability to use someone's existing video, like, probably, even mine now, and adjust my voice and apply it to something else and use.... I'll use technologies—
Liberal
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
You may be aware of the recently passed Bill C-70, an act respecting countering foreign interference. One provision of the act was to expand the preparatory acts offence. If you have knowledge of this, can you expand on how it will help address espionage or new foreign interference offences?
Chairperson, National Security Centre of Excellence
I can speak to the justice side of things. My opinion is that I feel some positive work has been done there. I commend the work that was done on C-70, especially on the ability to deal with that in a legal form as well as expanding some capacity for CSIS to perform in certain ways.
To get into the intricacies, I feel it would be best to tear that apart another time, if you choose. There's some content in there that still limits Canada, but we have to take steps and we're taking good steps. That's positive, so I commend everyone who participated in that to make that happen.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Can you give an example of a limitation and then make a recommendation for addressing it? Is that possible?
Chairperson, National Security Centre of Excellence
Some of the limitations we can see, as described earlier, are that, for some of the behaviours that are happening within Canada, it's very difficult to collect legal evidence—that's probably the right term there—or evidentiary data that you can use in court. It makes it very difficult to do that and show intent. Those are two very difficult things to capture in all of these cases.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
I'm going to ask Mr. McAndrews the same question. I know you talked about the difficulty of really knowing the impact of these things. Could you expand on that same question?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
I hate to do this, Mr. McAndrews, because I know we haven't heard from you, but can you give us a quick response in 15 seconds? I'm sorry.