Evidence of meeting #61 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 interference.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Doctoral Fellow, Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, As an Individual
It could, but we would also need more evidence, right? We can't assume that, just because people are against the speaker, they are automatically being influenced and told what to do by the Chinese government.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Sure.
The title of your article, which I referenced, starts with, “The Risks of Exaggerating Foreign Influence...”. Is it your opinion these risks are being exaggerated in the case of the allegations before us in Canada, today?
Doctoral Fellow, Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, As an Individual
I think it comes back to this: which allegations? Are we talking about online influence operations, writ large, or very targeted harassment? With target harassment, I don't think we're exaggerating those impacts. Those are very clear. They have pretty long-lasting impacts, as evidenced by the other panellists.
Where I'm a little more ambivalent, in terms of effects and effectiveness, is in these broad misinformation campaigns or influence operations. It's hard to tell exactly what the impact of those are. That's one area I'm a little more hesitant to speculate about.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Over the last five or six years, watching the way AI, algorithms, online information, disinformation and troll farms.... You know, I would suggest I've been the target of troll farms, myself. They were obviously artificial accounts targeted and directed at any given political decision.
I would make the following statement: In Canada, particularly given the convoy occupation and rise of right-wing populism, democracy is fragile. People are cynical. They've lost trust in a lot of our democratic institutions. This prevalence of information online, particularly as it relates to targeting, and the studies around how the brain interacts with social media....
Do you not see those as potentially hostile actors, within the context of Canadian democracy?
Doctoral Fellow, Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Yes. I don't think you're wrong on any of the points you just made.
Going back to my statement, I think we also have to understand why people might be consuming this. This gets back to the grievances. How do we rebuild trust in institutions and the media?
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
You referenced this. You stated that an overemphasis on bad actors and the supply of disinformation diverts our attention from the material problems that drive demand for, and receptivity to, dubious content of suspicious origin.
Can you describe how ignoring the material problems Canadians are facing can make them more susceptible to foreign influence?
Conservative
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
That's fine. I'll set that aside. I'm going to have a round of two and a half minutes later, and you can just open with that.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, that completes our first round. We're going to go to our second round of questioning.
Just to advise the committee, we're going to have Conservatives for five, Liberals for five, the Bloc for two and a half and Mr. Green for two and a half, and then we're going to move into our next panel after that.
Mr. Kurek, you have five minutes.
Conservative
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
Thank you very much.
Let me start by saying a big thank you to the witnesses for your bravery in coming today and for your continued advocacy in speaking out about these and all of the associated issues.
Mr. Tohti, can you expand a little as to how Uighurs who live in Canada have faced pressure, influence, threats and intimidation by the communist dictatorship in Beijing? Could you expand a little on what that has looked like and some personal experience or those who you know?
Executive Director, Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project
Thank you.
It is a long list, and we have been passing this information to our government officials since the early 2000s. For example, I'm a Canadian citizen, but I'm a Uighur Canadian, and you are also a Canadian citizen and a holder of the same passport. If the one Uighur Canadian and another Canadian citizen go to the Chinese consulate to get a Chinese visa, you get totally different forms and procedures than the Uighur Canadians. It's totally different.
They will ask, for example, how you remain in Canada, whether you applied for asylum or not, and you have to receive an invitation from your parents. Your relatives need to have security clearance. There are so many things. Also, you have to sign a pledge of loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party if you are a Uighur Canadian, as an example. That also effectively isolates the Uighur Canadian from their family members. It creates that kind of fear that if I go to protest, here's a consequence, and I may not see my parents again, or I cannot invite my parents to come to see me because the passport is given by the government.
Uighur Canadians are subject to a totally different set of rules by the Chinese government, not only in China but here in Canada as well. For that reason, regular phone calls threatening them not to participate in any protests are very standard, but it goes much further: to be an informant for the Chinese government and report on whatever's happening in Canada. Don't do anything that is against the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.
Conservative
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
Thank you very much for that.
I know time is limited, so if there are further examples or stories you have, please feel free to follow up with this committee. Certainly, I think what you've shared today behooves us to take this seriously, and I appreciate that.
Mr. Kwan, you've talked about some of the examples of how the communist dictatorship in Beijing puts pressure on Canadians and Canadian democratic infrastructure. How commonly known was this prior to some of these recent revelations? Can you expand as to how well known it was among yourself and others within the Chinese diaspora in this country?
Co-Chair, Toronto Association for Democracy in China
Very commonly known. In fact, we've been saying it all along for the last 15 or 20 years. We've seen a lot of this on the ground, obviously, and many of these have not been reported, or if they were reported to the local police or the RCMP, they will not be handled because there's a lack of evidence. That's why, in 2017, many of us banded together and collected evidence and testimonies from which we produced the harassment and intimidation report together with Amnesty International and submitted it to the relevant government departments.
Conservative
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
In the time I have left, if we have all this evidence, why do you think there has been a hesitancy or a refusal to act on behalf of the government?
Co-Chair, Toronto Association for Democracy in China
I'm not sure. We have not gotten any acknowledgement, so far. Normally, when you write a letter to an MP or to a minister, you at least get acknowledgement saying we received your letter and we'll pass it along to somebody else. We did not even get these letters.
Conservative
Co-Chair, Toronto Association for Democracy in China
First of all, we sent it to GAC and then, of course, to the RCMP. The RCMP is the primary one that we are trying to deal with.
Conservative
Co-Chair, Toronto Association for Democracy in China
I believe we had copied some ministers. I don't remember who exactly was copied.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Kurek.
Next we're going to go to Ms. Hepfner for five minutes.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I also want to thank all the witnesses for being here to testify with us today.
Mr. Kwan, I want to go back to something that you mentioned about Markham—Unionville. I want to say that I'm not the least bit surprised that Paul Chiang won that election. He was a police officer in the region for 28 years. He speaks eight languages, and he's been an excellent member of Parliament for the last two years. I just wanted to put that on the record.
I want to ask you about the length of time that you believe there's been foreign influence by China in Canada. You mentioned that this has been going on since the 1990s. You testified before a parliamentary committee in 2006, so this is a problem that spans several governments.
I would like you to give us an idea about how the problem has maybe changed or developed over that time.
Co-Chair, Toronto Association for Democracy in China
For one, China has become more sophisticated, more subtle. In the early efforts, China was seen as kind of bumbling in many ways and perhaps not taken seriously by our elected officials or law enforcement, but China has now upped their game, if you will, in such a way that many of these things that we're dealing with are very subtle.
I can point you to one thing. China does not play by the rules of engagement that we know in the West. We think that we have a contract with a Chinese company to install X-ray machines in all our embassies around the world, and the contract says, “Thou shall not do this, thou shall not do that, thou shall not share the information.” We don't believe the Chinese will follow that kind of contract, because we in the Western world think a contract is a contract.
If I engage a Chinese company to process visas in China for Canadian consulates, we think that the employees they hire will abide by the rules of privacy and whatever the contract says, but that, in fact, is not the case. The Chinese government has a way to get their people loyal to the party, loyal to the government and loyal to the country to do what is needed to do. I don't think there should be any surprises that they would do that.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
Thank you.
I will turn now to Ms. Lim.
You mentioned xenophobia in your opening statement, and I'm wondering if you can describe how foreign interference and conversations about foreign interference can affect the experience of Chinese Canadians and perhaps their participation in the democratic process in Canada.