Information & Ethics Committee on April 21st, 2023

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

When you talk about institutional co‑operation, are you talking about universities and institutions like that?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

I am talking about universities and scientific, research and development institutions. We have realized the extent to which technology has been looted, including the recruitment, quite simply, of people trained by our states who decide to leave with all their achievements and their work and put them to work for the Chinese regime.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Have you noticed that the Chinese regime is directly or indirectly funding political activities, that is, everything around the democratic process?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

In the case of China, there is not really any direct funding of political movements in Europe. However, this was the case with Russia, which financed the various European extreme right-wing parties and even admitted it publicly by receiving them officially and putting its oligarchs at the service of this project of union of the extreme right-wing parties in Europe and of all the movements that questioned European institutions.

In the case of China, there are no open political games. On the other hand, there are political figures who are in the Chinese orbit and think tanks or research institutes that participate in public life and receive direct or indirect funding from China. So the penetration of political life is more indirect than overt.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

As we speak, would you say that foreign interference is a significant danger to Canadian democracy?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

Once again, thank you for the question.

I am far from an expert on the issue of foreign interference in Canada. That said, what is certain is that in Europe, it is an extreme danger. It is an existential danger. I hope for your sake that your democracy is more stable than ours and that it is better protected. But what is certain is that it is a danger for all democracies. I can tell you that even without being an expert on Canada.

We have to understand one thing. For a very long time, we have not wanted to see that there are regimes, not whose interests are contradictory to ours—this is normal since, even between democracies, there can be contradictory interests—but which are philosophically, ideologically and viscerally hostile to liberal democracies and whose aim is to weaken us in order to establish what Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have together called a new international order.

So I see no reason why a democracy as important as Canada's should be exempt from the threats that affect others.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

In our frame of reference or our language habits, we are not necessarily equipped to think about this chaos. Our parliamentary habit makes us think first of the common good, not of chaos and destabilization.

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

But that’s the key to everything.

It’s very complicated to get into their heads. That was our greatest effort. For me, it involved decentring. You have to read theorists of these regimes, like Vladislav Surkov in Russia, to understand that the goal is chaos and that we should not seek a replica of our own ways.

Westerners often mistakenly assume that everyone else reasons the same way they do. That is not the case.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

If you have any suggested reading for us, it would be most helpful.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Villemure.

Mr. Glucksmann, Mr. Villemure is a Bloc Québécois Member. Thank you for your answers.

The next speaker is Mr. Green, of the New Democratic Party. I believe he will ask his questions in English.

Please make sure that you have the interpretation.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's correct.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

It was a wild guess on my part, Matt.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

John, your French is coming along quite nicely. I had to comment on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you to my French teacher, Anick Robitaille, for that.

Matthew, you have six minutes. Go ahead.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you very much for being with us today, Mr. Glucksmann. I'm keenly interested in your work in the European Union.

To put it on the record, you are the chair of the special committee on foreign interference in all democratic processes in the European Union, including disinformation, and the strengthening of integrity, transparency and accountability in the European Parliament.

Is that correct?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

Yes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

The resolution adopted on March 9, 2022, states that there's a need for an EU coordinated strategy against foreign interference, which among other things, should cover “Interference through global actors via elite capture”.

Can you expand on why a strategy against foreign interference should address elite capture?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

What we have discovered is that an essential elements of foreign interference is this transformation of our elites, political elites, of course, but also economic elites and cultural elites, into a kind of supermarket where you can come with your big companies and offer money to get them to work for you. They come and work for you, be it Gazprom or Huawei, with their networks, their relationships, their knowledge of internal affairs, and it allows incredible influence over your own political decisions.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

We haven't really discovered this in fact in the west. The west kind of created this through colonialism. This is a tactic that has been used by the west in other countries for quite some time. I think that we're seeing it now within our domestic landscapes, which is probably what's unsettling for us.

Would you not agree that the west has also been involved in these tactics for centuries?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

As I'm French, I can only confirm that colonialism was based on this kind of strategy. It's the—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

In the Canadian context, we heard a lot, for a very short period of time, about the Confucius Institutes.

Did that ever come up in your study, in terms of the way in which some of our academic institutions might have been co-opted or influenced through foreign-funded think tanks?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

Yes, of course it came along.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

In your studies, did you ever contemplate countries outside of Russia and China, in fact some that may otherwise be considered allies, engaging in similar types of foreign interference? Was that also part of your accountability and transparency?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

Yes. We have worked on the U.S., for instance, if that was your question.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm curious to know what other countries you may have identified as being active within the context of foreign interference within the European Union.