Information & Ethics Committee on April 21st, 2023

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

Thank you very much. I'm very grateful for your testimony today. Of all the witnesses I've heard throughout my career, your speech reflected the most experience and was of the highest quality. I'm astounded.

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Gourde.

We will now go to Mr. Fergus for five minutes. Then I will give the floor to Mr. Villemure for two and a half more minutes, making it a total of five minutes for him, and then it will be Mr. Green's turn.

Mr. Glucksmann, is it okay if we keep you for another 15 minutes?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

Yes. I will be late for my next appointment, but you're more important.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

All right. Thank you very much.

Mr. Fergus, you have five minutes. I'm going to stick tight to the timeline. Go ahead, please.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I'm grateful for your generosity, Mr. Glucksmann.

Mr. Glucksmann, when I did a little research into European Parliament procedures, I saw that Parliament reviews documents classified as secret and top secret.

Can you tell us about the protocols your committee has in place so that it can review secret and top-secret documents?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

Actually, we hold various types of meetings: public meetings, in camera meetings and meetings that require security clearance. Each meeting type has its own access to information rules. So not all of our work is public. That's a given.

By the way, I must tell you that we also had to look into the European Parliament itself when we realized that suspected Russian agents were attending in camera meetings. It wasn't our committee, it was our defence committee. All those rules didn't prevent our work from being infiltrated.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

We have a National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians here. It's made up of parliamentarians whose backgrounds are carefully checked and who commit to reviewing any type of top-secret document. However, limits have been placed on what they can reveal about those documents afterwards; they produce a highly classified report and another one that is made public.

Do you feel this is a good way to go about it? Is it similar to your way, where you can review some documents you're free to disclose and others you cannot?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

Of course, certain documents that some people have access to cannot be made public. The problem we have here is that, as you know, the European Union includes 27 countries. Authorizations are not generated by the European Union, but rather by the member state you come from. That can create issues over here.

If I were you, I wouldn't necessarily take my cues from our institutions, even though I have tremendous respect for them. In my opinion, you have attained a degree of consistency that must surely be better than ours. Our institutions are still young. This is both a strength, because they can evolve rapidly, but also a weakness in many other ways.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Oh, for once, we're ahead of you!

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I have a minute and a half left. I'd like to go back to what China, Russia, Iran and other countries that want to shake up democracies are really doing. Do you think your special committee could strike a committee that could go beyond closed doors? Would it be beneficial for it to have a committee of parliamentarians, like the one we have in Canada, to look at top-secret documents?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

Quite frankly, yes. Moreover, I've often experienced the frustration of a European parliamentarian when I interact with colleagues in the U.S. Senate, for example, and discover the extent of their investigative powers.

We don't have that here. Our special committee includes a secretariat that I think is great, but we have neither the power to compel declassification nor the power to investigate.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Fergus.

Mr. Villemure, you have the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm delighted to get five minutes instead of two and a half.

Mr. Glucksmann, when you were doing your study, did you observe any attempts by foreign countries to destabilize intelligence agencies?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

We observed issues, but we didn't have access to sufficiently classified information to determine if they were attempts at destabilization.

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

Okay. So perhaps they were, perhaps they weren't.

Did you observe any journalists trying to destabilize or interfere? I'm not talking about the media in general, but specific journalists.

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

Yes, and there are many of them.

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

Without divulging any classified information, obviously, can you tell us more about the impact those actions had?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

Some journalists are employed by the Russian regime or the Chinese regime, among others. We also have schemes that involve feeding journalists false information or fake scoops. The French television channel BFMTV recently went through a scandal of that kind.

Journalists are obviously a target.

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

To sum up your entire point, Parliament has a role to play. It should be possible for us to establish a registry through an independent entity that would track funding. It would also allow for registration and monitoring. We would need to ensure that this entity is independent of government.

Is that the direction you spoke of earlier?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

Yes. We're in the middle of reforming our rules at this very moment. Our committee must very quickly orchestrate some compromises on the proposed reforms. We have the transparency registry, but also a conflict of interest registry. We see these as fundamental.

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

All right.

You stated in the report that certain political parties were backed by foreign financing. Are you talking about one of the 27 member states of the European Union being supported by another E.U. country or rather by countries that are outside the European Union altogether?

[Raphaël Glucksmann]

When we say “foreign”, we mean outside the European Union.