Foreign Affairs Committee on March 23rd, 2017

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you, Mr. Fragiskatos.

We'll now go to Madame Laverdière, s'il vous plaît.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Minister, thank you for your very insightful presentation. I will sort of respond to your invitation. You mentioned the issue of cybersecurity during your presentation and you invited us to ask for details. I will do that right now.

You talked about daily attacks. Can you tell us more about the source of those attacks and about the Latvian government's reaction?

[Edgars Rinkevics]

Thank you very much.

I cannot answer in French, but I understood everything you said.

I just want to stress that when they talk about cyber-attacks, it is very difficult to trace the whole line of the attacks. I am sure that in your hearings you have heard it from your own experts. For instance, if we want to be very formal, then sometimes the biggest attacker is our neighbour in Lithuania or Estonia. We don't really believe that our Estonian or Lithuanian or sometimes Swedish friends are very much interested in our secrets or in our email system, so we try to trace those, let's say, attacks and you end up with proxy servers somewhere in Brazil or in China. But then you have also some reasonable intelligence analysis to suspect that sometimes those are originating in a close neighbourhood in the east.

We witnessed, especially during the period of Latvia's presidency in the European Union—that was in the first half of 2015—attempts to penetrate the information systems of foreign ministries. Because at that point we were the leading agency for the organizations and the content of the whole EU, and not only for foreign and defence policy. We were sharing our responsibilities with the high representatives for foreign and security policy, but we were also responsible for the daily business of the EU at every level, from justice and home affairs to health, welfare, social security systems, and so on. We also noted attempts to penetrate our systems through very specific emails planting viruses, and most of those were information-gathering attempts.

We are paying enormous attention, particularly to defence, foreign affairs, and the interior ministries, and also spending a lot of resources to build the necessary walls. I suspect that if those attempts were really successful, we would see some WikiLeaks type of situation with immediate information warfare involved. I think that we have been rather successful. From that point of view, it is sometimes very difficult to say, especially in a court of law, that we have full evidence that this originated in that city. But the patterns we are analyzing have shown where the real origin is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you very much.

I'll now go to Mr. Sidhu, please.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for coming to Canada to meet the rest of the committee, because I wasn't able to go to Latvia.

As you know, Canada firmly believes in Latvia's potential, because you were the first one to sign the CETA and you understand the importance of modern trade. The former secretary of state, John Kerry, made a compelling case why Latvia is such an excellent destination for foreign investment. We lately came up with $350 million towards the deployment of the Canadian battle group into Latvia. Do you think all these assurances will encourage the rest of the world to invest in Latvia in the future?

[Edgars Rinkevics]

Thank you very much for asking this question.

Actually, one message I want to leave not only with you but also with the broader public, especially with the business community here in Canada and also all over the world, is that thanks to those decisions taken in Warsaw, thanks to Canada, thanks to other NATO allies, we are probably currently the safest place to invest because that investment is well protected. That was exactly the message I also heard from your international trade minister, Mr. Champagne, when he was in Riga, and I am meeting him later. From that point of view I think it is also very important.

By the way, that is also part of some kind of smear campaign that you sometimes read in the press, some not so serious analysis that World War III is going to start in the Baltics, that there is imminent potential for Latvia or Estonia being the next Ukraine or Crimea, and so on. Sorry for using that language but I will dismiss it in one word, which is “rubbish”. We have to counter those kinds of claims every day. If there weren't a bigger section by NATO I probably wouldn't speak with such a degree of certainty here before you or with the press.

I do believe, by the way, that one way to counter the current wave of authoritarian populist regimes is actually by joining our efforts also to promote modern free trade regimes. I am a real believer that CETA is the first modern free trade agreement the European Union has signed with anyone. I wish that we would continue, also, our very difficult but still very necessary negotiations with the United States in signing a so-called TTIP agreement. Currently, as the new administration is settling in, those talks have been suspended, but let's wait.

I believe that CETA is providing a great opportunity also to build not only, as we have through NATO, a great transatlantic security partnership, but also a great transatlantic economic partnership.

By the way, we are very thankful for the money you are spending on Canadian troops, but we are also spending some money buying your Bombardier planes for our national airline, Air Baltic. I have flown on some three or four flights already with the new Bombardier CS300 series. I would say that this is a really great plane. So trade is already showing some good results. I wish now that Canada will buy some big things from us as we buy from Canada.

We are going to discuss today how we can engage in more trade activity when it comes to IT, pharmaceuticals, and how we can fully use the CETA potential.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Colleagues, that will wrap up our discussion with Minister Rinkevics.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the minister for, first of all, coming to the committee, and most importantly, coming to Canada to engage with our ministers on very important matters among ourselves, Latvia, and the whole region.

Again, Minister, thank you. I hope we've sharpened you up just a little bit because the press has been following what you were saying today so they'll be much harder on you than I think my colleagues were, but I can guarantee you we've appreciated your time and we enjoyed it and you are welcome to come before our committee any time. Thank you very much.

[Edgars Rinkevics]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I must admit, you have been much nicer than my own committee back home. Thank you for that.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you very much.

[Edgars Rinkevics]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Colleagues, we'll adjourn this meeting to the call of the chair.