Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 5th, 2018

[Justine De Jaegher]

We don't have hard data on that on our end, obviously, although I do think the statistics Coty cited from the Chief Electoral Officer's report after the election are useful. We could extrapolate from those youth voter figures the degree to which post-secondary students of that group factored in.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

The legislation we're studying right now, Bill C-76, reverses that and brings back the voter information card. Do you think more students would be likely to go out to polls if they were able to use that as one of their pieces of identification?

[Justine De Jaegher]

We do. We think the fewer the burdens placed on students in terms of accessing that vote, the more likely they are to do it.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Another concern your executive director had at that time was with respect to the removal of the commissioner from Elections Canada. Why was that a concern? That's something that has been reversed now, too.

[Justine De Jaegher]

That was just essentially, I believe, more oversight, and allowing for more of that. Also, I know there were concerns raised about our work with Elections Canada, trying to facilitate rather than hinder that. To my understanding, that's where this was coming from.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Okay.

Engagement is also a big piece of this legislation, and that, I think, is mainly what your organization does as well. The role of Elections Canada will now be re-expanded, I guess, back to being able to educate, as one piece, and being able to inform people on more than just where they can vote but also on the importance of voting, with more information around voting.

Why do you see that as being important, if you do, and how do you think your organization can work with Elections Canada to engage more voters in the future?

[Justine De Jaegher]

We're strong advocates of encouraging greater democracy for everyone. We think that should be the goal, so we think the reforms proposed are positive. We already do work with Elections Canada, in what capacity we can, in terms of testing new voting systems. We have participated in tests around an expanded on-campus polling station program with Elections Canada. That was very successful, so I imagine that relationship would continue to be positive.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I know that you're registered as a third party with Elections Canada. You spent almost $29,000, or a little short of that, in the last election. What type of activities did you engage in to spend that money?

[Justine De Jaegher]

I believe that was primarily spent on social media advertising—YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.—around information on how to vote and the issues that students felt it was important to consider in this election. It was primarily that, but it was also materials, such as printing. We did a lot of on-the-ground outreach with our members on campus. It was probably those two areas.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

What kind of information do you disseminate in those print materials? Do you support a certain political party, or do you consider it to be more information as to where the parties stand on issues?

[Justine De Jaegher]

It's the latter. Again, I believe we sent out a survey to all parties to provide their responses to questions on the student issues we had identified as being important to our members. Then we did publish those responses, I believe verbatim, on our website, with a link to them on the print materials and the social media materials. The materials were a mix of information on how to vote, what you need in terms of ID, the importance of voting, and the issues that students had identified as being important. They were not identifying a particular party to support.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Earlier you said that your financing comes mainly from dues. How much are your dues, and who are the students who have become members? Are they university, college, high school...?

[Justine De Jaegher]

They are part-time and full-time college and university students from across the country. There are about 650,000 of them in member locals. Student unions are certified as members with the CFS through a referendum process. Student dues vary slightly from province to province, based on CPI increases and things like that, but it's approximately $16 per year per student.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Do I have any more time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

You have 30 seconds.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Okay.

Thank you so much for being here and for engaging students. You guys do a lot of great work. I'm glad to hear that the count for student voters, young voters, went up last election. Hopefully, we can keep that up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much, Ms. Sahota.

Now we will go on to Mr. Falk.

Welcome to the most exciting committee on the Hill.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Good. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to our witnesses for attending committee today. Your interventions have been interesting and informative, so thank you.

Mr. Jones and Mr. Besner, I would like to start with you. In the work you do, when it comes to cybersecurity and investigating threats or breaches of security, do you do that proactively or do you respond to reports?

[Scott Jones]

It's a mix of both. We strive to always be proactive, really look at what a malicious cyber-actor would be doing, and try to get ahead of the threat. Especially in our defence of the Government of Canada, we've invested really heavily in proactive defence, taking action to thwart the activity before it is a costly breach, that type of thing. Unfortunately, though, with the dynamics of cybersecurity and the cyber-threats that are out there, threats sometimes evolve very quickly and do get through, so we have to respond to events as well. We work to minimize that. Every time there's an event, we also try to learn and apply defences so that it can't happen again that same way.

So it's a mix of the two.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

You identified different groups. You called them enthusiasts, and there were others. What are the primary sources of your threats?

[Scott Jones]

It's a broad mix of everything from very sophisticated nation-state activity typically targeting the government for espionage types of things, all the way down to hacktivists or enthusiasts, but in between you have cybercriminals.

Cybercrime is growing on the Internet and is increasingly sophisticated and very hard to detect, and there's a lot of money to be made. Because of its pan-global approach, it's also hard to track it all down. Cybercrime is growing.

You do see some terrorist use of the Internet, mostly for propaganda and recruiting types of things, and for fundraising, not necessarily in the cyber-attack sphere. Then you have hacktivists and enthusiasts.

Jason, did that cover it?

[Jason Besner, Director, Cyber Threat Evaluation Centre, Information Technology Security, Communications Security Establishment]

Yes, you covered it.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Are there algorithms you use or programs you've developed that assist you in the work you do?

[Scott Jones]

We use a wide variety of things. Last year, we actually open-sourced some of our cyber-defence tools to share with the cybercommunity in Canada as part of our approach to try to grow the Canadian ecosystem. That was our program called “Assemblyline”.

In addition, certainly we use a lot of algorithmic work in terms of machine learning and some artificial intelligence: anything that can automate the repetitive work of my analysts so that they can concentrate on the new threats, the emerging threats. Our goal is to understand it, automate it, automate defences, and then move forward so that our analysts can be freed up.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

When you've identified a threat, what would be your course of action?