Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 7th, 2019

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

May I ask you a very specific question about this protocol committee, this panel?

We can all sit back as people who are engaged in electoral politics, and what if an announcement is made in the middle of a campaign that one of our databases has been hacked and been used by a foreign body, a foreign government even, to spread very targeted and malicious lies about some other party? Who has the power to delay the actual vote of an election?

[Stéphane Perrault]

The law is quite clear on that. I can make a recommendation to the Governor in Council only in cases where it is impracticable. That's the criterion, that it's impracticable for me to conduct the election. That has to do with the capacity of having poll sites, for example, if there's a flood, the register of electors being accessible or if there's an attack, but it does not deal with the parties' own challenges.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Right.

Allow me this. That's a very high bar and a very specific scenario in which you could delay. This is not partisan in nature, but just a scenario we can imagine. The Liberal Party finds out it's been hacked. The panel realizes this. Every piece of data the Liberals have about every voter they've contacted, pro and con, is now known to a foreign entity. The Russians have targeted them with fake news about every Liberal candidate and the current Prime Minister. We are made aware of this. The public is made aware of this. You are receiving Facebook posts and messages that are straight-out lies. We can't pause the election. This panel can say, “The Liberals have been hacked. Any emails and Facebook notes you get are probably not true.” Spreading lies about the Prime Minister is an example.

[Stéphane Perrault]

I think it has to be very clear: There is no legal mechanism to pause the election short of an operational constraint on Elections Canada. The law does not allow for that.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

It's remarkable, considering the threat that we face.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you, Mr. Cullen.

Now we'll open it up to anyone who wants to ask questions.

Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

This actually is meant more for Nathan than it is for our guests.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I just want to observe that fake news has been out there ever since the serpent said to Adam and Eve, “If you try eating this apple, it's going to give you all kinds of awesome stuff.” It seems to be what's actually happened in recent times. You can spread information more rapidly, as with this rumour, and that creates a situation in which, if you think of fake news as being mind viruses in a sense, they are more virulent. By the same token, I think the way of disproving them can also be spread more rapidly. I suspect what's needed is some kind of cultural shift to allow us to deal with the fact that something you hear at the last second ought to be treated with some suspicion. I think that, ultimately, is where we're going to find our cure for it. It doesn't mean we shouldn't look for policy solutions, but I think, as a practical matter, that's where we're likely to find our answer to last-minute assertions meant to throw us off our game.

I did have one thing for the CEO. I just wanted to say that I very much appreciate what you're trying to do with regard to rural polls, advance polls in particular, the scenario that I had some frustration with. I recognize that you are under a very difficult mandate, in that you have to make every polling place accessible to disabled persons. I think it's a 15-point test. That rules out a lot of otherwise ideal locations.

I'll just say this: I appreciate the work you're doing. I would be grateful if, in your post-election report, you could come back and indicate, number one, how successful you were, recognizing that you'll be more successful in some parts of the country and less in others for reasons that have to do with the inventory of buildings. I would also be grateful for any suggestions you might come back with as to how we need to deal with this. Maybe the 15-point test is too inflexible and actually only 12 of the 15 points are really key. I kind of threw that out as a.... Anyway, perhaps getting back to us and saying that there is a problem here but not there would help us in making sure that kind of voting is available to all Canadians, everywhere.

[Stéphane Perrault]

May I have a bit of time to respond to this? It's an important point and I have a few things.

First, as I said, we are increasing the number of advance polling locations. That will give some assistance. One of the things we've changed is we used to draw polling divisions. Then the returning officers would bring up polling divisions, search for a polling location based on those 15 criteria and maybe not find something that was very suitable within the boundaries of a particular polling division. Now the sensible thing, which we're doing now, is to have returning officers identify the polling locations first and then draw the geography around them. That's a better approach. We know that 85% to 90% of the polling locations are the same, election after election. The ability to draw the boundaries knowing what the polling locations will be will reduce that. We've also built some technology, some software—

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

They use a very similar technique for finding new locations for Giant Tiger stores, by the way.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Stéphane Perrault]

You might be interested in this. We have software that allows us to look at outliers. We can run the software and it will tell the returning officer, based on the road network, if there are voters who are actually nearer another polling place. It will also tell them if there are voters for whom there is an inordinate travel distance compared to the rest of the community. That software has been used for the first time in this election, starting with this reverse process, starting with the polling locations and then doing the boundaries.

That, combined with the increase in advance polls, I cannot promise there won't be any problems but we feel we are better equipped to avoid that kind of problem.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

It would be unrealistic to expect no problems. I'm asking that post-election you identify where you found them arising and then present to us your suggestions as to any solutions that might involve our role. For example, the law has to be tweaked in order to make them more accessible.

With regard to your last point, I'm very glad you raised that. I know my riding boundaries have been redrawn, but at one time we had a situation in which people in the riding were on the west shore of a lake where the boundary was a straight line following a county boundary. The shoreline of the lake was, of course, drawn by the hand of nature, and as a result caused a small number of homes in my riding to be very far from any polling station. On a one-off basis, our returning officer—to her credit—was able to set up a spot where they could vote outside of the riding boundaries at a poll box just for them.

I suspect that's the kind of thing you're referring to when you talk about the exceptional locations.

[Stéphane Perrault]

Yes. That kind of situation would have been caught, should have been caught, by the software that we're now using to allow us to avoid that.

This is a really good example of what running an election from Ottawa is about. If you look at the election surveys, 99% of voters were satisfied with their polling location and 97% were satisfied with their advance polling location. The surveys would tell us that there's no problem, but that's not how you run elections. As you know, there are local issues that do not come up in the magnitude of the surveys and overall data. They're real issues that need to be addressed.

In terms of returning officers and candidates being on the ground and signalling the issues to us, I think that's very helpful.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

I have a list here, so try to make your questions a reasonable length.

I have Ms. Sahota, Mr. Nater, Mr. Hardie, Mr. Cullen and Madam Lapointe.

Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you.

My first question is in terms of the security penetration testing that you referred to before. How much funding is going into preparing yourself? With these current threats in mind, what outside agencies or companies, if any, have you hired, or is it all being done mostly in-house? I don't mean CSIS and all those types of government agencies that you're working with. Are you working with any other companies that are helping you do this testing?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Typically, penetration testing is done by third party private organizations that are white-listed by CSE, so that we know we're working with the right people and not the wrong people.

Overall, our spending on security on an annual basis is around $5 million.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Okay.

Has this increased a whole lot from previous election years?

[Stéphane Perrault]

It has, but sometimes it's hard to separate the increase on security from other things. I'll give you a couple of examples. When you do patches to software, you're not necessarily doing that for security reasons, but it's really important for the security to do those patches.

Similarly, when we build the systems today we need to build them not because the old ones are not secure, but because they're obsolete. They need to be rebuilt. As we do that, we build them with security in mind, with the new technology and so forth.

Not every security improvement is a security expenditure. A lot of what we do improves security as a benefit. For example, we had to build a new data centre. That new data centre is much more secure. For that data centre, I can tell you that there are $13 million over six years strictly for security devices. That does not count—and I'll be corrected if I'm wrong—the expenditures of the Communications Security Establishment for their device monitoring our systems.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

It's interesting. In the public safety committee we're currently doing a cybersecurity study. It's very eye-opening and it's very scary because of the gaps we currently have with all of our organizations—our government and our Canadian companies as well. I'm glad that this has been a big focus.

We're well aware of fake news being a growing phenomenon. I know you can't monitor everything that's out there. That would be almost impossible for you to do. I know social media companies are facing that same challenge. They have put a lot of money into trying to tackle the problem as well.

How about educating those who are consuming the information? Is there any money being put towards educating Canadians about this threat, about how to be more cognizant and mindful of what they're reading, and how to identify something that may come from an invalid source versus other sources, and sources outside of our country? What are you doing in terms of that?

[Stéphane Perrault]

It's a large problem and well beyond Elections Canada. I know that there are efforts elsewhere, both public sector and private sector efforts, but we have to do our part in that. There are a few things.

One is rapid response. I think Mr. Reid mentioned it. As I indicated, we're monitoring and we will be responding quickly. That's one aspect.

The other aspect that's very important for us in the coming months is to brand it. I talked about our pre-writ campaign, which is to brand Elections Canada as the trusted source of information. In the coming months, part of our strategy will be to make sure that Canadians understand that if they need information about the voting process they can check Elections Canada and that we're a trusted source. We're having a registry, which is our own repository of all our communications, all our tweets and all our posts. If something appears to be from Elections Canada, but you're not sure, media, citizens or parties can check and say that this was, in fact, a message by Elections Canada or not.

There's a range of things that we're doing. They do not tackle the full breadth of this disinformation problem that all societies are dealing with.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Have you been contemplating doing more perhaps?

[Stéphane Perrault]

I think there are different players that need to do their part. I can't myself take on to resolve media illiteracy as a whole, but I think media illiteracy, as it relates to understanding the electoral process, is part of my mandate. We're going to do some work in that area.