Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 7th, 2017

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Okay.

I want to move on to what you said before about cyber-attacks. As my colleague Mr. Richards said, you can't really hack paper ballots. If you're able to speak to it, what threats do you potentially know about, or what are you looking at to help protect our systems, so to speak?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Thanks for the question.

I want to be clear that at this point we don't know of any potential or existing threats that have come to Canadian political parties or the Canadian political system, but we did see in a recent election of one of our close allies attempts to influence the election and to collect information from political parties. As I was starting to tell your colleague Mr. Richards, the Australian Signals Directorate has recently offered the same kind of information and best practices to its political parties because it has experienced some attempts to access the information political parties have. France has also made similar offers and will be offering a session to its political parties at the end of the month. We know some of our other allies have also experienced this.

Really, this is a proactive step for—

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Yes. I believe in security. I'm with you on that. I think the issue in the States was the release of emails. I'm not sure if the people in the DNC were mad because they got caught or because they wrote them. I think it might have been because they got caught.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

It wouldn't be about the government protecting those systems. It would be about their providing this information to all political parties on how they can best protect the integrity of their systems, because it's not just about emails. Political parties do have information with regard to Canadians. I think our government believes it's important to protect that. Of course, it would be at the discretion of political parties to take us up on this offer.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

I have one more quick comment. You were talking about the fundraising. I think you're correct that currently what's going on with the Prime Minister doesn't break the law, but it does break the ethical laws.

I would think to make it easier—

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

I didn't say that.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

No, I did.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

But you said I was correct, and I didn't say that.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

To make it easier, instead of changing the law or strengthening the law, it would be easier just to ask him to stop doing what he's doing.

I have only a minute left, and if it's okay with the chair, I would like to give my time to my colleague Elizabeth May.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

I'm very grateful.

Thank you, Jamie.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I really have only one question. I think there's a conflict in your mandate letter. As one of my colleagues said earlier, this may be above your pay grade to answer. I don't think it's about pay grade. I know your mandate letter comes from the Prime Minister.

It's very fundamental to your role as Minister of Democratic Institutions, as you said in your opening, to restore Canadians' trust and to encourage participation. Yet your mandate letter puts you in a position of immediately breaking trust with Canadians by withdrawing the commitment to electoral reform.

My question is not to ask you to sort out that conflict but to ask whether you are willing to pursue with members of Parliament who want to find potentially a middle ground so you can, through electoral reform, restore the trust of Canadians in the promise the Liberals made.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Elizabeth, for your question, and thanks for joining us here today. I look forward to working with you on many different issues as we have in the past and as we move forward.

I think there are many aspects of my mandate that will continue to enhance trust and respect in democracy, which I look forward to working on. I think it's also important that we spent a long time consulting with Canadians. A lot of people in this room spent a lot of time consulting with Canadians and we heard many different points of view, and all of them were valid, because everyone has their own point of view and their own perspective on that. So I think it's important that we listen to Canadians and I think it's important that we take this step forward and that we continue to work with the committee and with members of Parliament to do what we can to enhance trust and democracy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you, Minister.

Mr. Chan, I understand that you don't need to go in camera.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I don't think I need to go in camera. I've listened to the lines of questions from all my colleagues and I think I'm on the same subject matter. If we're all confident that it has already been on the public record, I'm fine to continue in the open.

Thank you, Minister. I've listened carefully and my questions all relate to the first line in your mandate letter regarding cybersecurity threats. I specifically want to follow up on some of the comments you already made to both my colleague David and my colleague Blake's line of questioning on cybersecurity threats.

How does the Communications Security Establishment liaise with political parties as you work with it along with the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Public Safety? Should we be basically reaching out and providing designated individuals who will be working with you, with these other ministers, and with the CSE? Then I think what is most important from the perspective of political parties—and I recognize you already answered this question by saying that the intent of your mandate letter is to provide best practices—concerns any information that might be shared by the political parties with the CSE and with you and the other ministers. How do we have confidence that this information will be compartmentalized and not shared with other political parties?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Thank you for that question, because it raises a really important point. I think I said this already but I'll reiterate that this is not about the government or the CSE going and seeking information from political parties; it's about their providing information to political parties. At no point, at least in this mandate and in this particular item, does the government receive information from political parties. I think that's a really important distinction to be made, because if this is to be successful and we are to provide support and assistance to political parties, then parties and Canadians need to know that this is about providing assistance on how they can protect their information, as opposed to collecting and going in and taking any information.

Did you want to add to that?

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

As a follow-up on that, Minister, will there be any sort of risk assessment engaged in by the CSE—

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Yes.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

—in terms of potential threats as you provide that advice to political parties? Would it extend to all political parties, not just the parties in the House of Commons but potentially others that are not currently represented? How far would that mandate go?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

That's something that needs to be explored. I think as it's worded right now, it's all political parties represented in the House, but that's a conversation to be had with the Communications Security Establishment. They have not yet done this analysis because it has not been part of the mandate. That's a conversation I'll be having with them to explore how to develop this, but it will be important that they do a landscape analysis of what are existing threats, emerging threats, and potential threats. There will be a public analysis of this, but there will also be more information given specifically to political parties so they can take that information and use it how they best see fit.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

In terms of any information gathered through this particular process, what would the reporting mechanism be back to Parliament? Would it be back to this committee, would it be through the public safety committee, or would it potentially even be to the new national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians proposed in Bill C-22?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

I think that's still to be determined. However, I do believe that it would be very important for this to be reported back to Parliament. If Bill C-22 passes, that committee would certainly be monitoring and have access to this information. That committee would have purview over anything that deals with security intelligence or the CSE, so it would be. However, again I think it is important to highlight and to stress that the information collected would not be information from political parties. It's about providing political parties information to protect themselves. We need to make that distinction really clear—

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Of course.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

—so that people have confidence in this.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I just want to follow-up in what little remaining time I have, about two minutes perhaps—

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

One minute and a half.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

—with respect to questions that my friends in the official opposition raised regarding.... We basically use a paper ballot process, but in part of the recommendations in the public report from the Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada is exploring the use of technology as a basis to improve the voting process. It actually provided a demonstration to the committee on some of that proposed new use of technology.

Is there anything we need to look at as a committee, as you move forward on your mandate letter, that you think might be a potential risk to the integrity of the voting process, as Elections Canada begins to explore greater use of technology as a basis of enhancing the voting process?