Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Sept. 26th, 2024

[Stéphane Perrault]

I think that's a great question, and I thank you for asking it.

Yes, I have. I have to say that it raises challenges.

The Canada Elections Act, as it currently stands, doesn't allow for faces to be added to ballots. However, I think that option should be explored in the longer term.

In that case, I would also try the pilot project formula, but that project would not necessarily result in amendments to the act. We would suggest adding faces to the signs at the polling stations to see how that works.

Operational considerations should also be taken into account, including the production of candidates' images within a fairly strict time frame. We also have to think about the quality of those images. Some candidates may have reservations.

So that would be something we would want to experiment with. It won't be for the next election, but I would certainly do a pilot first, again, using faces on signs rather than on the ballot. We could see if there are lessons to be learned and go from there.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

That's really fascinating.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Ms. Gaudreau.

In the end, you didn't use three minutes today.

Ms. Idlout, the floor is yours.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you so much. Qujannamiik.

I'm going to build on my line of questioning with regard to electors who happen to not be home in their communities on election day, because a lot of the time they have been away for weeks or months at a time, especially if it's medical travel.

As well, Nunavut, being such a huge territory, has three urban hubs—or four, maybe. In the west, we have Yellowknife and Edmonton. For the central part, we have Winnipeg, and then for the eastern part, we have Ottawa. As Mona pointed out, we have an increasing population of Inuit as well.

I wonder if Elections Canada has considered maybe doing special one-day polls in these urban centres to make sure that, for example, the medical patients' votes are counted.

[Stéphane Perrault]

It is a significant challenge for us to do that. I think we're taking an important step forward with this pilot to see what challenges we face and whether we can expand further.

At this point in time, people who are voting by special ballot in Nunavut will have the ability to use.... If, for example, they're in a hospital in Nunavut, out of their home, they will be served with a special ballot that includes Inuktut on it. If they are detained in Nunavut, they will be served with that offering. However, if they are detained outside of Nunavut, for example, we will not have different kits for different prisons across the country. Those electors would not have access to the special ballot. There are limitations to what we are doing now. I think we have to recognize that.

All electors from Nunavut can apply by mail, especially those who are outside of the district. If they are outside of the district for a significant amount of time, we would like to communicate as much information as we can so they can plan their vote and obtain a special ballot in Inuktut to cast their vote, but that would require an application online. We will not be distributing those kits directly across the country or even in the three hubs that you mentioned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Ms. Idlout, I'm going to turn the floor to Mr. Duguid, as your time is up, but I understand there may be some time coming back to you.

Mr. Duguid, the floor is yours.

[Terry Duguid, Liberal, Winnipeg South, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Idlout already mentioned that Winnipeg is a service centre for many Inuit who come south for medical treatment and other services, and I'd like to cede my time to her.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Ms. Idlout, I give you the floor.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Qujannamiik so much, Terry. I appreciate that very much.

Just to continue the discussion about ensuring that electors can make their votes count, given the barriers, I wonder, as well, if there has been consideration of the important roles that the election officers have in the communities. I'm not too sure about how many of your staff will be bilingual in Inuktitut. I think that a lot of the time, unfortunately, we might find that the staff you end up hiring are bilingual in only English and French, whereas candidates might have scrutineers who are bilingual in English and Inuktitut.

I wonder what kind of resolution might happen if the bilingual Inuktitut scrutineer has a difference of opinion with what's going on when the votes are being counted for the different candidates.

[Stéphane Perrault]

That's a very good question.

The role of the scrutineer, as always, is to observe the count and make note of any disagreement that they have, and there are opportunities for either a recount or a contested election before a court. There are legal remedies for that, but that is not unique to that.

It is a challenge to recruit. It's a challenge across the country, but it's even more of a challenge in Nunavut. We always seek, as much as possible, to have people who speak Inuktut, but we are not always capable of recruiting every poll worker who can speak it. That is the case. As much as possible, we will have at least one person at each poll to assist anybody who has linguistic challenges.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you.

I think I just have a little bit more time.

Just to keep broaching the idea of the opportunity that elections can have with having special polls outside of Nunavut.... I just lost my train of thought. Damn it, I had such a good idea.

Having special polls is such a good opportunity to really make sure that some of the barriers that are experienced in the different communities within one riding, with having to fly out from different communities and with the challenges of weather.... By the way, I am excited to have the same election day as the Nunavut election day. I think that's a great opportunity to make sure that there's increased voter turnout. I think electors would prefer to vote on the same day rather than one week apart. I do hope that with the approval of this pilot project, we do consider how elections.... I don't know the terminology they use about how people would be less likely to go to vote if they are one week apart.

I'm glad to hear that you would make special provisions so that people in hospitals, at least in Nunavut, are visited by election officials to make sure they can vote as well. Hopefully that also goes for elders who might not be mobile.

[Stéphane Perrault]

Mr. Chair, with your permission, I would seize the opportunity to talk about the challenge.

I understand the enthusiasm for having a single day of voting in terms of having people drawn on the same day. However, there's the availability of locations and, more importantly, poll workers. We cannot have poll workers administering two sets of rules with different identification requirements at the same time.

Recruiting poll workers for a federal election is a huge challenge. We spoke about the challenges of having enough who speak the language. Having to compete for recruitment with any provincial or territorial management body would have an extreme impact on the availability of services.

I would caution the committee. Hopefully, if it does come to study Bill C-65, I can speak to it, but I do not recommend overlapping provincial and territorial elections with a federal election.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Perrault.

I'm sorry, Ms. Idlout. We do have to keep going here.

My apologies to Mr. Duncan, as I accidentally skipped him when going to Mr. Duguid. Nonetheless, he'll still have the same amount of time.

Mr. Duncan, we'll go to you for five minutes, and that will conclude this round.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's no problem. I have a thick skin, so I've gotten over it quite quickly.

Mr. Perrault, thank you for being here today.

I want to build on exactly that topic of the overlapping election date as proposed in Bill C-65. It would present some massive logistical challenges in terms of polling locations and the human resources side of things for poll workers in a federal election and a territorial election. You've alluded to that.

I also want to get your comments on this. When we talked about this pilot project and the supports, you mentioned in your comments and throughout this morning about Elections Nunavut helping with those language requirements and verifications. Are you confident, or less confident, that on election day—if the counts are on the same evening and the same night—you're going to have the human resources in Nunavut, and you mentioned in Ottawa as well, to be able to prepare the ballots?

Will you, under the special voting rules and special ballots, for example, be able to interpret those that need to be deciphered?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Yes. Our consultations with Elections Nunavut, based on their experience, show that it is quite possible to do the count using multilingual ballots in Nunavut. It may not be the same elsewhere in the country with other indigenous languages, but it is possible.

There is, as we've discussed, a significant community of people who speak the language here in Ottawa. We are confident that we are going to be able to recruit people to it.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Specifically, right now, it is proposed in Bill C-65 that the election days would be overlapping. It's one thing to partner with a territory—Elections Nunavut in this case—but to have the HR necessary on election night for special ballot counting.... I'm just thinking. I just looked up the numbers quickly. There are 22 districts and ridings in the territory for that. There are dozens of candidates and multiple languages additionally that are used in the territory. With the overlap, are you still going to be able to have the HR that's required?

You do mention that there is, but when they're running their own election, I'm sure they have the same recruitment challenges for poll workers and for those who speak the language. Is that not going to be an increased challenge in this case?

[Stéphane Perrault]

We are relying on their experience but not their resources to conduct this pilot. If there was an overlapping election on the same day, on polling day, that would present important challenges, whether or not we do this pilot. Simply the ability to have locations and staff, poll workers, to conduct the election would be a very significant challenge.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

My last question is on the report that you will do back to our committee on this pilot, and our support to do so.

In reviewing all of this, when we look at the poll-by-poll results or how individuals voted, it shows them by poll, and then group one or group two of special voting rules. Just looking at the last election in Nunavut, in 2021, there were 614 votes under the special voting rules, with only 12 rejected ballots as part of that, but it was about 8.4% of the votes cast. Are you able to break down further, just for numbers' purposes, whenever somebody would complete a special ballot, what percentage of individuals chose to write their special ballot in Inuktitut?

Then, if there were challenges—you mentioned that the spelling and the symbols could be a bit different—would you be able, in this circumstance, to break that down further, just to understand the scope, and if there is a challenge with that, the volume or magnitude of that, or lack thereof, if that would be the case?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Yes. I do not expect to do that examination on polling night, because the priority there is to get the results out, but certainly once that task is completed, we would examine unusual rejection rates. We could open the poll bags and look at how many ballots were cast using which language and so forth. There is an opportunity to take the time to study this carefully.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Duncan.

Colleagues, that concludes our discussion with Monsieur Perrault and Madame Morin.

I want to thank you both very much for being here.

Just briefly, for the benefit of both committee members and the public who may be watching, in terms of the next steps here, I have asked our analysts to draft a report on this subject. That will come to the committee for consideration. At that point, we will determine whether or not we want to send that report, as is or amended, back to the House. That will be our contribution to this part of the procedure. Then, as has been mentioned, our colleagues over at the Senate, in the legal committee, will also have to render their own judgment.

In terms of the next steps for this, we will await the report from our analysts, and we will have an internal discussion. Mr. Perrault, we hope to be able to get back to you in the not-too-distant future with our findings and our analysis on that.

In the meantime, colleagues, that was a great meeting and very interesting discussion.

Thank you, Ms. Idlout, for joining us and providing your contributions here as a guest member.

We're going to suspend briefly, colleagues.

When we come back, we will continue the meeting with a completely different matter. We'll see you in a few minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Okay, colleagues.

We will now begin the second part of the meeting.

We are transitioning into a different conversation now, colleagues.

Welcome to Mr. Genuis.

Ms. Mathyssen, welcome back.

Colleagues, we are here to discuss the question of privilege related to cyber-attacks targeting members of Parliament. We had several meetings in relation to this discussion in the last session, and we have some meetings dedicated to continuing the discussion as we move forward in this session.

We have a number of witnesses with us today. We do have some technical audio difficulties with the witness who's appearing online, but I would like to get us moving, and I hope we will be able to troubleshoot that in the very near future.

Appearing today we have with us Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former chief of the Asia-Pacific desk at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. From the Centre for International Governance Innovation, we have Aaron Shull, managing director and general counsel; as well as Wesley Wark, senior fellow. From the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, joining us online is Luke de Pulford, who is the executive director.

Colleagues, we are going to get under way.

Witnesses, you will have five minutes each. Mr. Shull and Mr. Wark, I understand you may be splitting your time, but it will be five minutes in total for your testimony in the introductory component here.

With that, I'm going to go to Mr. Juneau-Katsuya to begin.

The floor is yours, sir.

[Michel Juneau-Katsuya, Former Chief of the Asia-Pacific Desk, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Members of the committee, thank you for giving me another opportunity to share my observations and concerns about the future of our nation.

I was asked to comment on the question of privilege related to the cyber-attack targeting members of Parliament. In short, expect a sharp increase of cyber-attacks in the next years targeting not only members of Parliament but many elected officials of all government levels: federal, provincial and municipal.

Cyber-attacks have been and will remain the weapon of choice for many threat agents. This implies direct and substantive attacks against elected officials, institutions and our democratic systems. The intelligence community identifies basically five threat agents: state-sponsored attacks, radicalized citizens, organized crime/hackers, political activists and insider threats.

In terms of state-sponsored threats, in the last two years, very dark revelations have come to be known publicly about how the current and previous governments have neglected or avoided—sometimes intentionally—acting against foreign interference threats. Since the cat is now out of the bag, foreign agents will be forced, for a while, to work a little bit more covertly, so cyber-attacks will be chosen. Today, we hope the public's and elected officials' awareness has been raised, but it's not enough, sadly. When it comes to cybersecurity, Canada is last in investment compared to others in the G7 and the Five Eyes.

As the work of the committee demonstrates, you are still working on the issue, and many of you must feel like you are pounding your head against a wall. Unfortunately, petty political gains prevent Canadians from receiving the necessary protection. Not enough has been done on the legal side, like bringing modifications to the Criminal Code. A bad course of action has been selected, I must say, despite the fact that many experts advised going in different ways. From the public's perspective, this has only increased the bitterness and the loss of confidence in our institutions.

I repeat: We inevitably expect a sharp increase in cyber-attacks against elected officials in the coming years.

Offensive powers such as China, India, Russia, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and many others will have to change and adapt their strategies. They will also have to reduce their presence on the ground, at least for a while, and be more subtle and sneaky.

Thus, when launching more cyber-attacks against officials, various forms will be deployed: continuous negative and supportive campaigns against people opposed to them or in favour of them, hacking various systems to gain sensitive information, and neutralizing communications and compromising data by targeting specific individuals.

The nature of the work of elected officials is to travel to meet their constituents and to sometimes work at home—everything needed to weaken our cybersecurity. Therefore, more discipline, more awareness, more verification, more ongoing education and more vigilance are needed.

You must have noticed that I've used the words “elected officials”. I stress that we need to work with the federal, provincial and municipal levels. Currently, cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa, and even smaller cities like Brossard, Markham and many others, are under the influence of agents of China, as we speak, at the highest level. This is not fiction; this is fact. Do you want names? I have names. National security without the participation of the provinces is just wishful thinking.

The House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms reports that there have been 800% more cyber-attacks against elected officials since 2018. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, has noted that since 2023, it has received 65 times more requests for protection and doesn't have enough staff to protect all members of the House of Commons. In Quebec, since the last municipal election, more than 10% of municipal elected officials, more than 800 people, have resigned because threats were made against them or their families. In the last provincial election in Quebec, they had to give candidates bulletproof vests and bodyguards.

I will stop at this point, and I will be glad to take questions to develop a bit further the points that I have presented.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you.

Mr. Shull and Mr. Wark, I'm not sure who would like to go first.

Mr. Wark, it looks like it's you. The five minutes between the two of you will begin now. The floor is yours.

[Dr. Wesley Wark, Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Aaron and I can be a dog-and-pony show, but I'm not sure how much value I can give you in 2.5 minutes. I'll do my best, but we are really appearing here as individuals.

The story of the APT31 cyber-attack—CSE calls it a cyber-incident—is a complex one, and I hope it might be of some assistance to the committee to provide my perspective on it.

The Canadian public and the members of Parliament first became aware of a cyber-attack, or cyber-incident, by a PRC entity known as APT31 in March 2024 when the United States Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against seven APT operatives. The indictment revealed that the efforts of this PRC group spanned some 14 years and targeted U.S. and foreign critics, businesses and political officials. One of its many targets was the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, IPAC, which experienced an attack in January 2021 that was technical in nature and that was designed to elicit details of a target's IP addresses, browser types and operating systems through spearphishing. Caught up in this reconnaissance attack were a number of Canadian parliamentarians. The attack was understood as being unsuccessful.

CSE and its cyber centre were at the forefront of efforts to identify this cyber-incident—in fact, CSE was first tipped off by a trusted foreign partner—and to work with the House of Commons administration. Collaboration between CSE and the House of Commons administration is regulated, as I think you know, by an MOU first signed in 2016. Testimony at PIFI on September 24 indicated that a new version of the MOU has recently been signed, stimulated by lessons learned from the APT31 case.

Documentation provided to PIFI, including a chronology of events, indicated that information sharing among CSE, the cyber centre and the House of Commons IT security team about the APT31 reconnaissance was neither seamless nor sufficient in 2021.

CSE's mandate and capabilities need to be understood. It has a sophisticated sensor intrusion warning capacity that it deploys on networks and in the cloud to protect federal institutions and other levels of government. Here, I must disagree with my colleague, Mr. Juneau-Katsuya, in terms of understanding Canada's cybersecurity capabilities. The sensor capacity that CSE has developed has won praise from Canada's Five Eyes partners as best in class. It was first deployed to protect Parliament, starting in 2018, and has since been expanded.

According to the most recent annual CSE report, the organization blocks on average 6.6 billion intrusions a day. When CSE becomes aware of a cyber-operation targeting Parliament, it passes technical information about that attack to the IT security staff of the parliamentary administration for further action. CSE does not engage directly with parliamentarians in terms of providing threat warnings, in contrast to the process set in place for CSIS according to a ministerial directive issued in May 2023. CSE is not a domestic security service. However, it does have an assistance mandate under the CSE Act, and it can provide supportive intelligence and technical means to CSIS.

A directive issued by the chief of CSE in September 2023, and provided in an institutional report to PIFI, emphasizes the significance of its assistance mandate, as well as the need to—and I'll quote from that directive—“Ensure the timely dissemination of its products to the appropriate consumers of intelligence", including the House of Commons administration. That important principle must be upheld and continually tested in practice.

Going forward, and I will end on this point, I believe it will be particularly important—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Just one moment, Mr. Wark. I'm sorry.

Was there a point of order?