Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 7th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Yes, we can. While I have you there, do you want to just lower your boom slightly?

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Sure. How's that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

That's excellent. I'm going to hope that.... That's excellent. We'll go back to you.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay. That's great. Thank you.

As I was saying, I think one of the things that I would like to note or go back to for just a moment here...and I will tie all of this into the relevance of the amendment that I put forward. It is a good-faith attempt to trying to reach some consensus on this committee about how to move forward. I recognize that it feels like we're at a bit of an impasse, but I hope that opposition members—in particular, the Conservatives— will see the light based on my arguments today and, hopefully, agree that we can move forward with consensus based on having the national campaign director for the Conservative Party and the other members who are noted in my amendment come here. That, I think, makes perfect sense, and I can tell you why.

One of the things that struck me in the Rosenberg report was.... I've already gone through a lot of the substantive things that our government has done to combat foreign election interference, but one of the projects was the Canadian election misinformation project. What's interesting about this is that there was an attempt to work, and I think successfully to some degree.... I think we can look at how successful it was and actually drill down on key questions that committee members have. I certainly have a lot of questions about not just foreign election interference but misinformation campaigns online, of which there were some—and I would say many—during the last two federal elections. I would like to get into a little more detail on that to say why campaign directors would be useful to hear from, because of course they would have quite a lot of information and an ability to provide information on things they've witnessed and observed during their campaigns. That might be useful for us in terms of learning.

One of the things that I was going to reference in Morris Rosenberg's report is that there was an analysis done of the role that social media platforms play in spreading false information. That's not to say that they intentionally do it, per se. It's just to say that there's a role they naturally play in today's society that allows for the spread of that information.

Madam Chair, am I still coming through okay? I noticed that Ms. Blaney was kind of squinting, so I wondered if I was coming in clearly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

You are. Rest assured that I will let you know if I cannot hear you clearly. Thank you.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Mr. Rosenberg, on page 20, says, “They found that, notwithstanding more assertive moderation and election integrity policies, large social media platforms continued to be home to widespread misinformation.”

It's sort of interesting to think about this topic in relation to this work and study, because there is evidence documented that some of the social media platforms used to spread misinformation related to Conservative candidates in the last election. I think it's interesting to dive into that area and find out more, because we've heard, from our national security and intelligence community, about the fact that our election was free and fair, and that there's no evidence there was any impact on the overall results of the election. Otherwise, it would have triggered the protocol.

In fact, I know we heard.... I'll have to dig out this quote. I remember it, but I can't remember who exactly said it. I think it was David Morrison, but I will check and come back to the committee in a future intervention to verify that. He said something to the effect that the panel did not deliberate as to whether or not any misinformation or attempts at foreign interference in the election reached the threshold. They didn't. The debates and deliberations they had were only around whether or not something actually counted as foreign interference.

This is an interesting distinction, because those are two very different things. Of course, the protocol and the threshold associated with it is quite high on purpose. Notifying the public of foreign election interference is set at a fairly high level to ensure it's only in times when an election has actually been affected. I think what he was saying in his remarks.... Again, I will check as to who said that for the committee members. I'll come back with that specific reference.

Listening to the national security and intelligence advisers' community.... I think it's been very clear in the testimony we've heard to date. There are many other things that point to this, in terms of what they were able to say or not say. It was very clearly implied in what they said: If CSIS had that information, as has been claimed, it would have been provided to the RCMP and the commissioner of Canada elections. It would have been investigated. When asked, the RCMP said there were no investigations under way.

You know, we heard from national security and intelligence experts as prominent as the director of CSIS. They said they could not verify whether or not this leaked information was coming from CSIS or some other organization. To me, there's no confidence. I think Mr. Fergus eloquently spoke to this in his intervention. It's quite concerning when we see uncorroborated allegations floating out there. Obviously, they are dangerous in and of themselves when they're based on likely partial or pieces of intelligence that might not be interpreted correctly, or might not have been analyzed and converted into evidence. I think that's a very big gap, in terms of what's being said, claimed or reported.

These are all very important points to consider. They're all good reasons for understanding the fact that anybody who has a security clearance would be breaking the law if they came to our committee and said things they're not allowed to say.

I don't know what opposition members are hoping to get out of having the chief of staff of the Prime Minister come to the committee, other than trying to perpetuate some kind of false narrative that there's some big cover-up of some big scandal, which to me is just playing politics with a really important issue. What we heard from Fred DeLorey in the Toronto Star article that he wrote was very clear, and I'm going to quote him. I know others have quoted him and I've quoted him in the past. I don't think I used this exact quote, but this is an even better quote. He wrote:

As the national campaign manager for the Conservative Party of Canada during the 2021 election, it’s important to clarify one critical issue. I can confirm, without a shadow of a doubt, that the outcome of the election, which resulted in the Liberals forming government, was not influenced by any external meddling.

The national campaign manager of the Conservative Party of Canada is saying that he can confirm “without a shadow of a doubt” that whatever forms of attempted interference were present did not have an impact on the results of the election. Be that as it may, I think it makes the case for having him come to our committee and speak to why he says something like that with such a degree of confidence.

We have many Conservative members claiming all kinds of things that are untrue, as sensationalistic and absurd as claiming that the Prime Minister is working against the interests of Canada, which is treasonous. Those kinds of claims are hyperpartisan, sensationalistic. They're not true. They're disgusting and they detract from the overall stability of our democracy as a whole. I don't know how anyone who's a member of Parliament can utter such things without having some basis for making such absurd claims. They're completely unfounded claims.

For me, if we have Fred DeLorey, a person as prominent as the national campaign manager for the Conservative Party of Canada, claiming that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, there was no impact on the election results, we should probably hear from that individual. Certainly, hearing from the national campaign director or manager of the Liberal Party of Canada would be great and the NDP's manager, etc., and other parties' managers, would be very helpful as well. I think it would allow us to dive into a very important topic, which is to what degree online campaigns of misinformation and disinformation were present and being spread throughout the country during and perhaps before the election.

I know that during the election there was an independent third-party analysis done for the 2021 Canadian federal election. Despite what Mr. Barrett said, which I found very offensive when I made a point of order earlier and he implied that I had just got out of bed at something like 11 o'clock or something like that—I don't know why he would say such a thing—I was actually up early reading this quite extensive 80-page report on misinformation and disinformation during the 2021 Canadian federal election in preparation for our meeting today. I have lots and lots of observations and, I would say, insights from this report that I would like to share.

It all goes to the argument that we should really be having national campaign managers come before the committee because, of course, they would be best placed, in my view, to comment on the level of misinformation that was circulating during the election, and probably corroborate some of this independent report that has been done by a group called the Media Ecosystem Observatory, which consists of the centre for media, technology and democracy at the Max Bell school of public policy at McGill University, and PEARL, which is the policy, elections and representation lab at the Munk school of global affairs and public policy at University of Toronto.

Prominent individuals in their field have all participated in this work. There's a long list of contributors. For anybody who wants to look up the report and read it, it's called “Mis- and Disinformation During the 2021 Canadian Federal Election”. It's dated March 2022. It's been around for at least a few months, long enough for us to have a review and read it. I've spent quite a lot of time looking at it, because I think it has quite a lot of really useful information.

Why is this report important? It's important because we know that, dating back to at least 2018, there were reports done by parliamentary committees on threats to Canadian democracy. Let me put it this way: The major factor that seems to be evolving or changing the threat environment....

We've heard from every national security and intelligence professional that the threat environment is evolving. Why is it evolving? You could say it's evolving predominantly because of the spread of online information, digital platforms and the prevalence with which they're used by Canadians. That is one of the most important vehicles for the spread of information that may mislead Canadians, erode Canadian democracy and change intentions in the voting behaviour of the public.

If that's the case, I would go back to Morris Rosenberg's report. In the report there are instances of misinformation listed. Some of them do target candidates in the last election, but what's interesting is that we can't just immediately jump to conclusions about that. We already know that domestic and foreign interference online is happening all the time. It's ubiquitous. Literally every single day there's information being spread that's not entirely accurate. Sometimes it's entirely fabricated, but most of the time it's partially inaccurate or partially true, so it's stretching the truth, in a sense. What's interesting about this is that it actually has an impact on the population over time. We should be looking at how we make useful recommendations out of our work today and over the course of this study on that topic.

What's interesting is that in the very first pages of this report, they have a summary. I've read the whole thing, so I'm not going to quote from the executive summary. I've done the work here. The most extensive documented misinformation in the last 2021 Canadian federal election was on COVID-19 misinformation and widespread claims of voter fraud. Those were the two biggest misinformation campaigns online. They also note at the beginning that a lot of the discussion has focused on Chinese interference, which is interesting, because there is actually a lot more evidence that COVID-19 misinformation and claims of widespread voter fraud circulated on social media platforms. They should actually be part of our conversation on this topic. We're not looking at all the threats to our democracy if we're only focusing on the forms of foreign interference coming from China. We actually have to broaden our scope and look at all forms of foreign interference related to misinformation spread online.

One thing that I think is important for us to note is that Canadians are generally able to detect false stories. That's kind of important when considering this topic. There's really strong evidence here that Canadians are able to detect what is false from what is true. That's not to say that the rapid spread of misinformation isn't having an impact on the population. It is to say, thank God for Canadians' ability to discern what is true and not true. That is somewhat holding up in an era where misinformation and disinformation is so rampant and far-reaching.

The third point in the summary is, “we find no evidence that Chinese interference had a significant impact on the overall election.” For that to be on the front page of an executive summary is pretty important.

That's not to say that there weren't attempts. It also says, “Misleading information and information critical of certain candidates circulated on Chinese-language social media platforms.” There's lot of comment in the report about that. However, that it did not have an impact and that there's no evidence of its having an impact on the overall election again corroborates what we've heard from national security and intelligence experts, from the national security and intelligence adviser to the Prime Minister, from all the public servants who are part of the panel that oversees the protocol during the caretaker period and also from ministers who have come before this committee.

If we trust the experts—the people whose job it is to do that work and to protect us in our democracy—we have to say that not only have we had every level of accountability come before this committee, we also have independent reports and professionals from outside of government commenting and corroborating the same conclusion, which is that it did not have an impact on the overall election results.

I think that's important for us to note. I speculate that it's probably why someone like Fred DeLorey, a Conservative campaign manager from the last election, could so confidently say.... I would also say that maybe he could confidently say it had no impact on the election results probably because—and I don't know this for a fact—he had an opportunity to participate in some of those briefings that were given. Again, that is a mechanism our government set up during federal elections—to have party briefings during the election on attempts of foreign interference.

I think it's good to note that in this research study that was done by the Media Ecosystem Observatory, they certainly have verified the fact that most Canadians believe the election was safe from foreign interference and a minority of Canadians believe that misinformation was a serious problem. That may be changing in our discourse today, as a country. Maybe more Canadians are believing it's a bigger, more serious problem. I think that raises public awareness. If, out of all this, we get a greater degree of public awareness around this issue, that's probably a good outcome, but in terms of this committee's work, I think we have to be working to get to the bottom of things to make really good, clear recommendations on how to move forward.

One thing that struck me as a conclusion that they drew from this huge body of research—and I'll go into a little bit more detail as to how extensive the research was—was that a “cohesive misinformed and misinforming group has emerged”, which is interesting. They said that there's a “rise of a 'big tent' of misinformation, where groups who hold false or conspiratorial beliefs about one topic appear to adopt similarly distorted opinions about a broad range of topics.” That's a direct quote from the report, by the way.

What's interesting to me about that is how we see that the sliver of the population that buys into misinformation campaigns gets co-opted by these distorted opinions they're receiving through online sources and memes. They are then further susceptible to absorbing other sorts of conspiratorial beliefs and opinions that come at them online.

It's interesting, because that coincides with my personal experience at the doors in the last election campaign. I saw that the prevalence of that was becoming more clearly identifiable. It's very disconcerting to me that the population of individuals who might already be slightly susceptible to that will then consume more of that misinformation and adopt it into a world view that becomes more and more extreme.

In other circles and conversations we've had on Parliament Hill, that's part and parcel of the challenges that online digital media presents to an evolving era of information consumption in how we get news, media sources and information today, and how we absorb that. How much do we question it? How prevalent is it in our lives?

It's really important for us to think about that and to think through how we combat that ubiquitous kind of foreign interference. We have to be asking ourselves at every step along the way what the truth is and what is factual about how this is done. How is it being adopted by Canadians? To what degree are people buying into it? To what degree is it impacting their behaviour?

There is some good news in this report, and there's some bad news. There's some good news in relation to foreign attempts at election interference when it comes to misinformation, which is probably the vast majority of the attempts at foreign interference in our elections. It really came through misinformation online.

I think that's fair to say. I'm not a national security and intelligence expert, but if we read through the reports and information, I think there's a lot of work to be done in this area, at the very least. It is certainly something that has been documented over and over again, the changing threat environment that we need to be responding to. It continues to evolve very quickly.

One of the other things that they outline at the very beginning of this report is the vulnerabilities that we have as a Canadian society. One of them is what they call “A fracturing of the Canadian information ecosystem”. I'll quote this, because it's probably better said by them than by me. They said:

Canadians are increasingly obtaining their political information from a range of untrustworthy sources. There is an increasing danger of echo chambers or filter bubbles where people will mostly be exposed to information that supports their existing worldview and/or promotes a narrow political view.

This is one of the big vulnerabilities. We've talked about algorithmic transparency and the need to understand how the algorithms that social media companies utilize are feeding people information based on their preferences, and how that can take them down the path to becoming more polarized and potentially having more extreme views that coincide with their overall world view over time. That leads to heightened divisions within Canadian society and less tolerance for sitting down and talking through our differences and really respecting and appreciating the perspectives of others.

One of the other vulnerabilities that is mentioned is “Increasing difficulties in detecting disinformation and coordinated information operations”. What's interesting is that it's hard to detect. The report says:

The rise of platforms focused on privacy that exercise minimal moderation has led to a more vibrant and chaotic environment that can provide opportunities for those seeking to mislead, misinform, or manipulate.

That is another aspect of this that we need to take quite seriously. It's difficult to detect. It's becoming easier and easier to mislead and manipulate that information.

One of the other vulnerabilities was a “gap between the reality and perceptions of mis- and disinformation”. This one's quite concerning as well. This is probably true for our foreign adversaries who are attempting to mislead and misinform the Canadian public, whether during elections or outside of election periods. Many times we've heard our members say this. I'm sure we all acknowledge it. Their intentions are to draw out of us and sow the seeds of division so that our society becomes less trusting, more chaotic, more extreme and more polarized. It really erodes the fabric of our democracy.

This is one of the gaps they mention in this report. It is that over time, in a way, we're sowing the seeds of distrust of all information sources. It doesn't matter whether you're a politician, a journalist or an online platform. Wherever people are getting information, they're able to say, “I don't really trust that.”

How do they really know whether something is truthful or not? Over time, it's shifting. I was happy to hear that the findings in this report still showed that Canadians were generally able to discern what's truthful and what's not, but I think that is changing. There are more and more Canadians who are consuming misinformation and not necessarily identifying it as false or being able to pull out the pieces of falsehood from information that is combined with some truth. You cloak your lies in truth, or the opposite.

It reminds me of my philosophy course called “Truth and Propaganda” when I studied at Carleton. Randal Marlin from Ottawa taught us about truth and propaganda. I won't get into that.

The other thing is the emerging distrust in Canadian democratic institutions. This is another vulnerability that was highlighted in this report. It's pretty significant. They link that with individuals who have really tried to use the pandemic to sow the seeds of distrust. They say there is a growing number of individuals who no longer share the same factual reality as the majority of Canadians do. To me, that's really scary. It's scary, because there's a growing percentage of the population that doesn't share in the factual reality of the majority of Canadians. If there was ever a symbol or sign that we should be concerned, that, to me, is it.

I would say that, if democracy is about anything, it's about the pursuit of truth. It's amazing that in terms of our work here on this committee we're not taking more seriously the threat of misinformation online. It would be great to do some more in-depth work on that.

I'll go to another section here. I think it's important to note a few things that are really helpful for our work. I feel they are important and that they relate to why we would have a campaign director component to this and have the national campaign managers come before this committee.

One of the summary notes on the global context, which is one of the chapters in this report, is that “The tactics used by large-scale, foreign influence and disinformation operations have increasingly been employed by non-state actors including hate groups, extremist organizations, and populist political parties.” That's really interesting, because one of the big summary points, conclusions or findings is about non-state actors using disinformation. Foreign influence isn't just about state actors. It's about non-state actors as well, which is interesting.

I think we should also be looking at that in our study, in our work, which is to say that if information is coming from foreign sources by non-state actors and that information is being picked up and spread in Canada within our elections process, that potentially has an impact on Canadians. Again, I'm going to call into question how much of an impact that has on Canadian voters' behaviour and intentions. I think there's some interesting data in this report on how much misinformation coming from China had an impact on the voting intentions of voters, even in the ridings that individuals are saying were impacted. It's interesting to look at what this independent report says about that, and there are some really interesting findings there. I'll get to that in a few minutes, but I think it will be eye-opening for a lot of us.

There's another finding here from the summary that says, “Disinformation tactics are no longer simply the dissemination of ‘fake news’ stories by easily identifiable bot networks. They now include more subtle manipulation of pre-existing polarized issues, such as immigration, equity-advancing policies, climate change, and LGBTQ+ rights.” It's interesting that the issues that are already polarizing are the ones that these disinformation tactics and campaigns seem to centre around. If you were a foreign actor, what would you do to try to disrupt Canadian democracy? You'd focus on the more contentious issues and try to amplify the amount of discord in the Canadian public over those issues.

It's interesting that those are some of the tactics that are being used, again, by Conservative members making this a partisan activity. They're playing right into the hands of our foreign adversaries. They're essentially sowing seeds of distrust in our democratic institutions by doing that. They're pushing that narrative and claiming all kinds of untrue things and then having the public start to....

This is a tactic. It's a tactic straight out of the playbook of our foreign adversaries, and I don't know why they would perpetuate that. It doesn't make any sense to me that they would take that approach when we're all sitting here as rational human beings and saying, “Let's do what makes sense and what all the intelligence experts and advisers are telling us, and what many Conservative senators, former senators and their national campaign manager have said.” The former director of CSIS Ward Elcock has said the same thing.

I don't understand why they're continuing to call us back to this committee over and over again to debate something that is so clearly a rational approach, which they just don't want to admit, for whatever reason. The only conclusion I could draw is that political gamesmanship is more important to them than doing real work on this issue. Obviously, to do that, they would have to admit the factual reality that our government has done more on election interference than any previous government, as far as I can tell.

That's another example of how they're not living in the factual reality most Canadians are living in, which is something we've seen quite a number of times, from the denial that climate change is real to.... There are many other examples. I won't get into all of those.

I think the fact that disinformation campaigns are exploiting those polarizing issues is quite concerning, as well. We should be looking at that—at how misinformation wraps around, gravitates to, or is really heightened during times when Canadians are focused on big, polarizing issues.

It's also important to note that one of the big challenges they identified was the accusation of election fraud in the United States in the 2020 presidential election, and just how much that sort of campaign seeped over the border, through our social media platforms, networks and chat groups, etc. That was present during our last federal election campaign.

They also note that Canada has, historically, been relatively resilient to misinformation and disinformation, and has adopted a series of measures to limit the spread of misinformation over past years. Again, this acknowledges the work our government has done, which I made mention of in my previous remarks. The Canada Declaration on Electoral Integrity Online was adopted in 2019. All of the major social media platforms signed onto it. Well, it's not just social media platforms: Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, etc. all signed that declaration. Then, we updated it. Before the last election, it was signed again.

There was also quite a lot of awareness-raising around citizen preparedness. This included the digital citizen initiative, led by Canadian Heritage, which increased digital literacy skills, and a public awareness campaign called “get cyber safe”. There was also training for journalists and all political parties, etc. Again, no one can say our government isn't taking these threats seriously. I would say it has done some very significant things. One public awareness campaign reached over 12 million Canadians. That's pretty significant. No one can say reaching a third of the Canadian population isn't significant, in terms of its reach.

How much impact would an awareness campaign have on Canadians? Certainly, it would allow them to, perhaps, start to identify when they're seeing misinformation. Perhaps it even prevented some of the impacts of attempted election interference, both domestically and from foreign sources. We don't know that. It would be hard to establish a causal link, but it's certainly something we could look at. That's a lightning-bolt idea: How do we determine which awareness-raising and citizen-preparedness initiatives have had a positive impact on the Canadian public, in terms of being able to identify and pull apart a question...what is true and not true from what they're consuming online? That, to me, is a worthwhile pursuit, because we could then optimize our strategies and approach to have the greatest impact. To me, that's very rational.

Another thing was a section on Canadians' attitudes towards misinformation. There are some very important findings, here. I'll quote from this, briefly, then discuss why it's important:

Canadians perceive many common political phenomena as misinformation, from politicians exaggerating their promises to the publication of completely made-up stories by a media organization to [as extreme as] hate speech. There is significant ambiguity and politicization of the term.

That doesn't help, obviously. Politicizing misinformation as a term is going to create more challenges and exacerbate things, because what we really need to do is understand what it means and what it is, stick to a common definition and then educate the public around it. I would opt for that in terms of an approach.

Another finding in terms of the summary was that “[a]pproximately [one-]quarter of Canadians reported seeing misinformation during the campaign, while approximately 40% believed misinformation was a serious problem during the election”. That's interesting: A quarter of Canadians, or 25%, reported seeing misinformation and 40% believed it was a serious problem.

This is another finding: “A strong majority of Canadians believe that misinformation is a threat to Canadian democracy, [and] is polarizing Canadians and threatens social cohesion.” That's a strong majority, so there you go: A strong majority of Canadians believes that misinformation is a threat to Canadian democracy. I think that's a significant finding that demonstrates why in this work we should have a focus on misinformation and look at that seriously.

Here's another finding, which relates to the Conservative Party:

Supporters of right-wing parties (Conservative[s] and [the] People's Party) report higher levels of exposure to misinformation. However, they [do] not think of misinformation as a more serious problem during the election and tend to perceive misinformation as less threatening to democracy.

That is really interesting. In fact, the Conservatives and the People's Party, the right-wing parties...and this is not me saying this. I'm just quoting from this report, so don't get mad at the messenger here. What it says is that right-wing parties in general report “higher levels of exposure to misinformation”, which is interesting in itself, but then they don't see it as a serious problem, which is really interesting as well. Why would right-wing perspectives or people with those values...? I don't know what the answer is to that, but I find it an interesting finding in this very thorough work and research.

It brings up questions in my mind as to why, if the opposite of that is true—that left-leaning parties are less likely to consume or less likely to be exposed to misinformation but then see it as a greater threat to democracy—what does that mean? It's interesting. It might enable us to come to terms with some of the differences we have and maybe even highlight a way forward if we were to unpack that a little bit together. I'm not saying that we'll have the opportunity to do that, but I think that would be worthwhile.

It also states: “Canadians are largely in favour of content moderation but tend to believe that social media platforms and not governments should be making moderation and banning decisions.” Interestingly, the Canadian public seems to want content moderation, but most of it should be done by social media platforms, which is kind of interesting as well.

Also, then, it states: “There are significant differences in perceptions of misinformation and support for content moderation across partisan lines, socio-demographic groups, and media consumption patterns.” That's interesting as well.

There's lots more in here. There are some big aha moments. Maybe I will flip to those and give you some more important findings.

One is that as shown on page 23, they have done an interesting kind of experiment in taking four stories that are based on facts, four stories that are partially true or that they would consider misinformation—stories online—and then two stories that are completely fabricated, and then looking at the “exposure” of individuals and their perception of the “truthfulness” of those stories. It's interesting to compare those and see what the results are and what that tells us.

There are two or three findings from that piece of research that seem pretty interesting. “Conditional upon exposure to the story, factual stories were perceived as more truthful than misinformation stories both during the election...and post-election”, so it's good news for us that stories that had misinformation in them were more likely to be perceived as false, and factual stories were more likely to be perceived as truthful.

“While exposure might increase the likelihood of believing that a story is true, exposure to the stories might also be driven by citizens' predispositions, with those denying the existence of climate change being more likely to be exposed to the climate lockdown story, for example”, which is interesting.

This speaks to why algorithmic transparency or algorithms can be so impactful when you think about how often someone is exposed to a story that has misinformation in it. What it says is that if you're exposed once, you're likely to be able to determine that it is not true, but if you're exposed over and over again or if you have a specific predisposition to not believing in climate change for whatever reason, for example, and then you're exposed to a piece of misinformation like the one they document from MP Gallant, which is about climate lockdowns, you would now start to believe that over time.

This is important for us to understand. It's not just about one exposure; it's about the prevalence of this and how often you are exposed. We know even from marketing professionals and how marketing works that exposure to something over and over again eventually weakens your ability to determine that it's false and you become lulled into believing that something is true.

I think another really important quote or finding from this is that “a partial truth is perceived as more credible than completely false information”. This is interesting because it suggests that there is a trickle.... I hope one of the points members take from my intervention today is that we should be looking at misinformation, but we should be looking at it not just during election campaigns, because what we need to understand is that there is a slow trickle of misinformation that is happening throughout our society every single day. When you mix partial truths with things that are not true, that is, predominantly, what misinformation is. Parts of the stories and the things that are being reported are actually true, but there is some exaggeration or there is a spin on something or there are things that are being drawn from what is truthful but they are actually false, so they're extrapolated and they are more prevalent. However, they're also more effective at lulling people into that false sense of security and getting them to let down their guard and just absorb that information passively and having it affect their world view.

What I read from this is that it's happening all the time. If we're to take foreign election interference seriously, we also have to be considering what happens outside of the writ period. We have to be considering what misinformation and disinformation is circulating out there and where it is coming from. I don't think it's easy to determine where it's coming from all the time. We heard from security and intelligence professionals who came before us that it's not always easy to determine where information is actually originating when it comes to online sources.

I have covered that and I think that's important.

Here is another really big important finding.

What's interesting is that the highest volume of misinformation in the last election, generally speaking, was on Twitter. It's the highest volume of discussion of misinformation, because people are commenting more, and engaging more with misinformation on Twitter.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

We have a point of order by Mr. Gerretsen.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I'm not calling relevance, because this is very relevant, and it's great. I apologize for interrupting my colleague, but I believe there is a member of Parliament, Ms. Jennifer O'Connell, who needs to be made a participant. She's waiting for that to occur, so she can join the meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

That was very important. We don't know what happened, but we will look into that.

Ms. O'Connell, welcome to committee.

Mr. Turnbull, the floor is back to you.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate that. It's no problem at all that my colleague intervened there. I'm glad that MP O'Connell is joining us. I know she'll have a lot to offer on this important conversation.

I was just about to cover a few other findings of this misinformation and disinformation report that was done by the Media Ecosystem Observatory and that I think are really interesting. They did a comparison of the volume of misinformation related to the 2019 election and the 2021 election. Their analysis was based on 166,000 stories pulled from 159 Canadian media outlets that posted articles to their Facebook page. They did a seven-day rolling average. The graphs show that in 2019 the number of mentions and spread of misinformation and the volume of related discussions was much higher than in 2021.

That's interesting, right? It seems that this topic is coming up in our discussions now, and what's interesting is that it didn't come up as much after the 2019 election. We could talk about that in terms of why the 44th Canadian federal election had less misinformation and less discussion about it on average than the previous election. I think that's kind of an interesting question to ask ourselves: Why? I would have anticipated, based on all the opposition's focus on foreign election interference, that you would see...and the fact that most of foreign election interference is probably misinformation and disinformation online. I think it's interesting to compare and contrast the two elections.

There's another thing that I think is important in terms of the summary, which said, “Misinformation related to the election and to COVID-19 was detected on all social media platforms examined.” As well, “Despite more assertive moderation and election integrity policies, large social media platforms continued to be home to widespread misinformation.” What's funny is that when I was reading this report, I didn't realize that this was actually the direct quote from Morris Rosenberg's report, where he cites that exact finding. It's a signal to us and to the Canadian public in terms of that public report that we need to do more thinking and more work on the prevalence of misinformation. As the threat environment evolves, misinformation needs to be an area of focus for us in terms of our work in preventing foreign interference in future elections.

Here's another important finding: “The strong link between misinformation and social media has been well documented in recent years.” I mean, they don't talk about just one social media platform. They really talk about Facebook as being by far the most-used social media platform, at 79% of the population, followed by YouTube at 61% of the population, Twitter at 35%, Reddit at 14% and then TikTok at 14%. All those findings are really interesting. I thought it was also interesting that more than 60% of Canadians aged 18 to 34 report that they are using Facebook or Instagram as a source of political news, as compared with only 20% of those 65 or older.

What do we take from all this? I think we know, but I think it's important for us to ask these questions in our work.

Here's another finding: “Social media use is also strongly associated with whether individuals believed misinformation stories.” That is really interesting. They found a direct correlation between how much you use social media and how much you believe misinformation stories or stories that include misinformation.

There are many examples of this. I note that some of the mainstream social media platforms have made attempts to limit the spread of misinformation online, and some of them have done a reversal on that in recent months as well.

Another really important factor in all of this is that there are niche social media platforms. They mention platforms that include Rumble, Gab, Gettr, 4chan, Telegram, Audacy, Discord, Substack, Locals, BitChute. I've never been on any one of those, but I think there's this concept that there are other niche social media platforms that are playing a part in many of the.... What they say is many of the individuals who seem to be predisposed to wanting to consume this information, who are getting hooked, are now moving to these other niche social media platforms. That's where a lot of this misinformation can circulate more readily and without any sort of regulation because they're contained and not as open, which is also scary.

You can see that perhaps this sort of movement to radicalization or polarization of the Canadian public and their views can be further brought to extremes by cordoning off, going into these other chat groups and social media platforms that are niche. That's, to me, quite scary as well.

Probably the most important part of this report, I would say, is chapter 7, on “Disinformation and Foreign Influence”. This one I'll spend considerable time on because it really flies in the face of some of the things that have been said at this committee in terms of some of the perceptions or opinions of members. I think it's important for us to spell some of this out. I think it has again a direct impact on whether we ask campaign directors or managers to come before the committee, which is what I had proposed, so it's directly relevant to the amendment that I put forward.

The first finding here is, “A majority of Canadians are somewhat or very confident that Canadian elections are free from foreign interference. Canadians believe that China is the country most likely to have interfered in the election.”

That's I think consistent with what we've heard, and why we're all here talking about this. It is pretty important as a finding. Again, it couples the fact that Canadians have confidence in our elections and then also that Canadians believe that China is most likely the country that would have interfered in the election, which is interesting.

Another finding is, “Chinese officials and state media commented on the election with an apparent aim to convince Canadians of Chinese origin to vote against the Conservative Party.”

That's clear. So misinformation coming from state media, Chinese-sponsored state media, did try to encourage voters to...so that's wrong, that's 100% wrong. We should be cracking down on that. Again, it's another reason why I take this so seriously.

However, I think the latter part of that finding is “However, we find no evidence that Chinese interference had a significant impact on the overall election.” They also say, “We cannot fully discount the possibility that some riding-level contests were influenced.”

This is important.

This is an independent report that suggests that there were attempts at interference through state-sponsored misinformation campaigns, and we have that. The Rosenberg report includes examples of that. It's in this report.

What's interesting is that we can dive into this topic. There are some really key findings here, and I think we should know about how that was done and what impact it might have had or might not have had.

Why are these experts, again, all lining up and saying the same thing? Why is the previous Conservative campaign manager saying, without a shadow of a doubt, that there was no impact on the federal election results from 2021? Why are they all saying the same thing? All the experts are saying the same thing, yet we all know that there were attempts at interference, that there were misinformation campaigns put out there and that they did attempt to interfere. No one's denying that. No one has ever denied that. No one will deny that, yet we need to take it seriously and do the work associated with this.

In a recent media article, Ward Elcock said, “Chinese interference is not news.” He is a former CSIS director. To paraphrase him, he says that this is not the big media story that it should be because it's been around for a long time. That's what we've been saying all throughout our committee's work on this topic.

Ms. O'Connell has said that. I've said that. There are many members of this committee who have said that. For whatever reason, the Conservatives just woke up now to this and want to make a media story out of it for their political advantage. That's why they want to continue this charade, when we want to get down to work on the real issues. It's really too bad.

Here's another important quote: “...those who frequently consume political news on social media are less likely to believe that our elections are safe.” I found that really interesting. The more you consume political news online or through social media sources, the more distrust you have for our system, which is interesting as well. It shows a direct correlation, and they've done the research to determine that result.

Another finding is that “Canadians are critical of foreign propaganda, with 78% considering that it is either quite harmful...or very harmful...for democracy.” Canadians are agreed that foreign propaganda or misinformation will have a harmful impact on our democracy. I think that's important.

They cite examples of specific Chinese language social media and Chinese language platforms. They've found that the largest amount was confined to a single platform, which was WeChat, which is where there are several views that were presented during the election campaign that could have had an impact on voter intentions.

What's interesting, though, is that they looked at Chinese state-affiliated social media accounts. They say, “...we evaluated known Chinese state-affiliated social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter to assess the extent to which they were commenting and potentially influencing the election.”

They used publicly available lists of Twitter accounts and others, and they yielded a total of 29 Twitter accounts and 17 Facebook pages. Of the 4,094 unique articles that were shared on Facebook pages since the beginning of the 2021 election, only 33 mentioned Canada, the Canadian election or Canadian Chinese issues. That's 0.8%, so less than 1% mentioned Canada, the Canadian election or Canadian Chinese issues.

On Twitter, out of 32,317 tweets shared by Chinese state media accounts, only 261 mentioned Canada, the Canadian election or Canadian-Chinese issues. Again, that's 0.8%, which is interesting in itself. Out of all of the information that was shared, just a fraction, less than 1%, was on the state-affiliated social media accounts.

The information they were sharing during the election was less than 1% on Facebook and Twitter, which are the two main sources of political information, and where people comment. Less than 1% made any reference to Canada, the Canadian election, or Canadian-Chinese issues. That's interesting in itself.

Then it says, and this is really important, “When Canada was referenced, it was almost always in relation to Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou and the cases of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig.” That's also interesting.

What's interesting is that the vast majority of misinformation shared online by state-affiliated social media accounts from the Chinese government can be directly linked in some way. Out of all of this, a very small fraction, less than 1%, related to the Canadian federal election, or to Canadian-Chinese issues at all, and almost all of that was then focused on Huawei's executive and the two Michaels. That's really interesting to me. It suggests quite a different focus from what the Conservatives have said.

Again, this report documents very clearly that there were members of different parties who were targeted, and that there was misinformation online. There's no doubt about that. There's no denying that. We have examples that are documented in this report.

What's interesting, though, is that of all the social media platforms that the majority of Canadians use for political information, i.e., Facebook and Twitter, when doing the analysis....Most of the information that was being shared, or articles that were being shared, a lot of it, 99% of it, did not focus on the Canadian election, for one. The portion that did focus on the Canadian election was almost exclusively focused on Huawei's executive and the two Michaels.

Remember, the two Michaels came back to Canada four days after the federal election. That's also interesting to note. At the time, there was tension between Canada and China, and pressure to get those two Michaels back, of course, because we all wanted them back. What they went through was just horrifying.

Was this a positive thing? Did the information somehow skew voters? This isn't even documented as misinformation. These are just the articles that were shared. The specific instances of misinformation related to some of the views that....

They're documented here. They stated, “Notably, anti-Conservative mentions and articles increased, and a set of false or misleading claims and narratives emerged; the CPC would sever diplomatic relations with China once it takes power; CPC politicians were targeting Chinese Canadians for political gain; the CPC does not care about anti-Chinese discrimination; and all ethnic Chinese with ties to China would be required to register as foreign agents.” These were views shared by the Chinese language social media during the campaign.

No one has ever denied that it's true, that it's not right and that it should be stopped.

Are the Conservatives opting to regulate social media companies to prevent disinformation that targets candidates of all political parties? I've never heard them say that once. They've never acknowledged that most of the information was spread through online platforms and that, perhaps, we should be looking at further regulation in order to deal with the misinformation and disinformation that circulate online and that may impact voter intentions. I haven't heard them say that. It's interesting.

Another finding that's here is, “We find that, overall, Chinese state media tends to get far more interactions on Facebook.” That's interesting, too. That the Chinese state media tends to get more interactions on Facebook means they're targeting Facebook more often, because they probably know it's more effective and it's going to get more engagement.

Here's a big finding that I think will shock everybody.

They did a major look at engagement on Facebook and Twitter posts by Chinese state-affiliated social media accounts during the Canadian federal election of 2021. They looked at engagement across both platforms. What's interesting is they said they observed “no substantive differences in engagement between Canada-related content and other content.” This tells me that Chinese state-affiliated social media content that was pumped out on Twitter and Facebook did not have more engagement than any other social media content. That's a really important finding for us. When you think about how disinformation and misinformation coming from state-sponsored actors, specifically China, impacted voter intentions and voter behaviour...it didn't get any more engagement. That is what this report independently concludes. That's interesting.

There are some other findings here that are interesting, too.

This is an assumption, but I would say it a true assumption. If there were the true intention of the Chinese government to influence voter behaviour—and I'm not saying they didn't have that intention, but I'm assuming that if they did that—they would have tried to amplify content on social media around the election period. What's interesting is this report suggests there was minimal spread. In fact, the finding is, “Overall, we find no evidence that content produced by these or other Chinese state media were amplified during the election and their limited spread appears organic.” That information spread online, but it wasn't amplified.

We've often talked about bots on Twitter, etc., and how they're in campaigns that try to spread that information online. They're not organically spreading it; actual people are sharing it. That's a really interesting finding, too. Not only did that shared content not get more engagement, it also didn't get amplified superficially using a subversive strategy to try to amplify that. That's an interesting finding, too.

Again, this is not me saying this. I'm looking at this independent report done by researchers across Canadian institutions as reputable as McGill University and the University of Toronto. They have done this independent research and review of the 2021 election and are making these observations and conclusions based on their research. I trust that they have no political motivations.

Again, it comes back to the point that, over and over again, the Conservative Party wants to pursue this for political gain.

We want to do the work based on reality, evidence, science, facts and information to make our country and our democracy better, safer and, essentially, to protect it from the threat of foreign interference. It really is, truly, a threat that we take seriously.

The next section is even more telling for me. It's the section called “Evaluating impact”. It evaluates the impact of foreign interference in the federal election in 2021, related to misinformation and disinformation through online campaigns.

I would like to share a couple of findings on that, which I think are really important. Here is the big one: “If it is these Chinese Canadian voters who shifted against the Conservative Party, it should be detectable in the survey data. We evaluated whether Chinese Canadians switched their vote intentions or changed their evaluations of the Conservative Party using survey data collected during the campaign and just after election.”

“We compared Chinese Canadians' vote intentions during the first two weeks of the campaign to their vote intentions during the last two weeks, with the results in figure 22.” I can't hold it up because it would be a prop, but you can look at the report yourself.

“The two left panels show that there was no change among Chinese Canadians from the first two weeks to the last two weeks for overall evaluation of either the Conservative Party of Canada or Erin O'Toole specifically. The third panel shows that there was no shift in intention to vote for the CPC among Chinese Canadians between those surveyed during the first two weeks and those surveyed during the last two weeks of the campaign.”

Again, there is another graph in figure 22. “The far right panel shows self-reported vote for the Conservative Party among Chinese Canadians which closely resembles stated vote intention the pre-election period.”

To me, this is a “wow”, because this is one question I've had in my mind since we started this study. To what degree can we honestly say this happened? The misinformation that we know happened during the 2021 election, which circulated online although a very small amount, was a sliver of information that spread organically, it was not amplified and it did not impact voter intentions or voter behaviour. There is no evidence of that. It was independently verified by researchers at universities across the country.

In fact, remember what I said: It was less than in 2019, and it was 1% of all the state-sponsored articles that were shared on social media. Less than 1% related to Canadians. The vast majority of the articles and information were related to the Huawei executive and the two Michaels.

The reason our security and intelligence experts are saying this over and over and over again is because it's true—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Excuse me, Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I'm sorry. I was getting a little amplified there. My apologies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

I appreciate your noticing that. What happens is the interpreters get to hear that amplification, exponentially.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I'm sorry about that. You're right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

I appreciate it, because it is a very serious issue.

The points you are raising are welcome, so I'm going to give you back the floor and remind us all about that.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm very sorry about that. I hope I didn't cause the interpreters any discomfort or injury. That was never my intention. I got a little carried away, there. It's probably from sitting through the many hours of this committee and doing all this research. I apologize.

I keep coming back to this point: The truth really does matter in our democracy. What we've seen is, these misinformation campaigns have an impact. They are a real threat. We need to be evolving our approaches and strategies to combat them.

In this particular case—where we have Conservatives claiming things that are, quite frankly, not verifiable or corroborated by any evidence—we have to be very careful and cautious. We have to hone in on the key questions, here. Are these misinformation campaigns having an impact on Chinese Canadian voters' intentions, as has been claimed?

I think the answer in this report, again, is another corroborating piece of evidence, in addition to expert testimony. They came to the same conclusions through independent means. When you have multiple pursuits that are independent of political influence coming to the same conclusion, you have to go, “Okay, maybe those are approximating the truth pretty closely.”

That's the conclusion I'm drawing from all of this, which I think is quite rational. I pride myself on operating on the principle of sufficient reason, which is this test: If you say something that conflicts with my world view, argument or position on something, and I think it has merit—even if it has partial truth—I will take it into consideration. I will try to understand how I can benefit from that and change my perspective based on that. In this particular case, however, I feel as if opposition parties are just denying the facts. They're saying, “No, we're going to believe the allegations flying around and not look at the facts and information.” That's why I'm very animated about this, Madam Chair.

It's a shame that it's in my constituency week. It's not that I'm opposed to doing great work on behalf of Canadians in a constituency week. I would be doing that whether we were in this committee or not. It's just that I'm diving into extensive reports on this topic during a constituency week. I would rather—as Ms. Blaney said, the other day—be meeting with my constituents. I feel they are very important to meet with. I've had to cancel meetings for the day. All of that is fine. If opposition members would rather do this, then it's fine. I will continue to bring facts and information to this conversation. My arguments will be based on that.

I'm going to get back to this report. There are a few other findings, here, that I want to share. I think they're important ones.

Another key finding, on page 66 of this report, is that, “Canadian voters do not consider China to be a top electoral issue during the 44th Canadian election.” They did an analysis of all the federal election issues. China, or foreign affairs related to China, was not one of the top issues in the last election. Again, it's not me saying this. It's an independent report that surveyed all the different issues. I think it's interesting to conclude that. People are claiming things like, “This had an impact on the election”. We've had some extreme cases and claims made by Conservative members of Parliament and the leader of the official opposition related to this.

Other times, we've had more, I would say, benign claims that it's going on. Again, the argument is this. If independently verified groups have done work to say that China and foreign affairs related to China weren't a top election issue and we can also see that the relative response and engagement of the online misinformation campaigns that were state-sponsored had no verifiable impact at all on voter intentions or behaviour and were a very small slice of what was happening during the election, then why would anyone ever try to claim that somehow the overall election results were changed as a result of foreign interference, when we know that the vast majority of it was online? That, to me, goes to the heart of some of the arguments and perspectives that we've heard.

Another finding: “We see no evidence that China-related issues were consequential for the election, nor that the content circulated on social media had any influence on opinions at a national level.” That's another pretty telling conclusion, which I think speaks volumes to how disappointing it is that we're continuing to do this.

Finally, maybe I'll just quickly summarize some of the recommendations. I think there is some real importance to these, and there are only four. Bear with me for a few more minutes and I will wrap up by summarizing these conclusions.

One of them is to develop a community of practice focused on tackling misinformation in Canada. This is the type of recommendation that I would put a lot of weight into and say, yes, this is something the PROC committee could be recommending. It's something that probably coincides with some of what we've heard from the experts in this committee. This relates to that fracturing of the information ecosystem that I talked about at the beginning, which is one of the key vulnerabilities.

If you developed a community of practice that includes government bodies, researchers, media organizations and civil society organizations all working together, that would really help combat that fracture in the information ecosystem. In other words, that coalition or the community of practice, which would share best practices, could really leverage all of the expertise and the reference points and perspectives that people have in order to enhance our ability to tackle this in a really comprehensive way. That, to me, is a really solid recommendation. I think we should heed that advice from these professionals and recommend that in our future report.

Another one is to engage in strategic countering of misinformation. I found this one really interesting as well, because the focus here is on strategic. I think they've concluded throughout this report that there are certain things that spread and have more influence than others, and there are certain segments of the population that are, perhaps, more vulnerable or more predisposed. There are social media platforms that are targeting information based on critical issues, based on polarizing issues. There's the amount of exposure one has. There are a whole bunch of factors, and I don't think they are saying that a spike in misinformation during the election period is the biggest threat. I think they're actually saying the biggest threat is the ongoing ubiquitous nature of misinformation throughout Canadian society, which is being consumed every single day and polarizing the views of our population over time.

To me, both of those kinds of observations would require us to be very strategic about where to focus resources. What's having the most impact on Canadians and what is the biggest threat to Canadian democracy and our electoral process? To me, I think that is another really worthwhile recommendation.

The third one is, “Increase public resilience to misinformation”. I think this is one that our government has done considerable work on, but I think we could certainly benefit from a lot more. This, again, is that public awareness piece, the digital literacy skill building of the public to be able to identify misinformation when they see it, which is not easy. I, myself, have moments in my political career where I'm looking at information online and wondering if I should I really share it. Is that a view that...? I don't know. It's questionable. We need to be promoting that critical lens.

There are a whole bunch of aspects of developing public resilience to misinformation that I think we could do. There are some more specifics in this report.

Lastly, the fourth recommendation is, “Extend initiatives to limit and counter misinformation to non-election periods”. This is something Morris Rosenberg had mentioned in his report. He basically says that we should be looking at foreign interference outside of the caretaker period during the writ. Outside of elections, we should be monitoring and tackling this stuff.

I would say the government has been doing that, but I think we need to step it up. Based on these conversations, I think we could probably all agree that we should be doing that. I think there's a lot of opportunity there to dig in deeper. Outside of election periods, we could look at all the misinformation that's being circulated.

Here's another quote: “The threat to democracy may lie more in the slow, steady erosion of factual agreement, institutional trust, and social cohesion than in a flurry of election activity.” I think that's where we need to focus. That's the true threat to Canadian democracy. It's not just during election times.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be monitoring and doing all we can to prevent foreign interference during election times, but we have set up the processes for doing that and they are working. Could they be improved? Yes. I think we have said that from day one. We're open to that and all of us, I think, take that responsibility very seriously.

I think it involves continuing to adapt our efforts and include more strategies that will work and tactics that are better suited to that evolving threat environment. That includes non-election periods. That would be now. We should be monitoring and trying to combat misinformation online all of the time.

There are some specific recommendations here. One of them is, “Governing bodies may also wish to examine whether a regulatory regime in place during elections should be broadened to cover non-election periods, including but not limited to ad transparency, algorithmic audits, and limits on the use of foreign funds for advertising and partisan activities.”

Our government has done work on that.

Again, I'm not saying we can't improve things, if there are additional things we can do. We should look at those. Bill C-76, the Elections Modernization Act, prohibits third parties from using foreign funds for partisan advertising, and prohibits foreign entities from spending on partisan advertising both during the pre-election period and during the election period. It requires online platforms to publish a registry of partisan advertising. There are significant things we've already done on foreign funds for advertising for partisan purposes. The algorithmic audits and algorithmic transparency are things we've been talking about, and government has had quite a few conversations about them in open forums. I've gone to several events to talk about that with colleagues and debate that topic, and we could be looking at that.

There's lots to do, and there's a lot of benefit to working together, but I don't see how we get past the impasse we're at when opposition members won't agree to being fact-based, and look at the reality of what the government has done, and also look at the independent reports that are corroborating some of the big findings we have all heard now over and over again. It's not as if people can claim they haven't heard, or they didn't know, when they're going out saying misleading things. They know there is credible evidence of all the things our government has done to combat foreign election interference.

We've heard from the national security and intelligence community about all of the independent mechanisms. It said the last two elections were free and fair. We've heard all of this corroborated in multiple ways. The things that are being claimed are just, you know....It calls them into question. It's really disappointing, when you feel, as a member of Parliament, you're putting your best foot forward and want to do good, meaningful work for the benefit of the public, and we end up having to play partisan games. We're roped into it in a constituency week, when we should be with our constituents. I'm sure many of us would rather be working in our communities, meeting with our constituents today.

I'm happy to talk about this, and I have lots more to say. I have quite a few other really substantive reports that corroborate what we've heard from all of the experts, both the folks on the panel, the critical election incident public protocol, and all of the national security and intelligence experts. We've had it mentioned again by Conservative senators, and the former Conservative campaign manager from the last election. We've heard it from the former CSIS director. We've heard it over and over again. Hopefully, we can base ourselves in some factual information, move forward with this study, and get wrapped up with some really solid recommendations that the government can use to protect our democracy from these very serious threats.

With that, Madam Chair, I will wrap up here, and cede the floor.

I look forward to hearing from my esteemed colleagues.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you, Mr. Turnbull.

For the purpose of everyone knowing who's on the list, it's Mr. Fergus, Ms. Blaney, Mr. Barrett, Ms. Normandin and Ms. O'Connell.

Mr. Fergus, please go ahead.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I will once again quote the “Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar”, but this time, I will go back to the beginning of the report, specifically the part where Justice O'Connor talks about a misperception that was widespread at that time. It is important not to say things that are false. We have to proceed very cautiously in conducting an inquiry and not rely on information that is not sound, so to speak.

The current debate, which is bogging down the work of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, was sparked by the Global News report, based on information from a supposedly certain source, a person who works for an intelligence agency. We have to be careful though because we don't know if that person works for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. If they do, they have broken the law.

We don't know if that person has the full picture. I seriously doubt that they had access to the analyses on which the intelligence agencies base their work. The testimony from intelligence and national security officials makes me doubt that.

Another thing that makes me very cautious is that the officials said it was partial or inaccurate information. They expressed their doubts about the veracity of the information. Yet, people still want an inquiry into this.

My colleagues opposite are asking why I am so reluctant. They are saying that if everyone is innocent and everything is in order, I have nothing to fear. Yet, we are in the process of changing everything.

We are elected officials, and our privileges by far exceed the burden of proof that prevails in courts of law. We have privileges that no one else in Canada has. In my opinion, having those privileges requires us to be very thoughtful. It is a tremendous responsibility to trigger a process that can damage the reputation of other Canadians, if not of an entire community.

That is why I am reluctant to pursue that avenue, but it is also because I have access to relevant information, as everyone around the table does. We have seen this kind of thing before. It was between 2002 and 2006, in the Maher Arar case. I think it is entirely appropriate to consider the inquiry conducted by Justice Dennis O'Connor, to read his “Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar”, and to examine the key points in our current situation.

I assume that my colleagues are in good faith, and I hope they will exercise good judgment and show restraint before embarking on an inquiry that could hurt the reputation of a number of individuals, including that of an elected colleague.

I would ask the interpreters to refer to part 3.4 of the “Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar, Analysis and Recommendations”.

In this part, we see how Justice O'Connor arrived at his conclusions. He gives an overview of his conclusions. He talks about Maher Arar and the right not to be subjected to torture. He talks about the sequence of events, such as Mr. Arar's detention in New York and his being sent to Syria. He talks about Mr. Arar's incarceration and the mistreatment he suffered in Syria. Saying he was mistreated is a euphemism because he was in fact tortured. Justice O'Connor does not mince words in presenting his conclusions.

If that were the end of it, that would already be a parody of justice, but the truly horrible part is that leaks of false information persisted after Mr. Arar's return—relating not only to Mr. Arar, but also to two other individuals who were involved—and even during Justice O'Connor's inquiry.

It is beyond me that all this happened. Justice O'Connor had many recommendations to make. It is in our general interest to remain aware of this information.

The part of the report I want to quote is the overview Judge O'Connor gave of the misperceptions regarding Mr. Arar.

At the beginning of the Inquiry, many people within government and likely some members of the public believed that Mr. Arar had not been tortured while in Syria and that he had voluntarily admitted links to terrorist activities. It is instructive and disturbing to trace how this misunderstanding grew. Let me recount a few of the milestones. After the Canadian consul first visited Mr. Arar in Syrian custody on October 23, 2002, it should have been apparent that Mr. Arar had likely been tortured in the preceding two weeks.

This is rather serious. Mr. Arar was tortured for two weeks and incarcerated for over a year. I will continue reading the report:

Some Canadian officials, including Gar Pardy, Director General of Consular Affairs at DFAIT, operated on that assumption. However, others did not, saying they required more evidence.

At the beginning of November 2002, the Syrian Military Intelligence gave Canada’s ambassador a brief summary of a statement Mr. Arar had apparently given Syrian authorities during his first two weeks in custody. In that statement, Mr. Arar had said that he had attended a training camp in Afghanistan in 1993. DFAIT distributed the statement to the RCMP and CSIS without attaching a note cautioning that it was likely the product of torture and that, even if true, the admission was of doubtful significance for establishing terrorist links.

This part is very important. It comes down to highlighting the importance of setting the context. In leaks to newspapers from an anonymous source, there was no warning. What did our national security and intelligence experts tell us? Every time they received a bit of information or heard a rumour, they put it in context.

We may sometimes think that information is coming from a reliable source. We could then think that it is true. Others will say that it is coming from an unreliable source; that we should not give it too much importance. That's how this is presented to us, because it's information that was passed along on the ground. However, there's no context around it.

There is a fine expression: "A text without context is pretext." It means that a text unsupported by verified information serves as a pretext to justify a hasty conclusion or a baseless one. That is exactly what happened to Mr. Arar. We have to be cautious with everything we are doing, because if we continue this inquiry without knowing the context, it means we are here only to prove a point, that we've drawn a conclusion without evidence to support it. It makes no sense to act this way.

I will continue by quoting another passage in the report on the events surrounding Mr. Arar:

In late April 2003, a briefing note to the RCMP Commissioner indicated that Mr. Arar had “volunteered” to Syrian authorities that he had attended a training camp in Afghanistan in 1993, the implication being that he might have terrorist links.

What was this information based on? Once again, it was determined to be completely false.

In July 2003, the Syrian Human Rights Committee published a report saying Mr. Arar had been tortured while in Syrian custody. The Canadian consul visited Mr. Arar on August 14, 2003. Syrian officials were present throughout the visit, and Mr. Arar, who was anxiously hoping to be released, was very careful about what he said in front of them, indicating that the truth would come out when he returned to Canada. He also stated that he had not been tortured, beaten or paralyzed. Understandably, the consul was sceptical of this last comment, given the circumstances in which it was made.

Finally, we have a bit of context. When surrounded by people who are torturing us, it's very unlikely that we will tell the truth, isn't it? That is the reason for which the courts do not accept testimony from someone subjected to violence.

These are fruits of the poisonous tree. We should always remember that.

I will continue reading the report.

Later the same day, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs made a public statement about the consular visit. He had not been properly briefed. He indicated that, during an “independent” visit, Mr. Arar had confirmed that he had not been tortured. This statement created an inaccurate picture, as the visit had not been independent. Syrian officials had been present throughout. Moreover, the Minister made no reference to the need to view Mr. Arar’s statement about not being tortured with scepticism.

If an MP or citizen had heard the minister tell such a story without specifying that Mr. Arar was not alone when he made his statement, the minister would surely have been told that Mr. Arar would have had to be alone when making that statement. Indeed, if the people who illegally detained Mr. Arar for nine or 10 months were present, I would not have expected Mr. Arar to tell the truth. Everyone knows that doesn't make any sense.

I will continue:

When Mr. Arar was released on October 5, 2003, he flew back to Canada with the Canadian consul. He gave the consul some details about his ordeal, stating that he had been beaten on occasion during the first two weeks of his detention. The consul reported his conversations to other officials at DFAIT a few days later. However, subsequently, in memoranda, he reported that Mr. Arar had said that he had not been beaten. No mention was made of the statements Mr. Arar had made on the plane trip back to Canada. Mr. Arar first spoke publicly of what had happened to him in early November 2003. He described how he had been beaten during the first two weeks of his imprisonment and had given the Syrians a statement. Although somewhat more detailed, the description was consistent with what he had said on the plane. Professor Toope found Mr. Arar’s description completely credible. In the months following Mr. Arar’s release, there were a number of leaks from unnamed government sources indicating that Mr. Arar had admitted to having terrorist links in Syria and stating that he was not a “nice guy” or a “virgin,” as would be seen when the truth came out. It is fair to assume that some government officials and members of the public had the impression that Mr. Arar had admitted to having connections to terrorist activities and they formed a negative impression of him. If nothing else, some assumed that “where there is smoke, there is fire.” Certainly, at the beginning of the Inquiry, it was obvious to me that many within government believed that Mr. Arar had not been tortured and that he had voluntarily admitted links to terrorist activity to the Syrians. They were of the view that the truth would come out during the Inquiry.

Well, the truth did come out. When Professor Toope’s report was made public over a year later, the government did not challenge the findings in the report and, indeed, through counsel, the government indicated that Mr. Arar had given “a credible” account that he was tortured. The disturbing part of all of this [once again, I am quoting the Justice] is that it took a public inquiry to set the record straight. Getting it right in the first place should not have been difficult, and it should not have been a problem to keep the record accurate. However, over time, the misperception grew and seemed to become more entrenched as it was reported. In this report, [Justice O'Connor said] I speak often of the need for accuracy and precision when collecting, recording and sharing information. Inaccurate information can have grossly unfair consequences for individuals, and the more often it is repeated, the more credibility it seems to assume.

We have before us partial, incomplete allegations, which experts have denied. However, around this table, some of my colleagues insist on repeating those allegations, which haven't been corroborated and, according to officials, are completely inaccurate. Yet they continue to repeat them. As Justice O'Connor said, the more often information is repeated, the more credibility it seems to assume in the minds of Canadians. Wow. It's very important to keep that in mind.

I'll continue quoting the report:

Inaccurate information is particularly dangerous in connection with terrorism investigations in the post‑9/11 environment. Officials and the public are understandably concerned about the threats of terrorism. However, it is essential that those responsible for collecting, recording and sharing information be aware of the potentially devastating consequences of not getting it right.

The burden does not belong exclusively to those who head our national security and intelligence services. Indeed, they're an extremely important part of that responsibility, but it's a burden we all carry.

As elected officials, we enjoy certain privileges. No matter what we say in Parliament, we are never held accountable for those words, because a certain degree of freedom is required if elected officials want to be good parliamentarians or senators. However, those privileges come with responsibilities.

What I find infuriating is the fact that the people in charge, who have a much more complete overview than we do, or at least more than I do, came to the conclusion that there's always foreign interference in Canada, that the allegations we read in the newspapers were neither truthful nor credible and that they mislead Canadians.

If we want to question these people, we are all lost at this point, because they are an aggregate of experienced people who want to protect us. They've learned lessons from the past and do their work sincerely. They have information sources coming from our Five Eyes allies, meaning the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. They probably have other sources coming from our other allies. That said, I do not want to spread misinformation. At the very least, I can say they have access to that information.

The witnesses who appeared before us did not reveal any national security intelligence. They answered our questions frankly and came to the conclusion that what was reported in the newspapers was false.

In that case, why are we persisting with all this? Why do we want to break parliamentary traditions by forcing political aides to testify? Why are we accusing certain people of being influenced by foreign interests? How is it that we think it's acceptable to say this about a prime minister? It makes no sense. Everything is upside down.

I am sure that at least one country is laughing up its sleeve, and that's China. Other countries under an authoritarian regime, such as Iran or Russia, are probably watching us.

We're getting all worked up. Some people insist on repeating falsehoods for partisan reasons. Others have good motivations, but they're still playing the same game. According to our heads of security, they may be doing it for lofty reasons, but possibly for bad reasons too.

It is beyond me when they continue to repeat things that undermine Canadians' confidence in our institutions, even when experts tell us that our institutions have successfully resisted attempts at foreign interference.

That doesn't mean we can rest on our laurels. We must always remain vigilant. We must always adapt our measures to respond to the growing abilities of countries who want to wreak havoc in all democracies around the world.

I don't know if it was Ms. Romanado or Ms. Vandenbeld who said that the real challenges today aren't the struggles between capitalism and communism. One of the real challenges is the division between authoritarian governments and democratic governments. It was Ms. Vandenbeld who said that, because she has broad international experience. She worked in developing countries and saw the struggles that come with an authoritarian system.

Some people in those countries are working very hard to establish good governance so that they can enjoy the same advantages available in Canada. These people need help. I hope Canada will always stand up to help them. Ms. Vandenbeld saw what is happening for herself. She spoke of the importance of having exemplary practices and adapting them, depending on the situation.

Ms. Vandenbeld said this morning that Canada is seen as a world leader on these issues. She talked about her past and the way we can start to democratize and to share, as much as possible, the responsibilities linked to national security issues.

It started with the proposal from the former prime minister, Mr. Paul Martin, which was to establish a national security committee.

Mr. Paul Martin sought Parliament's support in order to create a national security committee that would be made up of parliamentarians. These parliamentarians would be sworn in as members of the Privy Council before they could be briefed on matters of national security.

Unfortunately, Mr. Martin did not win a majority vote in the election. He headed a minority government, the first one for decades, and lost the following election.

The next prime minister claimed at the time to very much care about national security. However, he never followed up on this claim by striking an advisory committee to deal with such matters.

It wasn't until 2015, when Mr. Trudeau's majority government was elected, that the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians or NSICOP was formed. Not only did his government set up the longed‑for committee, it also created a review agency called the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, the NSIRA.

We have dealt with these matters through another committee comprised of public servants, whose mandate is to uphold our national security on behalf of Canadians. We have also set up an organization that brings together all the recognized political parties in the House of Commons and their campaign directors. Again, all these people have sworn an oath. The members of this committee pool all their information on threats or any major attempts at foreign interference in our electoral system. This was another fantastic innovation.

Today, my colleague from Kingston and the Islands read out comments made by Mr. Fred DeLorey, the national campaign director for the Conservative Party in 2021. Mr. Fred DeLorey said that there was no doubt in his mind that there had been no foreign interference in the 2015 election. The results of the national election reflected the will of Canadians in each riding.

What's more, and this is relevant to the debate that we're having right now and that Canadians are also watching, he came to the conclusion that his party was unfortunately engaging in petty politics. That's a shame, because this is a matter of national security.

He is not the only great Conservative to say that this type of work should be dealt with by the NSICOP. After hearing the Prime Minister's statement last Monday, Mr. DeLorey came to the conclusion that the Prime Minister went even further than Mr. DeLorey himself would have done and that we should seize the opportunity to have an inquiry that would be untainted by partisan interests.

I think that Mr. DeLorey's conclusion is probably the same as the one to which the vast majority of Canadians have arrived, i.e., that these matters should not be the subject of partisan political debates. That's very important. I am happy to see some people nodding their heads here around the table. It is encouraging and leads me to believe that we will perhaps find a fair solution that will get us out of this impasse.

As I said, Mr. DeLorey was not the only Conservative. There was a former RCMP assistant director, a former chief of the Ottawa police and a former Conservative senator, Mr. Vernon White. I discussed the issue of making Wellington Street a pedestrian zone on many occasions with Mr. White. We had the idea of making it a more welcoming and useful space, a pleasant area where Canadians could come to celebrate Canada or even protest on occasion.

Mr. White conducted an in‑depth study on security within the Parliamentary Precinct. He came to the conclusion, as did I, that we are exposing government to risks that can't be justified. We have to protect the Parliamentary Precinct.

I don't want to keep banging on about the subject, because it's not relevant to our debate, but I did want to say that the former senator Vernon White cared about our national interests. We were able to set aside partisan interests and hold discussions that were very fruitful. I consider him to be a friend. Indeed, over the weekend, I listened to him speak on The House, the CBC radio show.

Mr. White is known for his candour. He said that the NSICOP was not the ideal place to hold these discussions, because parliamentarians can see everything, even classified information that hasn't been redacted. The committee is all set up and is fully independent, which means that it does not subject to any influence from the current Prime Minister.

Mr. White was a member of the committee that does incredibly important work on security matters. There has never been a leak from that committee. All committee members, both current and former, have taken their work seriously. They do not deserve the insults that have been hurled at them by some people who believe that the committee is a tool of the Prime Minister. According to Mr. White, this is utter nonsense. We must maintain our support for the NSICOP. We must avoid tarnishing the reputation of its committee members.

Mr. DeLorey and Mr. White came to the conclusion that these are two very useful tools. We can use them to really get at the heart of the matter quickly without spending too much of taxpayers' money. At least two great Canadians are of this opinion.

My colleague from Kingston and the Islands spoke of a third Conservative who had expressed his support, i.e., the former senator from Kingston, Mr. Hugh Segal, another great Canadian who enjoyed a stellar career. He was, amongst other things, chief of staff for Prime Minister Mulroney and the senior political advisor to Mr. Bill Davis, the former Premier of Ontario.

I am a Quebecker and I remember clearly that Mr. Davis was always considered one of the best provincial premiers. In an article published recently in the Toronto Star, Mr. Davis expressed the same opinion as Mr. White, the former senator, and Mr. DeLorey, the former Conservative campaign director, which is that the NSICOP is a good forum to discuss these matters and that the Prime Minister made the right call.

We have to stop all this petty political chicanery on an issue as important as our country's national security. This is obvious.

I would like to continue, but I know that other MPs want to speak. I would dearly like to hear what my colleagues have to say, especially my colleagues from the opposition. I hope that they won't just keep parroting the same thing and state that we have been going on and on about this for hours.

Once again, this is an important issue. We will take the time that we need to look at it closely. Period.

If my colleagues have any new ideas or new arguments, I am all ears. However, I do hope that this will go both ways, and that my colleagues will also listen as I would listen to them, and take into account the points that I have raised.

I believe that we should respect our parliamentary traditions. In order to do so, we should end this debate, withdraw the motion and let the committees with the proper mandates do their work. Matters that can be looked at in public will be looked at in public. Matters that need to be examined behind closed doors will be examined in such a manner, in order to protect information that deals with national security. Afterwards, there will be a report, which must always be published.

I will stop here in order to hear what my colleagues have to say.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you, Mr. Fergus.

I will go next to Ms. Blaney. After that, I will give us a quick health break. Then we will resume with Mr. Barrett.

Ms. Blaney, the floor is yours.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you so much, Chair. I hope the sound is good. I was gone for a short period of time. You'll let me know if the interpreters have any concerns, because I definitely want to make sure they're supported.

Madam Chair, this is a serious issue. I don't take any of this lightly. We are talking about how elections are done in our country and the impacts of foreign interference. That is incredibly serious, and I take that very seriously as I move forward in these discussions.

I do want to say that when I look at Mr. Turnbull's amendment, I have no problem with it if it's added to the content that we have already in the motion. I just don't see it replacing.... I don't think it's appropriate. There's a long history in the NDP—and I've heard many of my Liberal friends remind us of that—of not pulling in staff. Unfortunately, we're in a situation where this keeps coming out in the media, and it is impacting constituents and Canadians.

I was really surprised to listen to an earlier member from the Liberal benches today talk about how it's no big deal, about how no one in his riding is contacting him. I don't know his riding. He knows his riding better than I do, but I can assure him that I am not here because I enjoy being away from my constituents when I should be with my constituents. I'm here because my constituents have contacted my office enough for me to understand that they are experiencing some serious concerns around our democratic institutions, and we need to take that seriously.

That, to me, is the very point of this. This is why we've been calling for a public inquiry. This is why we've been saying repeatedly that it must be a process that is transparent, public and independent. We've now gotten to a point where all people hear is the Liberals justifying, instead of us saying, “Okay, we're now at a point where we have to have a public process because Canadians are getting concerned and those institutions fundamentally matter.”

I too trust our institutions, and I agree that they could be stronger and better. This is why a public inquiry is so important to the NDP. I think it's very concerning that the Liberals have been pushing back against a public inquiry by suggesting that it's unable to deal with secret information. We know that's not the case. We've seen that happen before. It can happen again.

I'm also very concerned because I heard MP Sahota, when she was here the other day, dismissing them because they cost a lot of money. Again, that's really concerning to me. It isn't about us as politicians. It's about Canadians in this country having faith in our systems. When she compared it to the LRT inquiry, suggesting that it wasn't worth the cost, I'm not sure that people from Ottawa would share that opinion.

I want to bring this forward. This is concerning to me. This is a position right here in this committee where we are very partisan. That's the truth of politics. That's why we're asking for it to be in a venue that isn't partisan, that really takes Canadians' concerns seriously and lets us know what's happening. That's it. It's a transparent process.

I want to point out that I've been listening to my friend Mr. Fergus speak for over an hour and a half, I believe, about the Arar commission and how that investigated intelligence leaks and misleading leaks from government sources, which, I think it is important to note—I think he noted it as well—was a Liberal government at the time. I agree that we got a lot out of that report, and I think this is the part that I find most perplexing. It is an excellent example of how relying on a public inquiry to get to the bottom of things, to get information out for the public to have faith in that..... It's like watching the member argue for what we're asking for. I'm not sure why that is not happening. There's a really great opportunity. It sounds like he's calling for a public inquiry. I support that. Hopefully, we can get some actions done.

I also want to come back for a moment just on a personal note. As you know, we saw something happen today where we had a member raising their voice. I want to recognize that it was dealt with and I appreciate the apology that was made, but one of the things that is sticking with me is the difference between intention and impact, and that when we're talking about these decisions that we make, we must be always focusing not on our intention but on the impact.

When I talk about a public inquiry.... To me, it's about what will be a good impact. I hear from the Liberals that they have great intentions. They feel they've done a great job dealing with these issues, and I respect, fulsomely, all the members of NSICOP. However, the impact of what's happened in this country is this: More Canadians are not trusting their public institutions. I want to remind everyone that we need to focus not on our intentions but on the impacts of the things we do and the actions we take.

It was referenced about the importance of spending time, in constituency week, with our constituents. I couldn't agree more. I've had to move a lot of things to accommodate this day, and I did it because I take my job very seriously, as I know everyone around this table does. I don't want to miss time with my constituents. In fact, I was thinking of Ms. Romanado, yesterday, when I was in Gold River. I was talking to the fire chief of Gold River and Tahsis, and was very disheartened to hear, from the fire chief of Tahsis, that they have no space to deal with their contaminated suits. Their building was condemned and everything is now in a sea can. When they do anything, they have to think about it very carefully, because, if they get any kind of moisture on their suits, how they're going to dry those is particularly hard. They don't have the proper infrastructure.

When I think of the work we are doing today, and the fact that we are sacrificing precious time with our constituents.... Everybody in this room needs to honour that. I honour it, especially because there are volunteers in my riding who will run to the fire and save people's lives and houses the best they can, yet they don't even have the right place to decontaminate their suits. That is wrong, in this country. It's shameful, in this country, and there's a lot of work to be done, here.

I also want to say that, when we see something come forward that is public, independent and transparent, I am very happy to move quickly. I appreciate that a special rapporteur.... I agree that is something used all over the planet. It's a role that's very specific. I think most Canadians know what that is, because Canadians are intelligent. I appreciate that. However, it is a baby step on an issue that is front of mind for far too many Canadians. I want to see it taken out of this partisan place. I don't want to see this issue used to make political wins. I'm seeing the parties using it to make political wins. I worry about that. I worry about how it's being used to create more fear. I don't like that. I don't do that easily. I never do that, personally. I want us to get to a place where we can vote on this and move forward. I listen to what Canadians are saying. I see what's in the media. We need to remember that, if we do not have these issues dealt with, in a way Canadians can have faith in the process, it will become increasingly partisan.

I'm asking everyone to work together, please, and try to get to some sort of solution. Let's go to the vote. Let's get to work for Canadians. Hopefully, we'll see something happen quickly around a public inquiry. I think we can all agree that Canadians deserve answers. This is the clearest way forward, in my opinion. Numerous opinions have come out supporting that. Of course, our leader Jagmeet Singh has been very clear, repeatedly, in the House of Commons, that this needs to happen.

Let's work together. Let's get to work around the boundary redistribution. I am also concerned. I have members in my own party. I've heard from other members who have put forward concerns. They want to be talking to the committee about getting that work done. I think we need to focus on that work, but we're stuck here, because the Prime Minister won't call a public inquiry. It's simple.

I hope you all figure something out. I hope that all of us remember our impact is way more important than our intention, and work for Canadians.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm happy to release the floor to the next speaker.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you, Ms. Blaney.

With that, I am going to suspend for 10 minutes; it will end up being 15 minutes. We will take a quick health break.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Excellent. It's good to have everyone back.

Yes, Mr. Cooper.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

On a point of order, Madam Chair, before we get going again, I just wanted to follow up on the status of the consolidated response from CSIS and the PCO. That was from March 1 and March 2. Although there wasn't a commitment to provide it within a specific timeline, I had asked that it be provided within a week. It's now been two weeks. I'm curious as to where things are with that.

I don't know, Madam Chair, if you have any insight or if the clerk could follow up and report back to the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

The clerk has whispered to me that she will follow up.

I don't have any additional insights. I can assure you that when we receive anything, it is sent out fairly quickly. We will follow up. Thank you for raising that, Mr. Cooper.

We will proceed with our speaking list. It will be Mr. Barrett, followed by Madame Normandin, Madam O'Connell, Madam Lambropoulos and then Mr. Fergus.

Mr. Barrett, go ahead.