Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 7th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Sorry, I'm just going to correct myself. Based on the information I received and reported, afternoon meetings are happening. Evening meetings have been cancelled.

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

So we can go—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

We don't have the resources.

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

Six committees are sitting until 5, between 3:30 and 5:30.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

We do not have the resources without putting another committee out of a spot, and that was the concern.

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

That's not the information I have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

You can challenge the clerk, but we are hearing that we have resources until 2, and that's what I've said.

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

That's not—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Excellent. Well, have your people talk to our people.

Madame Gaudreau, the floor is yours.

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

Madam Chair, I'm going to keep my comments specific and concise, but I, too, have no choice but to respond to everything I heard. I took notes. I know these proceedings are being watched closely.

The first thing I heard was that this wasn't a game being played. I was shocked at that, I must tell you. What is more important than what we are doing right now? The game is what's been going on for the past two hours. I realize it's a right members have, and granted, that's fair.

I'd like to put some things into perspective. We heard earlier that work had been done. Yes, work was done in the past few years. Fine. Was that enough? Was it appropriate? To answer those questions, I'm going to refer to some evidence. As everyone knows, three polls came out. I'm hearing about this from my constituents in Laurentides—Labelle on a daily basis. Obviously, I have to consider the bigger picture. On a broader scale, Angus Reid did a poll that revealed 66% of people were concerned about Chinese interference. Seven out of 10 people think the government is afraid to take a stand. You might argue that the methodology is all wrong. These are polls. Another survey showed that 64% of people were in favour of an independent public inquiry. Let's start there.

We are taking all this time. We're trying to get the facts. Why? As we heard earlier, the point is to identify best practices and course correct. To do that, we need to find out what happened. What can we find out? Nothing. We are being kept in the dark, and here's the proof. I was talking to people yesterday, and they asked why the government was trying to avoid the issue. According to them, we had agreed that, in government, we were going to put partisanship aside and work together to choose a chair who could do the job and oversee an independent public inquiry.

What happened last week? I thought it was pretty clear. Then we find out that the Prime Minister wants to make the decision and that he is going to appoint a so-called special rapporteur. I just found that out. Forgive me for being naive. I'm not the only one embarrassed as people watch all this. We are trying to save our democracy. What happened earlier is exactly what's been happening for the past two hours and for the entire time we met last week. I've been through this before, with the WE Charity scandal—a whole 48 or 50 hours of it, if I were to ask my fellow members.

I can list other points. People have lost confidence. What do we have to do? What does a leader need to do to preserve the bit of confidence people have left? He must step up. He must be humble enough to admit that some ideas are good ones and that perhaps he could have done a better job, but he mustn't do what he's been doing since yesterday. Again this week, we are going to spend question period talking about small steps and incremental actions. Is it normal for the opposition parties to be the ones providing answers and strategies? Come on.

It's tough to explain this to my constituents. With every filibuster and attempt to draw things out, I think to myself yet again that something fishy is going on.

What's it going to take? We all know the answer.

Madam Chair, I would really like to go on, but I'm not going to do like my fellow members. There's an amendment on the table, and that's what I'd like to vote on.

Initially, I heard all the frustration and arguments conveyed by the members, but what I heard in the end was that they wouldn't let this go. Indeed, we aren't going to let this go.

Can we finally move on? I'm ready to vote. That's what I want to say.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you, Ms. Gaudreau.

Go ahead, Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

I've been listening very intently to all the comments made by all of the members of this committee, whom I greatly respect. We've been debating this amendment for some time now. We've heard quite a few arguments and perspectives.

I'm wondering whether we should proceed to a vote on the amendment. I think there's one other speaker after me, if I'm not mistaken, Madam Chair, or two, so perhaps we can move to a vote.

I would like to say, though, that I would like to be added to the list to speak on the main motion after the vote, if that's possible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

You're ready for the vote on the amendment. That's what you're suggesting.

I have Mr. Fergus, followed by Mr. Cooper.

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

I'm of the same mind as Mr. Turnbull. I'd like to put my name on the list to debate the motion. I'd also like to take myself off the list for the amendment, so we can vote on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

I have good news for you, Mr. Fergus. You were already on the list to debate the motion, so you are first.

Mr. Cooper said that he didn't wish to speak now. He may want the floor later, however.

I will therefore call the vote on the amendment.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 6; nays 5 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

With that, we are on to the main motion as amended.

We'll go to Mr. Fergus, followed by Mr. Turnbull.

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

Madam Chair, I've spoken a lot already, and I'd prefer to hear what Mr. Turnbull has to say. Could you kindly move my name to the end of the list? Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you, Mr. Fergus.

Go ahead, Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks to my colleague, Mr. Fergus, for being so gracious and kind to me.

I've certainly been listening and preparing lots of remarks, but before I do that, I'd like to introduce an amendment to the motion.

I'll start by moving this. I move that the motion be amended by replacing the words after “in relation to its study of foreign election interference” with the following:

Invite the—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Mr. Turnbull, I'm sorry.

I want to confirm, to maintain some order, whether you have shared that with the clerk in both official languages.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Yes, I believe we have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

We've just received it. If we can wait a couple of seconds to make sure that everyone has it, it keeps us on the same page. I'll return the floor to you once I've confirmed that everyone has it. Thank you.

I understand that everyone's received it.

With that, Mr. Turnbull, I'll provide you back the floor.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

I'll start from the beginning. I move that the motion be amended by replacing the words after “in relation to its study of foreign election interference” with the following:

Invite the 2019 and 2021 National Campaign Directors of each recognized party in the House of Commons and the security-cleared party representatives to the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force during the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

The French translation is there as well.

I'd like to speak to that and address some of the comments that were made by Mr. Cooper at the beginning of our meeting today, which I found quite troubling. I have taken the time to listen to and review all the information we've had at our disposal, as well as the multiple reports. I pride myself on researching and reading through the various documents that are provided and also in doing my own research on these topics, because I take these matters extremely seriously, especially when there are allegations flying around and quite a lot of political rhetoric that I think could be injurious to our democracy as a whole, in terms of undermining our democratic institutions.

In particular, one of the false claims that we keep hearing from the Conservative Party of Canada—over and over again they repeat the same thing—is that the Prime Minister and our government have done nothing when it comes to foreign election interference. This couldn't be further from the truth. Based on all of the documents I have in front of me, there is ample evidence from the very first days of this government, which I wasn't a part of in those days, to show a track record of significant work that has been done on this issue at least as far back as 2017. I think it's safe to say it goes back right to 2015, when the Liberal government that's currently running the country first got elected.

I would like to take some time refuting that claim, but I also want to talk about a couple of other assertions that have been made over and over again that are deeply troubling.

One is that the Conservatives keep saying, and some opposition parties seem to be chiming in with a chorus of support for this, that they're interested in “getting to the bottom” of this. What's interesting to me is that, when you look at all of the non-partisan and independent processes that have been set up by our government, and you look at this committee and how many witnesses have already come forward with significant expertise in national security, you see that we haven't heard anything to demonstrate that this government isn't willing to get to the bottom of this.

What strikes me as just pure political rhetoric and games, to be honest, is this claim that somehow we are not interested in getting to the bottom of these matters. Quite the contrary is true. In fact, our government has been getting to the bottom of these matters and has demonstrated a real dedication and commitment to addressing foreign election interference.

The other thing I found really troubling about Mr. Cooper's claims at the beginning of this meeting today was that somehow the PM has instructed us to do some obstructionary work. I think that is also 100% false. I know I speak for myself, and I probably can speak for all my colleagues, that we're here of our own volition. We take our work at this committee very seriously, and to imply that we're somehow being controlled by somebody else is insulting, to be frank.

I also want to say that there has been a significant shift in the messaging over recent days from the leader of the official opposition, who I would remind people was the former minister of democratic reform. If you look back on the record, you'll see, I'm sure, that not much was done on foreign election interference in the time that Pierre Poilievre was the minister of democratic reform.

The shift in messaging that I've seen is that the leader of the official opposition has gone from saying that, yes, there were attempts at election interference but their party stood by the results of the election, to some very recent remarks that are significantly different from that message.

Let me just read a couple of quotes here. I believe it was yesterday that the leader of the official opposition said that we've never seen an intelligence service so worried about the prime minister and “his collaboration with a foreign power”. He has also said that they are “so concerned” about how Canada is working against its own interests and for a foreign dictatorship's interests.

These claims are somehow implying that the Prime Minister is working against the interests of Canadians and in a way collaborating with a foreign power to undermine our democracy. That couldn't be further from the truth. I don't have words to describe how much I think that's inappropriate language. It's untrue and it's unfounded. It's really risking our entire democracy and the faith that Canadians have in our democracy by making such baseless claims. If they were founded, of course, those claims could be made, but they're unfounded.

The other thing I want to point out is that, further to my colleagues Mr. Fergus and MP O'Connell, both of whom I have great respect for and in their remarks today made some very compelling arguments, we have set up all these different mechanisms within our government's mandate to protect against foreign election interference. We know that, on the one hand, there are non-partisan senior public servants within the caretaker period who are part of the panel for the critical election incident public protocol and panel. They take part in that during the caretaker period. We also know that outside of that caretaker period, our government has implemented what Rosenberg refers to as an “electoral ecosystem approach”, which is an all-of-government approach to combat foreign election interference. This has four pillars—enhancing citizen preparedness, improving organizational readiness, combatting foreign interference and building a healthy information ecosystem.

What I want to say about this is that, on the one hand, our government has set up a process—i.e., the protocol and panel—so that even within an election period, in a writ period or where the caretaker convention applies, there is a rigorous set of non-partisan senior officials who have expertise and are informed by the SITE task force, which is composed of experts in national security from all of our agencies, which are providing them with regular briefings.

That's just within the caretaker period. Then we have an independent assessment done after every election. Let's also be honest. If we actually look at and evaluate from the James Judd report, which was an independent assessment, how many of the recommendations were implemented, we can see that the vast majority of them, if not all of them, were implemented. I think maybe one wasn't implemented. That's because the government didn't necessarily agree with that one or took a different approach.

Similarly, within the 16 or so recommendations that were made by Morris Rosenberg, which I take very seriously.... I read the report. I think there's a lot of substance there that this committee could be deliberating on. We could be really drilling down on those recommendations instead of playing political games.

To me, the original motion that Mr. Cooper put forward, which was to have political staffers here.... I mean, they're not national security experts. We have all the deputy ministers. We have the national security and intelligence adviser to the Prime Minister. We've had the director of CSIS. The list goes on and on. I actually have the list of witnesses here if you want me to read them out.

You couldn't ask for a better list of witnesses to come before this committee. I don't see what the rationale is when you have ministerial accountability outside of the caretaker period and you have the officials and experts who inform them coming to this committee. Then you have the non-partisan public servants who are doing the work within the caretaker period who are coming forward. What more information could you possibly really want?

If your motivation was truly to get to the bottom of this and to take this matter seriously, why wouldn't you be listening to the people who have the expertise?

That's not good enough for the official opposition. It's not good enough because they want to push a narrative that is counter to the interests of our democracy and our democratic institutions. It's one that tries to undermine our democracy and our institutions. That, I will not stand for.

I want to talk for a moment about the fact that our government took up recommendations from an extensive report that was done in 2018.

In 2018, the ethics committee did a study that produced a very significant report called “Democracy Under Threat: Risks and Solutions in the Era of Disinformation and Data Monopoly”. The chair at the time was Bob Zimmer. I know the Conservatives will know Bob. That report is over 100 pages. It has significant recommendations, many of which have been acted on. If you trace back to the government response to that report, you can see that many of the things that unfolded after that report was published were responded to by the government and actually implemented.

Again, it points to the fact that there is no basis for this absurd claim that our government doesn't take foreign election interference seriously and the false claim that the government has done nothing on this.

Let me stack this up a little bit in terms of what the government has done.

I'll go back to that ethics report, which I assume happened over the course of a significant period because it's a pretty extensive study. As we know, these things can take months—to hear from witnesses and then deliberate. What I can see from that is that in 2018 that report was published, a government response came in shortly after—I'm not sure I have the date on the government response, but it was shortly after—and many of these things were then acted on.

First, obviously the critical election incident public protocol and panel were set up. That was first established before the 2019 election. The plan to protect Canadian democracy, which is that four-pillar plan that outlines an all-of-government approach, was implemented as well. That's listed in the Rosenberg report. He takes the time to go through the various initiatives that unfolded and were implemented out of that, so I'd like to speak to those for a moment.

One of the pillars of that all-of-government approach, which is sometimes referred to as the electoral ecosystem approach.... Let's be honest. Foreign election interference can't be tackled with just one intervention. It's a systematic set of strategies and interventions that cut across all of our ministries and institutions that's required. There's a lot of collaboration with many of our other systemic issues. We know that we need an all-of-government approach, and I think all of us are familiar with calls on the government to have a whole-of-government approach. This is exactly what our government has been implementing, and there's evidence of this. For committee members to claim that the government hasn't done anything just ignores the facts.

When you look at pillar one of the plan to protect Canadian democracy, enhancing citizen preparedness is the pillar. There's been a digital citizen initiative led by Canadian Heritage, which supported skills development through the use of awareness sessions, workshops and learning materials. That's one thing that's been done in that pillar.

Another is Get Cyber Safe. It is another public awareness campaign about Internet security, which added content about cyber-threats to the Canadian democratic process. Again, this is raising awareness among citizens across Canada, because what we've heard from CSIS in our testimony, and others, is that this is not just about intelligence. Everybody has a role to play in protecting our democracy. Part of it means raising the awareness of our citizens so that they understand what we're up against, what to look out for and what the signs are of foreign election interference so that they can help us identify, report and, in a way, gather intel and information that may be helpful in preventing it from happening.

Prior to 2019, the government provided journalists with training on foreign interference and convened regular press briefings. We also helped essentially to inform and to train journalists. There were also changes to Canada's election laws that expanded the CEO information and education programs aimed at the Canadian public. I will just flip to some of the legislative changes that were made.

One was An Act respecting national security matters, Bill C-59. Bill C-59 was a piece of legislation that our government brought forward that provided both CSIS and CSE with the ability to engage in threat reduction measures, subject to legal authorization of course. We heard from the director of CSIS when he was before our committee that they do intervene and have threat reduction measures that they're able to use. Obviously when there's credible intel that's been analyzed, corroborated and evaluated such that they're obviously not acting on a partial piece of intelligence, which as the director said, was the case. Most of the time they were accumulating intelligence that came with significant caveats. However, it's good for us to know that they have threat reduction measures, and they use those where needed.

What's interesting, though, is that our government was the one that gave them those powers in Bill C-59. Again, what's interesting is that the Conservatives keep claiming that we've done nothing. CSIS has threat reduction measures that were given to them by legislation that was passed by our government. That's a direct conflict with what the Conservatives keep asserting.

Another one is BIll C-76, the Elections Modernization Act. Conservatives also claim over and over that the government hasn't done anything, as if they repeat this falsehood and people are going to believe it. I don't believe that Canadians are going to be fooled by the assertion of false claims over and over again. The Elections Modernization Act came into force in June 2019, and it adds a number of different interesting and important measures. One is that it prohibits foreign persons or entities from unduly influencing an elector to vote or refrain from voting, or to vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate or registered party.

It also prohibits third parties from using foreign funds for partisan advertising and activities. It also prohibits foreign entities from spending on partisan advertising and activities during both the pre-election and election periods. It also requires online platforms to publish a registry of partisan advertising published during the pre-election period and all election advertising during the election period. It also has provisions that prohibit knowingly making or publishing a false statement to affect election results.

Those are five additional measures that were added in the Elections Modernization Act.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I was just getting started, Mr. Nater.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I know.