Evidence of meeting #61 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was telford.
A video is available from Parliament.
Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Office of the Prime Minister
I'll undertake. I will take it back and see what I can do.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Thank you very much.
There were media reports that there was an urgent briefing given to the cleared Liberal Party officials, and it would be helpful to know. Again, in that same context, we will ask the Liberal Party officials when they come what their list of cleared officials was. If you could make the same inquiry and provide that information to us.... You've indicated in the affirmative.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Okay. Thank you very much.
That would be incredibly helpful, because of course this speaks to the concern that information was made available to these officials, who would then, it would be reasonably expected, have provided it to the Prime Minister, which is what you said. If you receive information, you share that information with the Prime Minister.
Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Office of the Prime Minister
Yes, and you know, Madam Chair, I have every confidence that they would talk to the Prime Minister about anything they found out.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Did you recommend to the Prime Minister against removing the candidate from Don Valley North as a candidate for election?
Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Office of the Prime Minister
The member who is being discussed stepped outside of caucus quite recently, so I'm not sure what is being referred to.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
The question is exactly as stated. It's whether you recommended, when the candidate for Don Valley North was a candidate for election, against his removal from the slate of candidates running for the Liberal Party.
Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Office of the Prime Minister
I was never involved in a conversation on the subject.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Okay. Conversations did occur.
Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Office of the Prime Minister
No, I'm saying that I was not privy to a conversation. I don't have an answer for you on this because there was no conversation that I was part of on this subject.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bardish Chagger
Excellent. That's time. Thank you, Mr. Barrett.
I would just like to confirm that among the witnesses we have asked to appear, campaign managers have been invited to a future meeting, and we anticipate that meeting taking place in the month of April. Invitations have been sent out to the four names that we were provided. One has confirmed, and responses from the other three are pending. We hope to have those soon, and we'll share that information with all members as it becomes available.
Mr. Fergus, you have the floor.
Liberal
Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'd like to thank Ms. Telford for her presentation today. It was very clear and genuine. I'm grateful to her for trying to answer our questions related to national security.
Ms. Telford, you mentioned in your statement something that I don't feel has been fully considered in a lot of the extremely partisan discussions about this. When it comes to dealing with foreign interference, much of the work that needs to be done and the action that needs to be taken is not being directed by politicians. In fact, it would be completely inappropriate for politicians to be involved.
For example, CSIS gives information to the RCMP or the Commissioner of Canada Elections so that they can launch investigations. It's not up to politicians to direct those investigations. Again, that would be completely inappropriate.
In your experience, have these agencies ever required permission from the Prime Minister's Office to act and use the powers and tools at their disposal?
Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Office of the Prime Minister
I certainly believe so, and this would be the kind of thing, again, that NSIRA, for example, or NSICOP, under their different purviews, could be making recommendations on if they did see any gaps. Law enforcement and security agencies have a number of different authorities under which they do not need, nor should they have, the Prime Minister's or cabinet authorities in order to proceed.
Liberal
Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
To confirm, it's not up to the Prime Minister's office to direct the activities of the RCMP or CSIS.
Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Office of the Prime Minister
It's absolutely not.
Liberal
Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
It's not at all. Thank you.
The director of CSIS also told this committee that the CSIS Act provides a number of tools to enable CSIS to investigate foreign interference activities, adding, “We investigate these allegations, and we use all the tools at our disposal to try to better understand and characterize these activities and reduce the threat where possible.” Are you at all familiar with these tools?
Liberal
Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Office of the Prime Minister
We're learning quite literally every day more and more information that is going to teach us and teach different parts of government how they can improve and what other tools they may or may not need to have. You know, these last number of months, even in terms of trying to figure out how to communicate to the public on some of this has been an exercise for everybody—in some cases in new and different ways, though less so, perhaps, for the political side.
My understanding is that the tools have been used more than they ever have before, and I think you heard that from David Vigneault, the CSIS director, when he was here. As well, agencies are talking to each other regularly, and they brief up regularly to ministers, to the Prime Minister and to each other. That's because, as I said, while this is not a new threat, it is an evolving one, and obviously, as one of the other members here said, there have been a lot of events in the last number of years, whether we're talking about misinformation and disinformation being spread during COVID—which I think was talked about in one of the NSICOP reports—or about attempts at election interference by foreign actors, or whether we're looking at businesses, as I mentioned in my opening statement, and the minister from Innovation actually made changes within the last number of years on that front. The government has to continue to evolve and adapt as we learn about these threats.
Liberal
Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
I appreciate that.
If I can sneak in one last question, the foreign affairs deputy minister, David Morrison, told this committee, “The cabinet directive on the protocol states very clearly that whenever national security agencies become aware of interference they must consider all options to effectively address the interference.” The panel is in place to ensure there is communication with the public if there is an incident that threatens the integrity of our elections, but before that, the protocol ensures in the first instance that there's consideration of what could be done to actually address the threat. I think that's quite important.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bardish Chagger
Mr. Fergus, can you ask the question, so I can give a bit of time to answer? The beeper has gone off.
Liberal
Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
Oh, I'm sorry.
Do you have anything to add? Could you provide any colour to what the government was thinking when the protocol was first introduced back in 2019?
Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Office of the Prime Minister
It was a new thing going into 2019, and there was a review done of it. The review was made public. It was also studied by NSICOP, and NSICOP determined that the SITE task force and the protocol had fulfilled their mandate. However, there were some lessons learned that came out of those reviews, and they were followed up on heading into the 2021 campaign.
Now there are some further lessons learned, which we've all seen in the review coming out of the 2021 protocol and panel experience. One of those areas is communications and figuring out how.... To an earlier member's comments around instilling trust in Canadians and ensuring we're always building trust for Canadians in institutions, that's one of the areas that it talks about needing to be worked on. I think it's a great area for parliamentarians to give some advice on as well.