Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 18th, 2023

[Daniel Jean]

There are a lot of things at play, so foreign interference came up in the context of conversations regularly, but specific briefings on foreign interference were a lot fewer.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Okay, but did they happen?

[Daniel Jean]

They did happen.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

The spring of 2017 was when Ms. Telford's close friend, Ms. Ng, was elected to Parliament replacing John McCallum, the previous MP, who departed, actually, to become the ambassador to China.

In your role as the national security adviser, was there anything about that particular by-election, that you can recall, that provoked any foreign interference concerns, because there are some discussions in public media about the involvement of Michael Chan, who was Mary Ng's campaign chair during that by-election?

[Daniel Jean]

It wouldn't be appropriate for me to speak about this one way or the other, even if there was.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

You can't even tell us if a conversation happened. I'm not asking for intimate details, but were there any concerns, because we have information—

[Daniel Jean]

No, because you're entering into real specifics, and I don't think it would be appropriate for me to talk about this in an open forum.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

In your opening statement, you said that there were complaints about the 2015 warning given to embassies not to interfere in that year's federal election. Was it a foreign government or was it more of a domestic consideration? Do you remember who complained?

[Daniel Jean]

I used that example just to show how society evolved.

In 2015, when we issued that notice, we had a few criticisms. They were in the media, and they were primarily from retired former diplomats here who felt that it was insensitive to go that directly about putting foreign missions on notice.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

In your earlier testimony today, you talked about the importance of foreign actors or foreign states being able to surveil, do surveillance on or conduct intimidation operations on diaspora within Canada. I am assuming that also means the Chinese Canadian diaspora. Is that correct?

[Daniel Jean]

It means China. Any diaspora should not be subject to undue surveillance or intimidation by a foreign state.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Is it true that the law in China is that they will never extradite a national?

[Daniel Jean]

I am not sure.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Do I have more time, Madam Chair, or not? It was about to get interesting, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Go ahead, Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Mr. Jean, thank you for being here. I appreciate your testimony.

You mentioned several times, in response to various questions about the CSIS Act, the fact that CSIS was introduced in 1984. I know that our government added some threat reduction measures in Bill C-59, which was first tabled in the House in 2017. I know those are subject to legal authorization, so there was some enhancement of powers of CSIS and CSE, if I am not mistaken, with regard to threat reduction measures.

I am wondering, in terms of your deep knowledge in this space, and a review of the CSIS Act—which you seem to think is necessary and on which I agree with you—what specific changes should be made to the CSIS Act, in your view?

[Daniel Jean]

The CSIS Act was written in a non-digital world. What happens now is, very often, you will see the Federal Court saying to CSIS, “We understand you want to do that because business is done that way now, but we don't think your act, as it reads right now, authorizes you to do this.” The headlines in the media will say, “CSIS blamed by the Federal Court.”

I think it's time to really look at it and update it.

You're right that with the last national security situation, they already had the threat reduction that codified which ones require warrants and which ones don't require warrants. There were some minor refinements. The major improvements were on the cyber side.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Are there specific cyber-related threats and/or strategies, powers or tools that are really needed for CSIS to be able to act? Can you identify anything really specific for me?

I'm looking, because I'm interested in what you would recommend.

[Daniel Jean]

We definitely need to work on some of the major digital access tools and providing better tools that, at the same time, stay true to our values and our regard for privacy. I would encourage government agencies, civil liberties groups and privacy groups to work together on that.

I spoke about intelligence to evidence before. It's a major issue. We are very fond of the International Criminal Court, but we would not have the tools to be able to prosecute somebody in Canada, so that's another example.

We spoke about the foreign registry. Mr. Perrault has come up with a list of demands on the election site. To me, there is a lot of the information in various reports. We just need to come up with the right strategy.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you.

You also talked about public awareness being key, and I know that in the four-pillar strategy, that was one of the pillars. The digital citizen initiative and Get Cyber Safe were a couple of things that, maybe, contributed to greater public awareness. You also mentioned that the crown jewels are not in the government anymore. They're out in society and, therefore, agencies need to to adapt.

Are there specific strategies around raising public awareness that need to be expanded as well?

[Daniel Jean]

You've given me an opportunity to say more about this. What I usually tell people is that the crown jewels now are intellectual property on the economic security side. The crown jewels are data, which has become a real asset. Data sovereignty is a key issue in many countries. We've not started to focus as much as we should on that in Canada. The crown jewels are the threat of manipulating information or manipulating elections, and going into research in universities.

If suddenly the threat that used to be primarily on your governmental crown jewels are on all these outside crown jewels, the security intelligence agencies need to retool their approach. They need to be able to “sensitize”, which means that some of their information they'll need to declassify, not declassify to the extent of giving the full kimono but giving just enough for people to know what the threat is.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Is there a more collaborative approach with the external stakeholders as well? You seemed to imply that in some of your previous remarks. Could you describe that a bit for the committee?

[Daniel Jean]

Absolutely. If you take, for example, the cyber strategy and the measures that were brought, we worked very closely with the Governor of the Bank of Canada and the major banks in Canada, because it was so critical to protect our financial sectors. Right now, you see that a lot of the cyber-attacks are coming through the supply chain, such as the one that happened to BRP in Quebec this summer.

You need to have good measures in place and you need to work with them.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you very much.