Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 25th, 2023

[Fred DeLorey]

I don't know.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Was he the one who was the liaison?

[Fred DeLorey]

He was our representative.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

He would have been the one to receive it.

[Fred DeLorey]

That's likely, if that's how this—

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

He is not here today, which is convenient, as we aren't able to ask him the questions that he would be able to confirm or deny.

[Fred DeLorey]

I don't know. I obviously wasn't part of who decided who was to come to committee.

I know the motion read that he was the campaign director and was asked to come. He was not the campaign director. I was the campaign director. Our titles are national campaign manager, but that was my role, not his.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Great.

We hope he is here in the future and we can ask him that question.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

Madame Normandin.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being with us.

My questions are mostly for Mr. DeLorey, but if you want to add something, Mr. Marshall, feel free to do so.

Mr. DeLorey, I'd like to hear your comments on the type of information campaign directors could receive. You mentioned the difficulty of getting information on possible interference that could, for instance, undermine your campaign. Is that correct?

From what I understand, the information provided focused more on your own candidates than on what wasn't related to them, but could undermine them.

Am I summarizing the situation relatively well?

[Fred DeLorey]

We did not get anything from the task force saying what we had to be concerned about or anything to see. It didn't come that way. It was more us bringing to the task force concerns that we had seen.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Based on what I understand from the answers Mr. Broadhurst gave to my questions earlier, the information that intelligence agencies provide to party directors focused on their own nominees. They gave them, in a certain way, raw information.

What about your own nominees? Did you get raw information on the entire campaign or possible interference activities in various ridings, which you then had to analyze?

[Fred DeLorey]

We didn't receive anything on any of our candidates, any information or anything like that.

[Hamish Marshall]

I can't speak to specifics, but we were given not so much information on any of our candidates, but very vague information they were looking into something in this group of two or three ridings. It was very, very vague and it didn't really come to anything. It certainly wouldn't be what I describe as raw data. It was, “We've done some looking. We're doing some more looking.” It was very, very deliberately vague and very, very, very high level. We were not given anything to evaluate in any sense of the word.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

That was how it went, even though in principle, everyone who received that information had the required security clearances for it.

Am I understanding correctly?

[Hamish Marshall]

I don't know about the distinction and how the intelligence services work, their distinction between the raw data, which could identify sources, and a report or a conclusion based on that. My understanding is in some cases that is classified differently. I obviously can't speak to it. All I know is that in the situation we were in, we were given very vague, very high-level indications of things that didn't really come to anything.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. DeLorey, you said you already tried to address certain problems at the local level, which your campaign directors brought to your attention. You were then told that there were legislative shortfalls. For that reason, it was not possible to address certain issues.

In your opinion, when a nomination seems compromised, solving potential interference problems is up to the party the candidate wants to join. It would not be possible for another party to solve this type of problem.

Based on your analysis, ultimately, who holds the key when a problem with interference involves a potentially compromised nomination?

[Fred DeLorey]

I'm not quite sure I understand the question. We never received anything on any of our candidates in any way.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Generally speaking, based on your experience with the last election, when it's suspected that foreign interference activities have compromised a nominee, who has the power to manage that situation? Is it the party impacted by the interference, meaning the opposing party, or the party with the same political alignment as the candidate involved?

[Fred DeLorey]

The authority in our party rests with our National Council, and they have a committee, the national candidate selection committee, which approves candidates and can remove candidates. Of course, the candidate can appeal to the National Council as a whole if they disagree with that move. As Mr. Broadhurst said earlier, once you're registered as a candidate, only the candidate can withdraw.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Maybe my question wasn't very clear.

Let's use the example of a party negatively affected by a potentially compromised nomination which is impacting another party. Is it only the party with the same political alignment as the nominee who has the power to resolve a situation of interference? A member of another party would have neither the authority, the legislative tools or anything else allowing them to manage the interference impacting them.

Did I understand correctly?

[Fred DeLorey]

I'm sorry, but I'm trying to understand the question.

When there's a situation, we can raise concerns. We can go to Elections Canada or the task force and raise a complaint, but there's very little we can do, other than maybe put out a press release and attack the adversary for whatever they were doing.

Again, it is a tricky situation. I don't think we have this solved. We don't have the legislation yet. I think we're new to this, in what we're doing on combatting foreign interference. I think you guys have a lot of very important work to do to figure this out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

Ms. Blaney, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I thank the people here testifying in this important study.

I'm going to come to you, Mr. DeLorey. I think some of the information you shared today is interesting, and I'm really reflecting on some of the comments you made. This is kind of new, and we need to figure out how we're going to address this issue in a meaningful way.

From my perspective it has to do a couple of things. One thing it has to do is provide some sort of connection between that information, from all the resources they get it from...to the parties. But it also has to be at least transparent enough that the public understands what the process is.

Listening to the testimony today—the previous testimony and this—it seems pretty clear to me that there isn't clarity for anyone about how any of this works, and everybody's trying to figure it out. I appreciate that you talk about addressing some of those legislative gaps.

I would like to go back. Perhaps you could explain for me the work that you do. Of course if there's anything from Mr. Marshall...during the previous election.... What is changing internally in how you address some of these issues or look for those issues? It sounds like what you're telling us is that it feels like you're not getting enough information to do anything. You're giving information, but not receiving much.

What internally have you done as a party or in a campaign role to address some of these issues?

[Fred DeLorey]

The day Erin O'Toole left the leadership of the party, I resigned as campaign manager as well, so I'm not involved in anything that's moving forward.

What I would of course advise the campaign.... I would be pushing caucus to work on legislation to look at these holes and to figure out what the holes are. We're saying there are gaps. I don't know what they are exactly, so I would be working hard to figure out what those are.

As Mr. Marshall mentioned before, cybersecurity is something that we are obviously very concerned about, and that's an ongoing thing—constantly updating systems and doing that.

Again, this is all very new to us. I think the parties, and obviously the legislators here in this room, should be focused very much on fixing and plugging those holes.