Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 25th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Are you on the right channel?

You just want to make sure you can see the English when you go to it.

[Dr. Lori Turnbull]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Perfect.

You can start again, Ms. Normandin.

As always, I will take the time needed for interpretation into account. That time will be added to the speaking time, so everyone may speak slowly and there will still be time to ask all the questions you like.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I said I was going to ask the two witnesses questions in turn, starting with you, Ms. Turnbull.

You have already answered some of my questions, particularly regarding public funding of parties. I would like you to talk to us a little more about that. I understand it would be a way of making parties more independent of private funding, and so of foreign interference, possibly.

Should we also consider lowering the maximum amount of contributions? Is that something being considered?

[Dr. Lori Turnbull]

I think this is a fascinating topic.

I'm going to take the last part first. I do not think that we should lower the contribution limit, because it's already quite low. If we lower that, I don't see what it would accomplish. For example, it's around $1,650 or $1,700, and if you went lower than that, you wouldn't be achieving anything. I really don't think there's an issue by way of any negative outcome that's going to happen at the $1,700 level that would be different if we were to allow $1,400. I just don't see it. Most political contributions are nowhere near in that ballpark. The last time I saw the statistics, they were less than $200. I really have no idea what we would accomplish by doing that.

I think there is, perhaps, an optimal balance—maybe this is a conceptual thing—between the amount of money that political parties get from private sources and the amount of money that they get from public sources. You want political parties to want to compete for donations. That is a test of whether they're resonating with the public. That is accountability for political parties. If you're raising money, it should be because your ideas resonate. That's not always the way it works.

On the other hand, the public funding is not.... I don't see that as an investment, really, in a particular party. It's an investment in a party system. It's an investment in a competition. We need to make sure, I think, that even though you don't want to make parties entirely reliant on that—because we shouldn't have taxpayers or the consolidated revenue fund paying entirely for political parties' contributions and competitions—I think there's value in investing in a democracy to make sure, again, that you can see parties go, over time, and be able to count on a certain amount of funding. Otherwise, how you did in the last election is too much of a determinant for how you do going forward. Then we get a self-fulfilling situation, which I don't think is valuable.

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

Thank you.

I will now turn to you, Ms. Marineau.

You talked about the fact that various platforms, such as Google, had had to account for how they were infiltrated. Their reports have become a kind of process for state actors who would like to engage in interference to follow. I would like you to tell us a little more about this.

In spite of everything, we may have to strike a balance between the costs and benefits. On the one hand, by making this information public, we are informing the public about how interference works, so they can be better prepared to counteract it. On the other hand, however, if we talk about it in public too much, there is a risk that it will be used for evil purposes.

I would like you to tell us about this generally.

[Sophie Marineau]

Since 2016, there have been a lot of reports published and the effect has been to improve the methods used. Previously, they created a lot of web robots. Armies of bots engaged in massive information sharing. The bots were quickly deactivated by platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

They then came up with more sophisticated methods, to make the bots less easily detectable. For example, previously, bots that posted no photographs or profile information were easier to detect. Now, accounts are created in Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram and the accounts are then connected, to make it look like they really are a person.

Certainly, a lot of these bots can be banned. However, the more the methods are exposed, the more sophisticated they become.

Nonetheless, people are increasingly aware of the phenomenon. For example, when they notice that people on Instagram or comments on Facebook are often repeating the same things, they become a bit more critical.

Of course, that takes time. We become familiar with it and we learn, and the same goes for the platforms.

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

You also said that the work the government does was not sufficient, in itself, to counteract interference, and there should be other actors.

You may have heard me talk a little earlier about the idea of creating a permanent independent entity to combat foreign interference. That entity would resemble the Office of the Auditor General and would report to the House.

In your opinion, could that be a tool worth considering for combatting interference?

[Sophie Marineau]

It could be a tool worth considering.

If people lose confidence in their electoral system and their institutions, the best way of remedying the situation, in an ideal world, obviously, would be for everyone to have the same information. In principle, the more different sources that information comes from, including from parties, from a non-partisan organization and from the government, the more the credibility of the organizations will rise and the more people will trust that information. Conversely, the more people lose confidence in the system, the more difficult it will be to reach them and convey information to them through the platforms or media, or by other means of communication.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

Ms. Blaney, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I thank both the witnesses for being here today to participate in this study and for their interesting testimony.

I'm going to start with Ms. Marineau first.

One of the challenges as we address the issue of foreign interference in elections is how it's constantly changing. It's hard to figure out the best way to respond when every response has to mitigate the challenges that we're faced with.

When you were testifying before us, you talked about foreign interference needing to be addressed collectively, not just by the government but by all areas that are impacted. I have a two-piece question.

One is that we are hearing from multiple people that legislation is really the tool that we need to be looking at. When you look at foreign interference and disinformation, what are the holes in our legislation that we need to fill?

The second part of that question is that I've also heard, and I think this is an interesting idea, that the focus is tending to be right on the election as opposed to looking at elections and then in between elections and how we address information so that we're not not addressing misinformation and then suddenly right before and during the election we're panicking about it without a real resolution.

I'm just wondering if you could answer that very simple question.

[Sophie Marineau]

Thank you for the question.

First, I would actually like to be clear that I am not an expert in Canadian legislation. Certainly the government in power can contribute by enacting legislation. When I talk about a collective effort, I mean that the government is not the only bulwark. The attacks and disinformation are happening continuously, every day.

With respect to Russia, the group of researchers at the RAND Corporation compared the Russian disinformation technique to a fire hose that sprays people with propaganda. It's constant, and the disinformation spreads much faster than any measure that the institutions or organizations trying to protect themselves against that information could take. It is done rapidly using bots. One technique that is often used is to send out an enormous amount of information, see what is going to hook people surfing the net, eliminate the information that is reaching the fewest people, and redirect how the information is transmitted. They adapt extremely rapidly.

When I talk about a collective effort, I mean that everyone has to be made aware of the phenomenon. People have to inform themselves and ask themselves, every time they read a piece of information, whether it is true or not. People have to ask themselves whether they have the right tools for validating or verifying the information.

Where the government can be a bulwark is when it comes to legislation. Institutions and media platforms have to verify the information being disseminated. And members of the public have to protect themselves against disinformation.

Could you repeat the second part of your question, please?

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

It's about addressing some of these issues in between elections. The focus right now is really election-specific, but we've heard other testimony where even parties have said, if there were more check-ins during the election....

I also think about just educating people because, again, for the public it must feel like there's always some information about disinformation, but it intensifies around elections. How do we build that capacity in between elections? I think that's what I'm asking.

[Sophie Marineau]

Generally speaking, studies show that Russia often tried to inflame debates that were already in the news. It tried to polarize debates about religion, particularly in the United States, about ethnic groups, and about the government. It tried to sow division.

I think we have to think about places where information might slip in. That would be one way of identifying it and then being able to combat it. We have to ask ourselves what debates can inflame a situation and divide people, and what type of debate foreign powers can interfere in.

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

Thank you.

If I can come to you, Professor Turnbull, I really appreciated what you had to say about the health of democracy. I know, when I was last in the riding, I spent about a little over an hour with a bunch of teenagers between the ages of 15 and 17, and they had really hard questions. It was really fantastic to see the engagement. I'm a big supporter of getting younger people to engage with the system, because all the evidence tells us that the sooner a person engages with the system, the more they continue to vote. If they don't engage very quickly, they don't participate.

I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about why this is a good idea and how you think it will increase election connections.

I'll leave it at that.

[Dr. Lori Turnbull]

I think there are a number of things that we could do to increase turnout but also just to increase how inclusive the conversation is. I really think that 20 years ago, when people were doing research on why the turnout had tanked in the early 2000s, a lot of these issues came up. If you voted in your first eligible election, you were more likely to vote the rest of your life. If you felt the election wasn't a foregone conclusion, that it was competitive, you were more likely to vote. The more informed you were, the more likely you were to vote. All of these things.

They all seem to me to point to letting people vote when they're 16 and tying that in with some sort of civics—she's telling me I have to stop now, but you know where I'm going with this—to try to increase their information and their opportunity to participate at the same time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

I was trying to tell you by not telling you but then you told everybody anyway, because, you know, there are hundreds of thousands of people watching.

However, we appreciate that.

Our next round will be five minutes for Mr. Nater.

Then Mr. Fergus will also have five minutes.

Go ahead, Mr. Nater.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate those hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are tuning in at 8:16 on a Tuesday evening.

Through you, Madam Chair, to our witnesses, I want to begin with Dr. Turnbull in the room here.

Certainly, you have a unique background in the sense that you've spent several years in academia, but you also had the window into the public service side of things through your time at Privy Council Office and the non-partisan public service. You've been on record—and you mentioned again tonight—how you think it's worthwhile to have a public inquiry. I think you said you'd be sad if that recommendation didn't come out of David Johnston's review.

I am hoping you can put your PCO hat back on for just a minute.

One of the responses we had from Ms. Telford was that one of the challenges would be to create these terms of reference. If you were at PCO, what terms of reference would you encourage the government to have for such an inquiry?

[Dr. Lori Turnbull]

I am going to be very clear and say that I am not at PCO. I am not going to put that hat on. I will, with the hat that I do wear, say that it is hard to determine exactly how you're going to draw parameters around an exercise like this.

I think there are kind of two general ways you can go. One way is that you can be very specific: We are going to have an inquiry that answers these specific questions. You don't get a lot of veering off. That has the upshot of being clear. It might be easier, especially given that the timeline is not very long, to be very focused on the questions you want answered so that you're achieving that clear objective.

On the other hand, you may want to have a broader process wherein you're defining parameters around how we can measure the health of democracy, what sorts of factors we are looking at and what we can do to improve that. The value of an inquiry like this is really going to be in the recommendations. People will literally flip to the back to see what you think we should do.

I think, to get to the point, especially given that there's not going to be very much time, be solutions-oriented. What is it that you want to recommend to make things better, and based on what research and evidence?

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

I thank you for that.

Maybe just to follow up on that briefly, in terms of timelines and potentially short timelines and how broad or how targeted an inquiry should be or might be, is there the benefit, if a broader inquiry is recommended, that there might be interim reports, with those recommendations that everyone flips to, specifically focused on this smaller but important aspect of foreign interference, which could be the first part of a broader inquiry with an interim report with interim recommendations sooner, seeing as we're almost two years into a hung Parliament, and there could be an election at any point, in theory at least?

[Dr. Lori Turnbull]

Yes, that will be interesting if, for whatever reason, the timelines end up crashing and an election happens before this thing is over.

Interim reports make a lot of sense, particularly if there's going to be public engagement in this. I think it's important especially if it does go the way of having a really broad conversation around democracy, what's wrong with it and what we can do. That will have much less value if people aren't engaged in it. You need the interim reporting so you can actually have moments at which you're reaching out to people, but not necessarily for interim recommendations. I think probably the recommendations will come at the end, after you've talked to people.

If you have an interim report, you're checking in. Check in with people. Have a public engagement side of it so people are actually contributing and they know it's happening. That's going to be really hard given that this is going on over the summer.

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

Thanks for that.

I have about a minute left so I want now to focus on some of the governance issues and what we've heard from different witnesses, especially in the last few meetings.

CEIPP is the critical election incident public protocol, and one of the challenges we've heard about is that there's this threshold in terms of when the public ought to be notified. We've heard witnesses say that in a lot of cases it should be never, in the sense that there's such a high threshold. We know there's a panel. It's made up of five senior public servants.

In a short 30 seconds, my question is this: Is this the right structure or should we look at something else? What ought to be done in terms of when and how the public is notified on such an issue?

[Dr. Lori Turnbull]

This is hard because, as soon as you alert the public that there's an issue, then there are going to be questions about whether or not the results of the election will be accepted no matter what, because you've already flagged that there's a problem. Then what do you do about it?

It doesn't matter who it is. Well, it matters a little, but as soon as you say it, then the results of the election, I think, are not going to be accepted as they would have been.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

Mr. Fergus, the floor is yours for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First, I would like to thank the two witnesses.

My question is for Ms. Marineau.

You have talked about Russia. The witnesses we heard just before you also talked about Russia and the effects...