Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 20th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Once again, I know that everyone has their purpose. You're always welcome, Mr. Cooper, to provide us with information. We will have it translated in both official languages, but I do need the exchange from member to witness to flow back and forth with no overlap because, at the end of the day. it is the member's time. I will always ensure that witnesses have some time to answer, but you would be just matching the length of time consumed on either end.

We'll go back to Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

We're definitely here today because of a story you published. That's what bring us here, so I really wanted to make it more clear. Do you think you possibly could have gotten it wrong?

[Samuel Cooper]

No. This story stands and the legal—

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

Well, the former Governor General stated unequivocally that the member for Don Valley North had not discussed extending the illegal detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor with Chinese government officials, and I quote:

I have reviewed the same intelligence report that was provided to the Prime Minister relating to [the] allegation

—this is in regard to MP Dong—

which I am advised is the only intelligence that speaks to this issue. I can report the following. The allegation is false. Mr. Dong discussed the “two Michaels” with a PRC official, but did not suggest to the official that the PRC extend their detention.

This report has caused Mr. Dong, a member of Parliament—and in addition to that, his family and many others—a lot of harm, and perhaps irreparable harm. Do you have any comments to that?

[Samuel Cooper]

My only comment is that this story, starting in November 2022, meets the highest standards of public interest and public interest reporting. Referring back to my last attempted answer, NSICOP in 2019 asked this government to look at the Security of Information Act and the CSIS Act and to look into the measures taken in Australia in 2018—

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Cooper. I think our committee will be heading down that direction, so I appreciate that.

I also understand that you mentioned that you work for The Bureau right now. You've talked many times about transparency.

Upon googling it, you can't really find out what the source for The Bureau is. So who funds The Bureau?

[Samuel Cooper]

I think I'll have more to say about that, but I can assure the member now that it's not a foreign government or anyone outside of Canada.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Why can you not let us know, then, where the funding comes from?

[Samuel Cooper]

I didn't come here prepared today to disclose what a public interest investigative reporter who's looking into important matters, who may or may not be interested in my reporting—

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I think, though, as a journalist, that you would be interested in knowing whom you work for. You can find out easily with the Globe and the National Post where their funding comes from. Why not The Bureau?

[Samuel Cooper]

The Bureau is a subscription-driven platform on Substack. As the honourable members know, Canadian media is changing, and authors and writers such as Terry Glavin are on Substack now. This is about subscribers and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

We're going to go for two and a half minutes to Madame Gaudreau, who will be followed by Ms. Blaney.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm going to ask each witness a question.

Mr. Elcock, if you had a chance to speak with the Prime Minister, what would be your ultimate advice to him? You're an expert in the field and you've seen how things work. We've been trying to shed light on the subject for many months.

[Ward Elcock]

Madam Chair, I have given advice to prime ministers in the past. I'm not sure that in this case I would know enough to give advice to this particular Prime Minister.

I do think that the government probably could have acted faster on issues of foreign interference, which is a serious issue, although sometimes I disagree with what people see as serious and not-so-serious foreign interference.

Having said that, the reality of much of the reporting.... I think there's some question about whether all the reporting that we in the public and in Parliament have seen is in fact accurate. I think that comes from both the testimony of people before this and other committees and also the report of Mr. Johnston. If the facts on which we are all operating out here in the public are not accurate, then it's pretty hard to give the Prime Minister advice—

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

My understanding is that we have to act now. We've changed, and all the alert levels have been raised. Now we need to act and to shed light on the situation in order to demystify it. That's the kind of information you would give the Prime Minister.

Isn't it?

[Ward Elcock]

In a sense, Madam Chair, I agree with the member's point that—and I said it a second ago—the government probably should have acted on foreign interference perhaps earlier than it has and more determinedly than it has.

Having said that, foreign interference is a very large problem, and most of the discussion, frankly, that I've seen is on a relatively narrow part of foreign interference in this country. There is a lot more to do with foreign interference than I have seen so far in any public discussions. Action sounds simple, but it's not necessarily easy.

For example, a registry makes a great deal of sense, but there are also a lot of views out there, I think, that a registry would solve a lot more problems than it really would. A lot of the problems of foreign interference will not be solved by a registry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

Ms. Blaney.

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

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

I'm going to come back to Mr. Elcock.

You just answered my colleague's previous question. You said that it needs to be broader, that the conversation you're seeing so far in the public sphere is too narrow and that the foreign agent registry is not the only thing that needs to happen.

In what way do you think it needs to be in terms of broadening? What are the areas that we should be focusing on, and where do you feel that we're being too narrow in our discussions?

[Ward Elcock]

Madam Chair, while I may not agree with everything in or all of Mr. Cooper's reports—news reports, after all, are news stories, not necessarily fact—the reality is that the things we need to do are broader than simply registries. We need more counter-intelligence work because you need to identify all of the activities, which means more funding, probably, for CSIS. We need to be looking at issues like why the Chinese language media in this country largely follows Beijing's line on Ukraine and a variety of other issues. We would not tolerate that with RT in the case of Russia or Russian reporting. Why is it that Chinese language reporting in Canada often follows Beijing's line? Is it controlled by Beijing? Do we know?

There is a wide variety of issues on foreign interference that needs to be engaged in and not just some of the issues that, frankly, have been discussed in committee hearings as a result of a number of leaks.

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

Thank you.

I think that brings us back to a really important point, which is that diaspora communities have been coming forward for a very long time and have been talking about their concerns, but are not feeling they are really getting the response they require.

When you discuss this, do you think having better connections with those communities and really amplifying those voices are important parts of our addressing the issues of foreign interference?

[Ward Elcock]

Madam Chair, it certainly is important to have close connections to diaspora communities. It is sometimes rather more difficult than the honourable member might suggest, or might appear to suggest, in a sense that many parts of the community are unwilling to come forward and to have discussions. Some parts of the community actually share the views of the foreign country.

This is not an issue that is going to be easily resolved overnight.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

We are at three minutes of bells left. Do we need another round, or are we...? Do you want one more round? Yes

What we're going to suggest to Mr. Cooper and Mr. Elcock is that we will have our vote, and then we'll have up to 10 minutes for members to return to this room. We'll just do one more quick turn. We'll finish this round, with five minutes for the Conservatives and five minutes for the Liberals, and then we'll get into our committee business. Is that okay?

Thank you.

The meeting suspended. Please stay tuned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm calling the meeting back to order.

I would like to thank Mr. Cooper and Mr. Elcock for waiting for us while the vote took place.

Mr. Berthold will now have the floor, followed by Ms. Romanado.

Mr. Berthold, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair

Thank you for being with us today, Mr. Cooper and Mr. Elcock.

Mr. Cooper, today we can see that the Liberals, who have been the party in power for nearly 8 years, have desperately been trying to undermine your credibility since your article appeared on November 7 last. They very promptly denounced the article and denied the affair. As we saw again today, they attacked the messenger rather than the problem that you had revealed in your article.

And yet, on May 3, 2018, world press freedom day, the Prime Minister claimed we should celebrate the work of journalists around the world in order to protect democracy. He said, "Canada will always defend journalistic freedom and stand against any violence, intimidation, censorship, and false arrests used to silence journalists."

Mr. Cooper, other journalists have followed the story since your article appeared. Pieces of information were confirmed over time, and a diplomat was expelled. The existence of the memorandum was confirmed, and Chinese police stations were disrupted, although we don't know whether they've been shut down.

We have learned that some MPs, Michael Chong, Erin O'Toole and Jenny Wai Ching Kwan, were targeted by Beijing. Since the Minister of Public Safety raised the ban on revealing the facts to the members targeted by the Beijing regime, CSIS has informed the members of the threats weighing against them.

In the interview that you conducted with him and in his speech to the House, Mr. O'Toole confirmed the existence of a Beijing-funded network to interfere in our elections.

We've learned that the ministers or the Prime Minister have disregarded CSIS's briefings.

We've had a special rapporteur, who proved to be more special for his links to the Liberals than for the relevance of his findings. He has now resigned.

Despite all the articles published on the subject, and in spite of your book, it seems clear that the Liberals don't have the slightest intention to shed light on foreign interference in our elections.

Mr. Cooper, what are your observations regarding the relevance of an independent public inquiry into the Beijing regime's interference in our elections?

[Samuel Cooper]

As I said in my opening statement, my knowledge is that a special report by the Privy Council Office in January 2022 cited Beijing as threatening MPs who are critics of the Chinese Communist regime, so I do think that MP Erin O'Toole, in his speech in Parliament, in my view, accurately reflected that this is a growing, novel, expanding threat run through the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department that seeks to egregiously control and intimidate diaspora communities.

In my opening statement, I also said that, because of my groundbreaking book about the Chinese Communist Party's interference networks, I myself, a journalist, received a CSIS defensive threat brief in 2021, the same time period when other MPs, we've learned, were subjects of disinformation in WeChat Channels. MP Erin O'Toole said that these were funded through the United Front Work Department, so the threat to Canada, in my view.... It's not my view; it's an NSICOP 2019 review's position that Australia and Canada are being attacked in almost the exact same manner.

Yet Australia, in 2018, due to a media report about two PRC-linked donors who had funded about $7 million Australian to the three major parties, allegedly implicated an Australian senator. The media furore that followed, that is, the public discourse that followed those media-leaked disclosures led to the new Australian counter-interference laws.

There was similar activity in the United Kingdom after a very firm disclosure about an individual with the United Front Work Department funding parliamentarians in Britain. They have followed up with laws. Canada is facing the same or worse threat, and most concerning, many of our diaspora community members have stated openly that they feel they are not protected.

This is the nature of the threat against journalists, community members and politicians. Most concerning to me—more than anything else—is that Canadians are fearing that they cannot speak openly about matters because a growing power from a foreign state is impacting lives in Canada.