Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 19th, 2023

[Rob Stewart]

Sure. We collect two kinds of intelligence in Canada by Canadian agencies: human intelligence and signals intelligence. That turns into both raw reports of the information that's obtained and assessed intelligence which are distilled and analyzed for credibility and verifiability. There are also stand-alone pieces that are done by a couple of units in the government that generate views of the world with top secret and informed by intelligence top secret information embedded in them. Then there are many things that we obtain through the Five Eyes network which are the product of various agencies in those countries. Those things all tend to be bundled into a binder maybe with some tabs.

Every couple of days you get a binder. You flip through the binder, and you try to detect trends or issues of interest. Those tend to be from a public safety point of view, the larger ones.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Every couple of days you get a binder. How thick is that binder?

You're showing about four inches.

[Rob Stewart]

A couple of inches.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

You said you get intelligence. Is intelligence evidence?

[Rob Stewart]

No.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Explain the difference, please.

[Rob Stewart]

I don't know what you quite mean by evidence.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Just because you get a piece of intelligence, does that mean it immediately becomes evidence to go out and arrest somebody?

[Rob Stewart]

No.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Can you explain the difference between the two things?

[Rob Stewart]

Intelligence, particularly raw intelligence, can be anything and a range of things from something that you have some certainty about or something that sounds very speculative. This is why we assess intelligence, to make sure there's credibility. When we use language, it's typically used by the community as, “We assess this to be the case,” as opposed to “We know it to be true.”

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

You must put the various pieces of intelligence on a ranking system of some sort in terms of how credible it might be versus how not credible, how it distributes amongst your trends that you were talking about.

I won't ask you to get into where you ranked anything, but do you do some sort of process like that?

[Rob Stewart]

Again, for my part, in my role, I'm monitoring. It's the agencies, particularly CSIS and the Communications Security Establishment, which report to different ministers, by the way, who are kind of the first order briefers of the ministers when there are issues of importance. I would not presume to take their place.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

You're part of the group that comes together during that caretaker mode during an election to monitor in real time and respond in real time. I think that a lot of people would like to portray this as five people, you being one of them, who sit around a table and just look at Facebook and Twitter all day long and then make decisions on what looks like a threat.

Tell me about the resources that go into providing you with the intelligence that you have. Are we talking about departments and networks? What goes on in order to provide you, the five people sitting at that table, with intelligence? What's the apparatus like that supports that?

[Rob Stewart]

The SITE task force is composed of the Communications Security Establishment, CSIS, the RCMP and Global Affairs. Each of those is an army of people and a whole process of distilling information and bringing it into a report that is presented to the panel of five, which is what we call it. It's quite an exhaustive and large effort on an ongoing basis from early in.... It's on an ongoing basis, frankly, but that heats up as you get into an election and then becomes active once the writ is dropped.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

You receive intelligence, and then the five of you, based on the various different inputs that you get, have to make a determination as to the credibility of that and how to act on it. That's your primary job. Is that correct?

[Rob Stewart]

That is the role of the panel.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

You are saying before the committee today that, during the elections in 2019 and 2021, yes, you received information, but there was nothing that signalled that it had any influence on the outcome of the elections. I heard you say that earlier. I just want to give you an opportunity to repeat yourself and to—

[Rob Stewart]

I was not part of the panel in 2019, but I can say that I was part of the panel in 2021, yes.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

They gave a report to that effect.

[Rob Stewart]

It has been subsequently reported and assessed by people who look at the operation of the panel ex post that the panel did not determine, in either election, that there was a threat to the integrity of the election.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

The panel did not determine there was a threat, so there was no threat.

I'm sorry. Can you rephrase that? There are too many negatives there for me.

[Rob Stewart]

There is an ongoing level of foreign interference. It's a very serious problem. There are clandestine and deceptive efforts to influence our democratic processes in society on an ongoing basis. We should take it very seriously. It was not judged by the panel that it had an influence on the election.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

We now go to Ms. Gaudreau for six minutes.