Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2025

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Wark, you've spoken about the importance of Canada's having its own independent intelligence assessments, and we've heard from CSIS and other organizations about information sharing. There's a balance between having transparency and publicly available information and information that we can't share with the public, and then there's having our own information versus sharing and using other countries'. What's your advice on the best way to find that balance—our own information versus sharing information with other countries and the information being publicly available versus tipping our hand on what we're looking into?

[Wesley Wark]

Thank you for the question.

It's a complex issue that any security intelligence community, including Canada's, struggles with.

I would say it's perhaps typical in a Canadian context that we overstress the need to secure information against the need to inform the public. I don't think we've ever found the appropriate balance between the two prerogatives. There are lots of efforts under way to increase transparency around national security and intelligence activities. I don't think we're anywhere close to the end of the road of those efforts.

I would say to members of the committee that there are two things I regret about recent developments.

One is that, when the government introduced its national security transparency commitment in 2017—not a law, but a commitment—it contained, I think, some very valuable principles around transparency and how it would be delivered. Very little of that has actually been acted on in the eight years since.

The second—and this goes, in a way, to a question Mr. Wilkinson asked earlier about things that remain to be done—we are still waiting in this country for the issuance of a national security strategy. The last one was issued, as members will know, in 2004. A new one was promised in May 2024, which is a bit like FITR, as we're still waiting to see it appear.

Thank you.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I have time for one more question.

You have cited Robert Huebert's warning that state actors may bandwagon on disinformation. What does bandwagoning look like operationally, and how can we detect and counter it?

[Wesley Wark]

Marcus may want to take this question first. I'm happy to join in.

[Marcus Kolga]

Sorry, if you could just repeat the....

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Yes, the term is “bandwagoning”. I believe you talked about taking misinformation that already exists and expanding on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Answer very quickly.

[Marcus Kolga]

I have not heard the term “bandwagoning” before, but certainly, amplification of disinformation by domestic influencers is a very serious threat to our democracy.

We've seen this happen. We've seen foreign authoritarians pay influencers to engage in these sorts of operations.

In September 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice issued an indictment against two employees of Russia Today, RT. This is Russia's state media platform. It's been identified by Global Affairs as a key component of Russia's intelligence operations. This scheme basically saw RT—

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

In a very rare moment, I'm going to have to cut you off. We are well over time. Hopefully we can get back into this. I'm sure—

[Marcus Kolga]

Okay. I'm happy to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

—we have enough interest, or you could fit it into one of your future answers.

To all the witnesses, the next set of questions will be in French, so please, if you require it, have your headset at the appropriate channel.

Mr. Tay, I'm sure they told you to have the channel on English so you can receive interpretation.

Ms. Normandin, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank all of the witnesses for participating. I am very grateful they have joined us.

I have a question for Mr. Wark and Mr. Kolga. You both spoke about the importance of deterrence, which may be one of the objectives of the registry.

Mr. Kolga, you also spoke about Canada's response to intimidation against Tibetans and Uyghurs. I would like to move beyond the scope of the registry.

Can you hear the interpretation?

[Marcus Kolga]

I'm getting it now.

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

That's great.

In response to what you mentioned about the intimidation of Tibetans and Uyghurs, I wanted to bring up the issue of Canada's weak response. The registry is important, but there are other aspects, so I have a related question.

The Bloc Québécois proposed a bill to address importing goods made with forced labour. This bill specifically targeted Xinjiang and Uyghur labour.

Are laws on aspects other than the registry another signal that Canada can send to malicious foreign actors?

[Marcus Kolga]

Certainly, I strongly believe that the existence of the legislation, and of course its implementation—whether it's against forced labour or FITR itself—definitely has a deterrence effect. That is a very important aspect of this legislation.

When there are individuals who perhaps clandestinely may look to profit from aligning themselves with and supporting authoritarian regimes, whether it's with information and influence operations or whether it's through transnational repression, they will think twice about doing it.

Will all of them? Will it terminate all clandestine operations, as Mr. Wark has said? Probably not. This will depend on its proper implementation. However, the existence of the legislation itself is a strong deterrent.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Kolga.

I now have a question for you, Mr. Wark.

You mentioned your concern that the registry could eventually become a register of “good guys”.

Is there a risk that people with malicious intent will voluntarily register in order to divert attention or to provide themselves with a kind of good faith umbrella, while continuing to engage in negative clandestine transactions?

[Wesley Wark]

Thank you. I'll respond in English to this interesting question.

It wouldn't be the smartest approach in the world, in my view, to sign up to the registry if you intended to continue covertly practising some form of foreign interference. It would put you in the sights of both monetary penalties and potential criminal sanctions, as well as making you an easily identifiable target for either law enforcement or CSIS. I don't think it's very likely.

In terms of my concern about it being a registry of good guys, I take Marcus's point that it will contain many good guys who will sign up, understanding the purposes and transparency objectives. My concern is really the resource implications this will have and trying to measure those requirements against potential outcomes.

This is something I encouraged Public Safety to think about very seriously from the beginning: The best example of a registry that has been around for quite a long time but has been proven, I think, to be pretty ineffective in terms of leading to any real outcomes in terms of legal action is the Australian one. Marcus might correct me on this, but I believe only one prosecution has followed from the Australian scheme, and even this was somewhat controversial. It probably would have been caught by other criminal legislation and by a combination of Australian security services and federal police in that regard.

There have been a lot of complaints and criticisms in the Australian context about the wastefulness, frankly, and of people's having to go through a very complex registration process. A former politician, for example, might have to do this.

I'm not opposed to the idea of the registry. I think it's very important to continue to measure its effectiveness. This is a role Parliament can play. The annual reports of the commissioner will be very important in that regard. However, I fear a bureaucratic sinkhole, to be honest. I fear the drawing away of resources from other law enforcement and intelligence activities, for which Canada has, frankly, limited resources.

This was one of the things that was of great interest to me in Dan Rogers' recent public address, in which he was talking about the challenges of trying to move very rapidly from one threat to the next and the need to constantly change the resources CSIS could allocate.

My concluding remark about this is that I think we have to be very careful to keep the foreign influence transparency registry as targeted, tightly managed and resource-unintensive as possible.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you.

You have 15 seconds left, Madam Normandin. I'll give it to you next time.

I will be very serious on the timing moving forward.

Mr. Calkins, you have five minutes. I will cut you off at five.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Ponoka—Didsbury, AB]

Thank you.

It's a conundrum having three interesting witnesses, but I'll have to focus my questions on Mr. Tay.

Mr. Tay, can you hear me okay?

[Joe Tay]

Yes, I can hear you.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Ponoka—Didsbury, AB]

Good.

I'm going to follow up on a line of questioning from Mr. Cooper.

You were contacted by the RCMP and told it was unsafe for you to continue to campaign. Can you confirm that?

[Joe Tay]

Yes.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Ponoka—Didsbury, AB]

Did they tell you it was you specifically, somebody in your family or somebody in your broader circle of loved ones who was most at risk? Was any of this disclosed to you?

[Joe Tay]

I specifically asked that question of the RCMP agents. They said they were only targeting me, and not my family, at the time.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Ponoka—Didsbury, AB]

You said your volunteers were harassed and intimidated. Can you give us an example of what this looked like?