Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2026

[David Morrison]

It is not easy to put the government in the position of saying what is true and what is not true. There are multiple sides to that equation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much.

We'll suspend for five minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

We are back.

We will proceed with Mr. Jackson for five minutes, please.

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

It's nice to meet you folks.

I have to say that, as a new member of Parliament, this whole situation has been alarming to me. The conversation about what the public knows, without alarming the public, is one that I'm quite interested in.

I would argue that when I go around in my constituency and ask people if they know about this situation, they have no idea and they don't believe that it's happened in Canada. They think I'm a crazy, tinfoil-hat person when I'm talking about the Joe Tay situation.

I'm just curious in terms of the downplaying that we're doing to try to not alarm the public. Comments were made about the actions of Paul Chiang in relation to Joe Tay and then the Prime Minister decided to go out and defend the integrity of Paul Chiang. I know some of you were advising the Prime Minister at that time.

With the situation that Joe Tay was experiencing, how well briefed in advance was the Prime Minister before Mr. Tay was informed or the campaign of the Conservatives was involved?

[Nathalie Drouin]

When we are operating as a panel of five, we do not get any authorization or clearance from the Prime Minister before talking to political parties.

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

I'm not saying you had to get approval from the Prime Minister to inform Mr. Tay or his campaign. At what point was Mr. Carney informed, as Prime Minister, about the situation that was ongoing?

[Nathalie Drouin]

To be clearer, I hadn't briefed the Prime Minister during the general election about those matters. My connections were with the cleared representative from the Liberal Party, as I had also a contact with the cleared representative of other parties.

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

The Prime Minister came out and encouraged one of his MPs, who had encouraged a Conservative candidate to be turned in for a bounty, and the Prime Minister was not briefed by his national security adviser on that matter before he spoke publicly about it.

Is that what you just said?

[Nathalie Drouin]

Can you repeat the question?

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Before the Prime Minister went out and defended Paul Chiang's comments and called him a man of “integrity”, he was not briefed about the Joe Tay situation by you, his national security adviser. Is that correct?

[Nathalie Drouin]

He was not briefed by me during the general election.

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

That's interesting.

I'm very curious about what the next steps are. We have the contradiction about calling the PRC an “existential threat” and also we're building “the new world order” with them, which was a comment that was made fairly recently.

How does that change your relationship in terms of global affairs and the ongoing threats to Canadian elections, given that we are establishing a new relationship? What changes in terms of your actions with the PRC?

[Nathalie Drouin]

Thank you. I'll start and the deputy minister of foreign affairs will add his comments.

As the Prime Minister said in Davos, the world is changing and we need to adjust to this new world.

I must say that our economic security is also part of our national security. We need to also make sure that Canada will be resilient when it comes to its trade and capacity, and that Canada will have diverse options in front of it.

However, it's not because we are pursuing closer economic ties with China in some specific sectors that we are abdicating our responsibilities when it comes to national security concerns. It's not because we are re-engaging on the economic side with China that we are saying that what we have said before does not exist anymore.

One important thing that we did when we were in China was talk about national security. We opened the conversation when it comes to law enforcement and the rule of law. I think that being able to have those dialogues and, at the appropriate moment with the appropriate channels, talk about our irritants and concerns will be better for Canada than not having any opportunity to talk about those things.

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

If China is continuing to be an actor in the interference in our elections, what is their goal, in your opinion?

[Nathalie Drouin]

The expert for that would be David, about the five poisons—

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

They're not going to do it for fun. They have stuff to do.

[Nathalie Drouin]

They have objectives.

[David Morrison]

China has what they call their “five poisons”. One is the independence of Taiwan. One is the group Falun Gong. One is Xinjiang. One is Hong Kong. One, I think, may just be human rights, or the way the west interprets human rights. On a scale, Taiwan is at the top.

When China pursues those goals overseas, that's foreign interference. I've told them repeatedly, personally, that we have a poison as well, and that is foreign interference. It takes place on our territory. It's our turf. We get to call the shots. That's what the clash is. Their goal is to preserve the Communist Party of China and the territorial integrity of China. They see those five poisons as threatening that.

They overreach, in our very strong view, when they pursue their five poisons agenda in other countries, including Canada. That's where we clash on what is foreign interference.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

I'm going to have to cut you off, Mr. Morrison.

We will proceed with Mr. Louis for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses here for the work that they do and for taking the time to meet us today.

As you stated in your opening remarks, all democracies face foreign interference, and as we know, Canada is no exception. Your work on the critical election incident public protocol understands the importance of having robust, credible and evolving measures to protect the integrity of our democratic institutions. I appreciate the work that you do to ensure that Canadians can have confidence in our elections, and that they're conducted safely, securely and with integrity.

As I hear today, this work is necessarily ongoing. Threats are evolving, technologies change and public trust has to be continually earned. You mentioned some timely countermeasures and progress in implementing the recommendations of the foreign interference report. These are all things that contribute to safeguarding our security and our sovereignty.

We've touched on some of the things, but can someone talk broadly about how the threat of foreign interference has changed in recent years, leading up to this general election? What trends are we seeing?

I'm not sure exactly who wants to answer this.

[Nathalie Drouin]

I'll start, and my colleagues will add.

One actor that I think is operating differently in Canada than in the past is Russia. Before the illegal invasion of Russia into Ukraine, Russia didn't have a lot of interest when it came to Canada's democratic exercises. Because Canada plays a great role in supporting Ukraine, Russia has now more interest in Canada—not necessarily in our democratic exercises, but mainly to push its own narrative when it comes to Ukraine. We see Russia as a more important player in our domestic affairs than we used to.

The other thing that we already talked a little bit about is on the cyber side. Technology is evolving, and there is the use of AI. We see more attempts to undermine our critical infrastructure and IT than we used to see.

Do you want to add a little bit?

[Tricia Geddes]

I will only add transnational repression. I know we've talked about it already today, but I think this is a really critical area. These are attempts by foreign states to intimidate, coerce or harass citizens, dual citizens, or others here in Canada. It's particularly focused on those who are critical of those foreign governments or their interests. I think this is concerning. This is something that I think we are all paying close attention to, and we need to provide additional supports there.

As my colleague from foreign affairs said, those are the areas in which, when we see it, we will continue to call out those who are perpetrating or supporting it. Honestly this has no place in Canada. We are a very rich and diverse country where we need to protect those citizens who are feeling vulnerable.

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

Thank you.

The SITE task force report said, “Increasing our collective resilience against threats to our electoral processes is a whole-of-society responsibility.” Maybe the question about AI would fit into this.

How can we raise awareness about what the CEIPP is doing, and how would the outreach work?

You mentioned a feedback loop, Ms. Geddes. What can we do to increase Canadians' understanding of democratic institutions and how to protect themselves?

[Nathalie Drouin]

There's a variety of things that we are doing and that we need to continue to do.

Our two intelligence agencies, the Communications Security Establishment and CSIS, are both regularly out there, talking about the threats we are facing. Recently, the director gave a speech about the threat landscape. The CSE does exactly the same, especially on the cyber side. I'm sure you are personally receiving communications from your own Sergeant-at-Arms because he's seeing threats that MPs may face and he's raising this awareness.

Those are all the types of things we need to continue to do. Working with social media is another way to address that. There's a suite of things to enhance Canadians' awareness. Tricia also talked about what the foreign coordinator is doing with communities in many languages. This is also very important, because we are talking to all Canadians.

Sébastien, do you want to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

I'm going to cut you off again. I apologize.

We'll go to Madame Normandin for two and a half minutes.