Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 10th, 2026

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

This is going to be a very unproductive meeting—

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Mr. Cooper, we're—

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

—because all we're getting is stonewalling from the panel, and I think that when they....

Mr. Chair, I do raise a concern.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Is this a point of order?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

It's a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

We have a point of order from Mr. Cooper.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

When questions are put to witnesses, I think they have a duty to answer. When I ask yes-or-no questions that are straightforward, and they obstruct, as we saw from this panel, I would ask that you direct them to answer questions that are straightforward in nature.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much.

Madam Kayabaga, do you wish to add something?

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

No, I just hope to get my turn.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Okay.

I can't make the witnesses answer. Your point has been made very clearly, Mr. Cooper.

I have been in similar positions as a member of the committee.

To witnesses, members are here and are elected to represent their constituents. If there are reasons, be it for national security, that issues are classified, perhaps those can be explained, but the expectation from members of this committee, if those issues are not classified, is the members' questions should be addressed specifically.

We have a lot of time left, and it will be a long committee meeting if this information isn't classified and members' questions aren't answered.

On that point, we will turn to Madam Kayabaga for six minutes, please.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I also welcome our guests to this committee today.

Ms. Lloyd, I will start with you.

You mentioned that you provided a recommendation report on the public inquiry into foreign interference, which states that the SITE task force “guarantees the nimbleness needed to adapt to evolving situations”..

How does it encourage a nimble response to foreign interference?

[Vanessa Lloyd]

Mr. Chair, I think it is important to share with the committee how the SITE task force has evolved its practices since the various studies on foreign interference, for example, by the experience of the public inquiry into foreign interference, as well as reports done by NSICOP on foreign interference.

What was different about this election, in addition to the ongoing collaboration between the operational members who you see appearing before you today, is we were much more transparent about reporting to Canadians incidents as we saw them. That was part of the direction given to the panel that was executed by the SITE members on the clerk's direction and guidance, which I believe the committee heard about in the testimony last week.

One of the things we need to keep in mind is that as threat actors evolve their tactics, the government must do so as well. Part of the mechanism for countering foreign interference was to ensure that every candidate, campaign and clear representatives of each party understood what it is to recognize foreign interference now.

Part of the effort that the SITE members made was to ensure that every confirmed candidate received an email from the SITE task force, which included information about how to detect foreign interference, made specifications about the difference between acceptable diplomatic behaviour and that which was beyond diplomatic engagements and provided them information on how to protect their social and digital selves, as well as how to report to CSIS and the RCMP threats of physical intimidation or violence.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

From your perspective, how prepared is the task force to go into another election compared to past elections?

[Vanessa Lloyd]

Mr. Chair, the task force is always prepared, since we have the experience of having now been stood up for three general elections. We have also been stood up since 2023 for 12 by-elections.

I think the power you see before you is the integrated approach of the national security community to executing our investigations under our individual mandates and, as my colleague Ms. Walshe mentioned, bringing that insight and analysis together to provide an informed view during a general election specifically to the panel and, during by-elections, to the deputy minister committee on intelligence action, which performs that role during the by-election functions.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

What would you say to Canadians who are concerned about election interference but may not fully understand the safeguards that are already in place? We've been studying this for a while, and it turns out a lot of Canadians are concerned. Can you let them know some of the safeguards that are in place?

[Vanessa Lloyd]

Mr. Chair, during the five weekly tech briefs that we had, we covered a range of topics to ensure that we were sharing information with Canadians, again, for the purposes of making them more resilient to attempts of foreign interference and violent extremist threats.

Part of the evolution of the way we approached the last general election was to ensure that a large amount of information was readily available to Canadians both by explaining it verbally during the tech briefings and by publishing tools like the tool kit for threats to democratic institutions. It also included a large number of backgrounders, individual SITE members' reports and information in multiple languages.

When we came forward to speak about instances of transnational repression, for example, that information, because of the nature of the threat actor, was provided in English, French and simplified Chinese. The CSIS “Foreign Interference and You” document, which I believe has been shared with this committee's chair in past appearances, is available in nine languages.

Part of making the effort to communicate is ensuring that Canadians down to the individual citizen level are equipped with the tools and information to recognize threats against them, particularly in the cyber domain, and help them be digitally savvy. For example, CSE's Get Cyber Safe campaign is one of the tools we hope citizens use on an ongoing basis for their engagement in daily life.

[Bridget Walshe]

Mr. Chair, I'd like to add to that response.

We did a lot of work even ahead of the election by studying and understanding, for example, the threats posed by artificial intelligence to democratic processes, and we put that out in advance.

From leading up to elections to making sure there's a lot of information available to Canadians ahead of time and briefing candidates, as Ms. Lloyd mentioned, we made sure we were providing a lot of information and resources.

We offer a hotline to candidates during an election. Should they have any questions or concerns from a cybersecurity perspective, they have one number or one email they can use to reach out so they're supported.

As Ms. Lloyd mentioned, we have the Get Cyber Safe campaign. It's true that it's tough to reach all Canadians to make sure everybody understands the message and the clarity, but we're certainly investing quite a bit to spread the messages across social media and through the tech briefings we had and to make every effort to ensure the guidance, advice and practical steps are available to Canadians out there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much.

We will turn now to Madam Normandin.

There will be a cameo, which I am excited for. Apologies to our witnesses that they may not be the star of the show for today.

On a side note, I don't understand how he could be sleeping during a PROC committee meeting. That's absolutely shocking.

Madam Normandin, you have six minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much.

I hope my questions won't force you to lie.

Witnesses, thank you for being with us, especially since some of you are appearing for a second or third time.

I want to start with a question about your relationship with social media platforms.

Last week, the Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Perrault, told us that when disinformation is posted online he is sometimes able to communicate with social media platforms. Generally speaking, they work together quite well to take down pages.

Have some platforms systematically refused to respond to your requests?

We know that disinformation posts sometimes garner a large audience. For a social media platform, there can be value in keeping them up.

Have you seen any cases where the platform was reluctant to take down a disinformation post?

[Saliou Babou, Executive Director, Rapid Response Mechanism, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

I thank the member for the question, Mr. Chair.

It's true that we have a collaborative relationship with social media platforms. When we identify information threats, we contact the platforms and submit that information to them so that they can determine whether those threats violate their own rules, their own terms of use. That's the way we do things. Each platform determines whether the content should be taken down or whether they continue the conversation with us. It's a variable geometry relationship. Some platforms are more collaborative than others.

At Global Affairs Canada, we prefer to let the platforms themselves communicate the measures they are taking as a result of our recommendations. We feel it's our duty to communicate with these platforms whenever we have information that could be relevant to them. So we have a fairly transactional collaborative relationship with the platforms.

I couldn't tell you which platforms are more reluctant than others. Some chose to communicate publicly following the federal election, while others did not.

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

Thank you.

What I understand from your answer is that there's a lot of reliance on collaboration, which couldn't happen in some cases. I'm thinking in particular of platforms controlled by certain states. Take for example China, a key player in spreading disinformation.

As I understand it, there's no coercive or other mechanism that would make it possible, for example, to take down or suppress a non-compliant post that could be seen by millions of people, if the social media platform doesn't collaborate.

Is that correct?

[Saliou Babou]

It's a bit more nuanced than that. The relationship with the platforms is one of the tools at our disposal to try to counter these information threats.

We have other tools at our disposal in collaboration with other partners in the intelligence community that enable us to take more robust action when necessary, always under the authority of our superiors and ministers.

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

I find your answer interesting.

At what point could one decide to forcibly have a post taken down? If problem posts have remained on social media—I'm referring here to questions my Conservative colleagues asked—it's because there's been unwillingness to take them down in some cases.

Am I reading the situation correctly?

[Saliou Babou]

I'd just like to make a small clarification. I'll let my colleague Ms. Walshe add to that. It's not about having information removed, because we're not responsible for content moderation online. Rather, we work to counter information threats. There's a distinction and a nuance to be made.

In terms of the Canadian government's position, we never ask platforms to take down content.

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

Thank you very much.

I'd like you to tell me about the review of the national security strategy.

The current strategy dates back to 2004, so it's been in place quite a long time. A new strategy was supposed to be issued to us in 2025, and Ms. Drouin had been entrusted with the mandate.

Now that she is stepping down, can we expect a new national security strategy to be taken up in the coming weeks or months?