Evidence of meeting #40 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was registry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner, Office of the Foreign Influence Commissioner of Canada
There have been a number of technical problems with the registry. Yes.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB
You bet there have been.
Following the registry's privacy breach of Dr. Burton's personal information, a telephone call with Dr. Burton was scheduled to discuss the breach. That call did not happen due to a “major technical outage” that prevented officers from accessing the system and reaching Dr. Burton. Is that correct?
Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner, Office of the Foreign Influence Commissioner of Canada
I believe so, yes.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB
Your office didn't have the capability of making a telephone call.
That's not the only “technical outage” that occurred. During the week of September 7, an online information session about the registry was scheduled. Dr. Burton and several Chinese diaspora democracy activists were blocked from the information session. Is that correct?
Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner, Office of the Foreign Influence Commissioner of Canada
I would not say that they were blocked.
October 6th, 2026 / 11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB
Well, what do you call it when they attempted to access the session and received a message stating, “Sorry, but you do not have access to this event”? That's called being blocked.
It's another glitch and another screw-up. Is that right?
Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner, Office of the Foreign Influence Commissioner of Canada
There have been a number of technical issues, as you have highlighted. Whenever technology is used to facilitate communications, there is a risk that there can be an issue.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB
Mr. Boegman, there was, as you acknowledged, another glitch involving none other than someone who's connected to a P.R.C. principal. It's been weeks since that filing was removed from your website, a website that's supposed to be transparent in providing Canadians with information about who's acting on behalf of foreign governments.
I will note that, according to Public Safety's analysis, the estimated cost for the IT system at the registry is $29.41 million. Is this what $29.41 million of tax dollars gets Canadians, a completely botched IT system?
Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner, Office of the Foreign Influence Commissioner of Canada
The current system that we are using for the registry is called the MVP. The MVP stands not for the most valuable player but for the minimum viable product. It was a system that was put in place to enable the registry to be launched on August 4. It is built on existing systems that are at play. It's also reliant on manual processes—
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB
You can't even make a phone call. You can't even set up a conference call. Have you thought about calling in GC Strategies?
Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner, Office of the Foreign Influence Commissioner of Canada
No.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
Thank you so much.
We will now turn to Madam Kayabaga for five minutes, please.
Liberal
Arielle Kayabaga Liberal London West, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I would like to start by thanking Mr. Boegman for returning to our committee. It's always very useful for us to have these dialogues. Thank you for being available to do that.
Commissioner, you're now just over two months into the implementation of the registry. From your perspective, how has the rollout gone so far, and what have you learned in the last two months?
Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner, Office of the Foreign Influence Commissioner of Canada
From my perspective, I believe that it has been a positive launch of the registry. In particular, I have been pleased with the outreach that we have been able to conduct and the different industry groups and associations that we have met with to explain the registry and the requirements.
We've published a wide range of guidance documents and are working on more to help inform people on what their requirements are and how the registry interacts with those sectors. That's been, I think, quite effective. We're going to continue to do more of those.
I'll be honest. One of the things we have found is that there was a plan to have everything ready for the launch. My military background has told me that no plan survives initial contact, and there are things that we have not found out until we've actually tried to do things. That has resulted in some challenges, but we are working diligently to rectify any issues that we see and to make sure that the registry functions as it should.
There have been some technical challenges. Those have been, I would say, government-wide in terms of inaccessibility of systems. Unfortunately, it happened when we had some activities scheduled, but we have been able to make up that opportunity and reschedule those activities for the stakeholders that want to be there.
We are now moving into the next phase, where we will be looking at any compliance and enforcement activities following the deadline on October 3. That's going to be a key focus of the office going forward, as well as supporting individuals who are looking to register on the registry.
Liberal
Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner, Office of the Foreign Influence Commissioner of Canada
That's right.
Liberal
Arielle Kayabaga Liberal London West, ON
One of the challenges with a new regime is making sure that everyone understands how it actually works and when they have an obligation to register. What are the most common areas of confusion that you're seeing from individuals or organizations when it comes to registering?
Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner, Office of the Foreign Influence Commissioner of Canada
I think the biggest one is not understanding the specificity of the legislation: In having a meeting with someone from a foreign country or doing typical international exchanges and engagements, do I need to register for those? Of course, the answer is no. If you're just exchanging information and ideas, of course international engagement can take place. It's only if the three triggers on the requirement to register apply that registration is needed. I think it's just a misunderstanding of what those are. That is something that we've seen.
As well, the registry is intended as a key transparency mechanism. It's one tool. It's an additional tool, but there are many other tools that deal with foreign interference writ large: the responsibilities of CSIS, the RCMP, the Communications Security Establishment and others. Not necessarily understanding the role of our mandate and the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act and what that means, but conflating the work we do with the work of the other agencies is another area where there has been some confusion. Each agency has its own responsibilities and its own levers. Ours is about transparency of activities, whereas other agencies have their own levers.
Liberal
Arielle Kayabaga Liberal London West, ON
For a system of this magnitude and given the importance of the different collaborations that are happening, how long would you say that it would take you to see the registry begin to eventually lose some of the glitches? Two months is clearly not enough, but....
Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner, Office of the Foreign Influence Commissioner of Canada
I'm very hopeful. I think it will be in the near future. We have staffed some key positions. We now have a permanent manager of the registry. I have both of my deputy commissioner positions filled. There have been some transitory staff in place, and now we have a more permanent team. Part of that, then, is that we have the ability to really drill down and make sure the processes are robust.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
Thank you so much.
We will now turn to Madame Normandin.
You have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Thank you.
Mr. Boegman, you mentioned that there was no list for the 2,422 entities that were reported by Public Safety Canada, but that it was more a business case analysis based on criteria.
Do you know which criteria were used?
Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner, Office of the Foreign Influence Commissioner of Canada
I don't have the specific criteria, but from what I understand, we looked at the other systems in Australia, the United States and England to see how many entities were on their lists. That's one indicator. I think we also looked at all the activities in various sectors, such as the defence sector, the legal sector and the academic sector. We need to know what the types of arrangements are. We got a percentage. We have criteria or a method for determining that the number is 2,400.
Bloc
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Okay, 2,400 is a lot. You mentioned that you didn't have a proactive approach to encouraging people to register. I imagine you can't register 2,400 entities at once. You can't approach them all at once. However, it might be a good idea to target those with the highest risk of influence.
Would knowledge of these criteria and better co-operation with the other international bodies that also have registries be useful in determining who should register sooner than others?
Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner, Office of the Foreign Influence Commissioner of Canada
Yes. We've had initial conversations with other countries to better understand how their lists work and to see if there are lessons for us. That's something we'll have to do another time.