Industry Committee on May 20th, 2020

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I understand.

This question is for CSE and the RCMP.

We hear from constituents all the time about scams. The RCMP has tallied up that it costs individuals about $100 million a year overall for these scams, at least those that are reported. I would say they are under-reported, because people are embarrassed when they are taken advantage of. We hear about this all the time, and it's not just from seniors, although I've heard predominantly from seniors.

We've made significant investments in cybersecurity over the last number of years. You are the experts. Are there measures that other countries take that we do not? Are there measures, in your experience and estimation, the government could take to better strengthen our society against such fraud?

[Scott Jones]

I'll start and then turn it over to my colleagues in the RCMP.

The first thing we've done is we've really tried to give practical things that every Canadian can do that are within reach. That's something all countries are doing. We've tried to make this as accessible as possible through, say, Get Cyber Safe.

The second thing we've tried to do is to find partners who can give capability. CIRA is a great example of that. That's something every Canadian can look into that immediately raises the cybersecurity bar. The one thing with cybercriminals especially is that they go after the lowest bar. If it's not economically feasible, they're going to move on to the next target, so by doing—

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I appreciate all that—and I know I'm running out of time—but there would be nothing, in your estimation, that we could do as a government to improve your work.

[Scott Jones]

We're trying to leverage the mandate we have today. I think anything else would be a policy question that should probably be debated by you and the ministry.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

Our next round of questions will go to MP Gray.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

This question will go to the assistant commissioner.

We've talked a bit about anti-fraud and spoofing. I'm wondering if there are some provisions in place for those who spoof their phone number, like, for example, telemarketers. Would you be able to confirm that caller-ID spoofing is still legal in Canada, even for those who might use it for malicious intent?

[A/Commr Eric Slinn]

I'm going to pass this off to Guy Paul because I think he deals with it more often, but spoofing does become difficult. Proving where a call was spoofed and the software that's available make it even more challenging.

Guy Paul, maybe you can add more to that.

[Insp Guy Paul Larocque]

Thank you, sir.

As far as the method of solicitation goes, last year direct calls were the number one overall way Canadians were reached for frauds that were reported to us. It's reasonable to assume that most of those calls were spoofed.

The challenge with spoofing a number is that it's not illegal in the sense that there are applications out there for people to do it just to play pranks on people. The issue is when people use it to commit crimes like fraud. Then, of course, it's not the spoofing itself that's illegal. It's the actions taken by the scammers, like representing a government agency to extort money from Canadians.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Would you say there are sufficient lines of communication right now during this time of the pandemic between the CRTC and the RCMP when it comes to tackling telephone fraud?

[Insp Guy Paul Larocque]

We have frequent conference call meetings to discuss the issue. We've been in touch with our main partners pretty much on a weekly basis to discuss current trends and how the situation has evolved. I can say that we've been in contact very often with our close partners.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Let's say, for example, a complaint comes in about a fraudulent call and it's received by the CRTC. You said you have weekly communication. Is there a quicker process that happens when something seems to be emerging or seems quite serious? Is there a more expedited protocol?

[Insp Guy Paul Larocque]

Yes, there is. Those calls are mainly to discuss trends in intelligence that we can share with each other, but when there's something urgent or emerging we have protocols in place where we can share the information more rapidly. It's done within the same day or the day after when the information is what we call “hot”.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Out of the number of reports that the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre receives, what percentage would you say is investigated and what percentage would lead to actual enforcement? Do you have those numbers?

[Insp Guy Paul Larocque]

Unfortunately not, because it's a very difficult metric. You'd have to turn to Statistics Canada to have a better picture of what has been investigated, or where charges were laid, because of how it's being reported through the protocols in place or policies that police agencies across the country have to adhere to.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Would you say that there's an adequate level of enforcement when it comes to fraudulent calls, based on your assessment?

[Insp Guy Paul Larocque]

That's a very tough question to answer, because we always think that more could be done. There are always better things that we can do as law enforcement as well.

Fraud is a collective problem. We need to be able to educate the public. We think public education is the key issue in being able to mitigate fraud. One thing we'll never be able to stop is the solicitation of fraud, but a successful measure is to help the public recognize what the risks behind fraud are. In that way, they'll be able to reject the fraud attempts when they see them.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Okay.

[A/Commr Eric Slinn]

Guy Paul is being nice there too. I think I said in my previous testimony in March that we need to do a better job, and not just the RCMP but all of law enforcement. It's not a sexy crime like many of the drug crimes are and those sorts of things. As a community, we need to do better. We've engaged the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police as well to up our game with these frauds.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you.

Typically, the CSE would use the common criteria for information technology security evaluation to evaluate the security claims of information technology products. Obviously, our committee has focused on this a lot. We've seized on this topic of improving network access for Canadians, and of course—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

MP Gray, unfortunately, you're over time. I'm sorry about that.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Our next round of questions goes to MP Longfield.

You have five minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

MP Gray, you were heading down a path that I was thinking of heading down as well, so maybe I can build on some of your questioning.

To continue with the RCMP, we're fortunate in Guelph to have a former RCMP officer, Gord Cobey, as our chief of police. We work quite closely together. We also have the OPP around Guelph, so we have multijurisdictional police forces who are working together and keeping ties between each other.

My question is in terms of the previous meeting when you were with us, Mr. Slinn, and were mentioning public education and how important it is to exchange information quickly. If you're allowed to share that publicly, how does that actually happen between forces? Is there a way we can improve or help you to improve quick responses, as we've needed to do in other areas in COVID?

[A/Commr Eric Slinn]

Thanks for that question.

I think the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre is a great hub for collecting a lot of that intelligence. They do a great job of pushing that intelligence out either in close to real time or as a trend analysis, bulletins or postings to various law enforcement agencies across the country. The other thing they do well is informing Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, which does a lot of the intelligence tracking.

To answer your question, I think the framework is in place where intelligence on fraud is passed expeditiously to various law enforcement agencies across the country. It's just a matter of putting more resources or effort into these fraud investigations. I don't want to characterize them as being easy investigations. These international ones can be very complicated, and securing international evidence in a country can be challenging as well.