Industry Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2022

[Chris Lynam]

Do you mean specific to SIM swapping investigations or...?

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

It could be, but it sounds as if they're maybe not being separated, so it's just the overall fraud. It would be helpful with this study to have it from your side. If you have any numbers, that would be helpful.

[Chris Lynam]

We'll go back and look.

I'll add that, as folks know, the RCMP is not the police of jurisdiction in all parts of Canada, so it might not give the full picture of what's happening at municipal or provincial levels where the RCMP isn't the police of jurisdiction. We'll see what we can find.

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

That's great. Thank you very much.

You also mentioned that it's really important for Canadians to be aware, not even specifically around the SIM swapping and phone porting scams, of other types of fraud. Is the RCMP actively doing some type of education campaign, especially during this month? Do you have a campaign that's active right now?

[Chris Lynam]

Yes, for Cybersecurity Awareness Month, there's actually a government-wide effort. In many respects, the cyber piece is led by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, another initiative that was part of the new national cybersecurity strategy that was released in 2018.

Part of that, as I mentioned, is that this month it's about not getting phished. It's all about phishing. We both have activities that we support. We help out the cyber centre with that under their “Get Cyber Safe” campaign.

As I mentioned in my remarks, we have Fraud Prevention Month in March, which is a big event. Last year, I think we had over 300,000 visits to the CAC website during that month, and we think that through social media we reached about 700,000 people. It does give you a sense that if you craft the—

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

Can I ask just one more quick question? I know we're out of time here. I'm sorry to interrupt you.

[Chris Lynam]

Sure.

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

Are any of those communications in other languages? We know that cultural communities and new Canadians in particular can be subject to fraud. Is there outreach in other cultural communities in other languages?

[Chris Lynam]

It is a good point. The majority of those are in the two official languages of Canada, but we recognize that there is a need to figure out how to do more outreach to new Canadians or folks who don't speak English or French. At different levels or, in some cases, the non-profit or NGO sector, there's quite a bit of work in this space, but there's definitely more to be done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much.

I now yield the floor to Ms. Lapointe for five minutes.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

I'd like to pick up on the questions that my colleagues MP Gray and MP Lemire were asking around raising awareness. I'm specifically interested in how we help vulnerable populations such as seniors.

You talked about what happens when complaints are put forward, but how can we get upstream from that in preventing this for those vulnerable populations? You described some campaigns with 300,000 hits to a website and social media, but a lot of our seniors don't have smart phones and they're not necessarily on computers. What are some of the things that we do to help those vulnerable populations?

[Chris Lynam]

I'll start, and then I'll turn to Sergeant Larocque to speak a little more about the senior support program.

I agree. Part of where I think we are now in terms of a program for prevention and awareness is really trying to tailor the approach to different audiences to figure out what resonates with them and what they need in order to stay safe online or not become the victim of a telephone scam.

You're right that seniors may feel more comfortable getting pamphlets or booklets. We've done some work in the past in producing booklets and using other formats, such as in-person meetings or in-person gatherings to promote that. COVID threw a wrench into a lot of that work for a couple of years, but we're now back into that space.

I'll let Sergeant Larocque talk a bit more about the senior support program and outreach activities there.

[Sgt Guy Paul Larocque]

In terms of outreach, we have proactive presentations that are done in person, to the extent that they can be done. Of course, as Mr. Lynam explained, COVID slowed down our efforts, but we still found ways to be able to reach out. We had virtual presentations when we could not be there in person. Our senior volunteers have now started to do in-person engagement.

Just last week or the week before, one of my communications officers gave a presentation to newcomers. It was great to be able to familiarize them with all of the fraudulent threats that can be out there and to help them navigate through them.

I recognize that prevention will continue to be key. We'll never do enough prevention. There's always more that we can do, and it's always going to remain a challenge to be able to reach as many people as possible.

One thing that we've reproduced at the centre is using the hashtag #Tell2. Basically, if I tell two people about a fraud story or a fraud threat and then they tell it to two others, it will amplify the messaging.

You mentioned senior victims of fraud, who can be more vulnerable and difficult to reach. That's why we ask their families to be able to help us reach out and have those conversations with them.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Lynam, we heard from you this morning—and the CRTC told us the same thing last week—that only approximately 10% to 15% of victims of fraudulent calls file a report.

The question in my mind is how legislators can help increase those reporting numbers. The current process of having to contact the CRTC and complete a form is very onerous for victims.

What if there were a national automated system that all carriers were obligated to implement, through which simply using a code such as *555 would immediately end and block the fraudulent call? It would be reported immediately and it would help us track and trace these calls.

Has that type of system solution been considered?

[Chris Lynam]

I'm not aware of a solution like that. I think we need more ideas about how we make it easier for people to report it when they're a victim. It is part of the mandate of the NC3 to work with the CAFC to do that.

For example, we are building and rolling out a new online system called the national cybercrime and fraud reporting system. We started it and went right back to first principles. We went and talked to senior citizens to say, “Hey, if you were to report online, what language would resonate with you? How could we make it easier?” We've redesigned an approach that allows that. We are rolling it out. It's currently in our beta approach. We get about 25 victims a day and we iterate it constantly to make it more user-friendly.

That's just one example. We have to both make it easier and explore different ways to help Canadians report. That information feeds into the ecosystem that can then help investigations or further prevention efforts.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much.

We'll now turn it over to Monsieur Lemire.

Mr. Lemire, you have two minutes and thirty seconds.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

The last report we adopted contained three recommendations that may concern you.

First, Recommendation 1 talked about data:

That the Government of Canada work with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, Statistics Canada, provincial governments and police enforcement agencies across the country to improve the availability and accessibility of data on fraud calls in Canada.

Recommendation 2 talked about data and information:

That the Government of Canada work with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, telecommunications service providers and police enforcement agencies to increase and improve information available to Canadians about fraud calls.

Finally, there was Recommendation 5:

That the Government of Canada introduce legislation to facilitate the exchange of confidential information between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, and other Canadian governmental bodies in order to coordinate an effective response against fraud calls while protecting privacy rights.

So it was about data sharing, information and, particularly, the exchange of confidential information.

Has the government approached you in the last two years to improve practices? Has it taken a leadership role? Finally, have these recommendations been implemented?

[Chris Lynam]

Those are three good recommendations.

In terms of the first one, a lot of work has been done to get more data and information out there about fraud. Very shortly, we're going to be releasing a report on the annual activities of the CAFC, which will have a lot of additional data about fraud and what have you. That should be coming out in the next little while.

We're continually looking at information-sharing arrangements with other agencies and what have you. We talked earlier about working with the CRTC on that. I'd say there has been some progress in how we work with them, but there's more to be done.

I'll turn it over to Sergeant Larocque to talk about our open data approach at the CAFC.

[Sgt Guy Paul Larocque]

Right now there have been recent developments on that front. We want to release more data and make it more accessible to the public, so we're currently working with one of our units at the RCMP to publish that type of data using the open government data concept. For example, some of the reports that we publish are for prevention, like the bulletin reports and things like that. They will be the types of reports that we will look at to be uploaded to that portal, as well as fraud-related data that's coming.

Even for the academic sector, for example, if they want to do research, the data will be a lot more accessible, because some trend data will become available, hopefully, in the near future.

Of course, data will be anonymized to protect victim and suspect information, but the data will still be sufficient to enable some trends to be seen. As Mr. Lynam mentioned, the annual report will also provide some good contextual data as well.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Larocque.

Thank you, Mr. Lemire.

I will now recognize Mr. Masse for two and a half minutes.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Prevention is everything in many respects. In fact, we have Mr. Mecher coming up. He's a former RCMP fraud investigator. He's been working on the Western Union file. He did an amazing job and will be testifying here.

We actually sent an email out to members of Parliament to try to get that out there. It was taken up by about 10 other members of Parliament. We sent that out twice. It's always hard to get it raised as a priority.

In 2018, the public safety minister then, Ralph Goodale, convened a summit here in Ottawa on guns, drugs, smuggling and so forth. I'd like your honest opinion on whether a summit is a good idea or a bad idea. Are we at the point where we need a summit on fraud or something like that to bring in the provincial, municipal, federal and other legislators to have something more robust for public relations?

I don't want to have meetings for the sake of meetings, by any means. I have enough of those. What I did like about the summit that Mr. Goodale put on is that it bound a lot of people who hadn't worked together in the past. Formal stuff and informal stuff took place later.

Given your time and the commitment, is a summit on fraud and cybersecurity something that would be worthwhile for the country at this point?

You're not insulting me if you just say no.

[Chris Lynam]

I think there would be great support for bringing the stakeholders together in different forms—whether it's a summit or some other type of activity—to talk about the impact and figure out solutions.

For example, there is a lot of activity already, with the government recently putting out a call for consultations for the renewal of the national cyber security strategy. That was an avenue both to solicit online input and meet with different stakeholders.

We talk about addressing cybercrime and fraud as being a team sport. It involves law enforcement, other government agencies and the private, non-public sector. I frequently go to conferences or events where that is the theme, and people are in those rooms committed to figuring out solutions to reduce victimization.

I think events or activities whereby we can bring those stakeholders together to say, “This is what I'm seeing and here are some solutions I think I can put on the table” would be beneficial.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you.

Mr. Masse, go ahead briefly, if you want.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'll just follow up with Mr. Larocque.

You mentioned getting multilingual material out to people. For example, to get it in Arabic and other languages, is it just a matter of resources? It is expensive to get proper translation. I know this from my riding and so forth. Is that the case?