Thank you, Mr. Chairman and esteemed members of this committee.
I will focus my remarks today on primarily the information operations aspect of foreign cyberwarfare and the threat it poses to our information environment and our national security. I will talk about the direct impact Russian information warfare is having on our understanding of Putin's invasion of Ukraine and how the Russian government seeks to intimidate and silence Canadian critics of Russia's war.
Last week Alina Kabaeva, the head of a major Russian state media organization and Vladimir Putin's partner, characterized Russian government information operations as a weapon of war. She said that in terms of importance to Russia, information is in no way inferior to a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
Indeed, information warfare has become a primary tool in Russia's hybrid and cyber tool kit over the past decade, and it has directly targeted Canada. Russian disinformation operations targeted Canadians during the pandemic and last year's Ottawa trucker protests. Russian information operations have also targeted Canadian Forces stationed in Latvia. The Russian GRU's Ghostwriter campaign published false stories that claimed Canadian soldiers were spreading COVID in Latvia during the pandemic. Today, the Kremlin's anti-Ukrainian narratives aim to erode public support for Ukraine and to intimidate and dehumanize Canadians of Ukrainian heritage, including those elected to government.
The broad goal of Russian information warfare is to undermine public trust in our democracies and the cohesion of our societies. They do this by weaponizing issues and narratives that have the greatest potential to polarize us. They inject and amplify narratives that exploit both Conservative and Liberal biases and any issues that have the potential to drive wedges between Canadians.
Since Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, we have witnessed Russian information operations target both Conservative and Liberal leaders. Prime ministers Harper and Trudeau both, with their governments, have been falsely accused of supporting Ukrainian neo-Nazism by Russian state media and its constellation of proxy platforms for their support of Ukraine's sovereignty and their criticism of the Putin regime.
During the course of Russia's latest invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has significantly intensified information operations designed to erode Canadian public support for Ukraine. Among the most successful is the Kremlin's ever-present fearmongering about military escalation, including the possibility of nuclear war. It prevented us from arming Ukraine after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. It prevented us from first sending shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles, then artillery and then tanks to Ukraine. Today it prevents us from sending fighter jets to Ukraine.
One year ago we were told that Vladimir Putin's three-day special operation was intended to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine's government. This same narrative about Ukrainian support for Nazis is today being aggressively deployed to dehumanize, devalue and discriminate against Canadians of Ukrainian heritage. Such narratives are leading to an alarming rise in threats and violence toward Canadians of Ukrainian heritage and other central and eastern European communities.
Direct intimidation of these communities and critics of the Putin regime is equally concerning. A recent article published by a Russian independent media outlet, Meduza, reports that the Russian embassy in Canada is actively monitoring the social media activities of Russian diaspora members and critics of the Putin regime in Canada. One Russian Canadian was sent a message by the Russian embassy in Ottawa warning him, “We know you, we're watching you, we know what you do.” Last year the Estonian honorary consul in Toronto received a letter threatening to spread anthrax if Estonians continued to support Ukraine. There have been reports of attempted phishing attacks in various diaspora communities as well.
Canadian parliamentarians also face a daily barrage of emails and trolls on social media that seek to influence their decision-making. I've been told by some members that their support for Ukraine is frequently attacked by anonymous social media accounts. Such political intimidation and manipulation, artificial or not, may result in suppression of political and military support for Ukraine.
While I've focused on current Russian threats, Chinese government information operations also represent a significant and persistent threat to our national security and defence.
I'll leave it there for now, and I very much look forward to your questions.
