National Defence Committee on Feb. 16th, 2022

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

You referenced anti-mask and anti-vaccination narratives in Germany, and you talked about what's going on in Ottawa. You noted that there is evidence that, and I'm going to quote here, “Russian state media and its proxies were aggressively promoting wild conspiracy theories, anti-mask and antivaccination narratives and movements” and that “Canadian anti-mask and antivaccination movements have transformed into aggressive anti-government movements during the [2021] election.”

Given what we've seen unfold over the past few weeks—and you did touch on this for a moment when I asked you the last question—how do you assess the evolution of this threat?

[Marcus Kolga]

In the context of COVID?

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Yes.

[Marcus Kolga]

It's been persistent. It's been there all along. We have seen the transformation of these protests and the introduction of anti-government narratives. We saw that happen already in the fall of 2020 when the first protests started appearing in Canada. I think the first one was in Montreal. Those anti-government narratives have stuck with those protests all along. Clearly, the state actors, Russian proxy platforms—one of which is right here in Canada, in Montreal, in fact—and Russian state media have used those narratives. They've amplified them. They've legitimized them.

What they're doing with them is dividing Canadians using those specific narratives and they're allowing these anti-mask movements, these anti-lockdown movements and the anti-government narratives within them to harden. Through that, our society is becoming more and more divided.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

That's unbelievable. Thank you for that.

I want to go back a couple of years. The last time I was on this national defence committee, from 2016 to 2020—I'm not absolutely certain when this happened—I was on Facebook one day and I saw.... You're an expert in communications and media strategy, and it's timely that you're here because I've been wanting to ask this question to somebody for a long time.

Anyone can be media now. This incredibly well-produced news program, I believe it was in Russia, was saying that a U.S. ship had fired at the Russians in the Mediterranean, or something of that sort. I don't know if you remember that, but when I looked down in the bottom corner where it said “Share”, it had been shared something like 25,000 times. This was a Facebook post of clear misinformation. Mainstream media is certainly going to speak about an attack by the Americans on the Russians, or an attack by the Russians on the Americans.

Do you remember that? It was so slick and so well produced that I can totally imagine why the population would believe it and then share it as if it were real.

[Marcus Kolga]

There are two answers, quickly.

Russia has become an expert in creating completely fake news. They've used scenes from video games in the past that they've tried to pass off as real television news reports.

The other thing is that Russian state media doesn't only broadcast through RT. That's not the only platform they rely on. They rely on online platforms, whether it's YouTube or their own website, and a lot of the content that appears there is shared, as you say, very widely on platforms like Facebook, unfortunately, Twitter and others.

They don't rely just on that television medium but on online media. The problem is that the information on those platforms gets shared very widely.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We're going to have to leave it there, Mr. Fisher.

Ms. Normandin, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank both witnesses. I invite them to jump in when questions arise that interest them.

At the outset, Mr. Hampson, you mentioned the severe lack of resources in the Canadian Armed Forces. Based on what you both said, obviously there's still a lot of work to be done in terms of cyber threats and psychological operations.

Is that where we should really prioritize resources? Are there other more important areas that might not have been thought of?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

You have to make some tough choices. As we've just heard from Marcus, there are cyber-attacks and cyber-influences when it comes to social media discussions in this country. The question is, who should do it? When it comes to some of the things Marcus was talking about, that's a role for the Communications Security Establishment, CSE. It's not really a role for defence, although defence has to be apprised.

One aspect of that, which we need to pay a lot more attention to, is not just infiltration of social media but attacks or penetrations that steal our intellectual property. It's important to remind the committee that one of the reasons why Huawei is one of the greatest telecommunications companies in the world today, if not the biggest, is that they did a great job of stealing a lot of Nortel intellectual property. That has found its way into Huawei equipment.

However, when it comes to our armed forces, we're on the right path in acquiring a new surface combat capability. That's going to be hugely important. At the same time, it's going to be very vulnerable to hypersonic cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons. That's also true of our partners. We definitely need those 88 new fighter jets. We should have done that a long time ago.

Our problem is not the direction in which we're moving, but the fact that we're moving far too slowly and far too inefficiently. Every time there's a change in government, some program gets cancelled and things get put on the back burner, only to resurface in a decision four years later. We can start with Mr. Chrétien's helicopters there.

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

Thank you, Mr. Hampson.

With regard to the role that the Department of National Defence has to play, I was just wondering whether certain operations were indeed within its remit. In the case of military propaganda operations, however, I cannot believe that they do not fall directly under the responsibility of the Department of National Defence.

In this context, it is understandable that psychological operations are often reserved for the reserve force. It is they who do it, rather than the regular force. However, there is a loss of expertise, as there is a large turnover of personnel within the reserve force.

Should we, as a priority, ensure that this expertise is maintained within the regular force?

[Marcus Kolga]

I'll just quickly answer that.

I think it's extremely important that our forces be equipped to deal with cognitive warfare. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, this is the 21st-century battlefield, and our forces are being targeted regularly, especially in places like Latvia and Ukraine, with cognitive warfare. We need to make sure that our forces are equipped with the resources to defend against this.

Back to your earlier question about where we should be placing our resources, we need deterrents in NATO and we need to ensure that we add resources to our mission in Latvia, perhaps working within NATO to call for a permanent mission in the Baltic states to deter Vladimir Putin. That's something we should be looking at, because it is that sort of power, the deterrents, that will stop Vladimir Putin from acting the way he is right now in Ukraine.

Finally, I would say the Arctic, as I mentioned earlier. Vladimir Putin is engaging in a mass mobilization in the Arctic. We need to be better prepared for Russian activity and certainly Chinese activity in that region. Right now, we're woefully unprepared for that.

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

We talked about psychological operations. Should there be more one-on-one training for reservists and officers so that the military on the ground are prepared when there are disinformation operations?

[Marcus Kolga]

Yes, absolutely. They need to be trained. I know that some training was occurring about a year and a half ago, two years ago, which was unfortunately derailed. I know there was a unit within the armed forces to deal with cognitive warfare, which has now been sort of pushed aside. We need to reinstate that unit and we need to make sure that all of our forces, whether reservists or regular forces, are trained to have at least the basic resources to detect information warfare and to be able to cognitively recognize and handle it when they do see it.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Ms. Mathyssen, go ahead for six minutes, please.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just to sort of build from that, there have been a lot of reports recently in the media because of what's happening here in Ottawa and across the country with the anti-government movement you were talking about before and of course the identification of that within our own military. How concerned does our own leadership need to be about that within our own military as well?

[Marcus Kolga]

I think members of our own military are allowed to believe and think and speak the way they feel appropriate, but if these members of our military and members of our law enforcement and others are active in these sorts of anti-government movements, then I think we should be more aware of that and try to curb it whenever and however possible.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Kolga, you also mentioned those actors. You mentioned Montreal media in terms of the Russian actors involved. Could you could expand on that a bit? We've also seen within this movement that foreign money is being funnelled in. How is that money moved in? Do we know that Russians are funnelling it through the United States to get it here? How does that all work?

[Marcus Kolga]

I can't really speak to how these movements are being financed, especially the ones in Ottawa right now. What I can speak to is the first part of your question about these proxy platforms.

There is an entire disinformation ecosystem being created by the Russian government. We're talking about RT, Russia Today, the state media, but also these proxy platforms that are sort of.... You can't say that they're necessarily funded or controlled by the Russian media or government, but they are definitely aligned with the Kremlin, share its values and also help to advance its narratives.

This platform in Montreal that I mentioned earlier was identified by the United States State Department's global engagement centre about a year and a half ago. It's Global Research. This is a platform that has been regularly publishing, during the COVID pandemic, wild conspiracy theories, some of the wildest you can imagine, the QAnon types of conspiracies that suggest that, for example, big pharma is injecting Canadians and people who are accepting the COVID vaccine with these vaccines that are full of graphene and various different substances that are intended to allow big pharma and the elite western governments to track the people who receive these vaccines.

Some of these stories posted on Global Research appear on other websites, including Russian state media, and they get shared very widely when they're shared on Global Research. This platform also gives the Russian government a way to sort of launder the narratives. It's a step in between. People who might feel uncomfortable sharing narratives that appear on state-run platforms may feel more comfortable with this platform that seems to be independent.

Those platforms—not just Global Research but a number of others—are instrumental in sharing these narratives that are shared by a lot of anti-government extremists, and we've been seeing this happen, like I said, over the past two years and even before that. It's something that the Canadian government needs to be taking a closer look at and working with our allies on to ensure that Canadians have the cognitive resources to recognize these narratives and reject them for what they are when they see them.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Shifting gears a little bit, we were talking about Canada supplying lethal weaponry, and for years experts have warned about the misuse and potential diversion of small arms and light weapons. We don't have the ability to track them. Years from now.... I'm thinking long term in terms of the repercussions of this. Could we open up that discussion a bit?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

I assume that was directed to me.

Absolutely, there is a risk. There's a risk whenever you provide weaponry to another state, even so-called strong states, in terms of how they might be used by state authorities or fall into the wrong hands if there's a collapse of the state.

I think it's fair to say Ukraine has a well-run, professional military. We've been investing ourselves heavily in training, and so have other countries, but if there's a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and state collapse, I dare say weapons can fall into all kinds of wrong hands. That's the risk you run, but if you don't arm the Ukraine state, as many have urged, to make it the so-called bitter pill for Russia to swallow, then the risk you run is that an invasion looks relatively easy for.... I'm not saying it is easy, but a weak Ukraine is going to be much easier to attack than a strong Ukraine.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

Colleagues, we have 20 minutes, and I have 25 minutes' worth of questions here. I'm going to be a little arbitrary and just cut a minute off everyone.

With that, Mr. Motz, you have four minutes, please.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Hampson, in your opening remarks, you didn't paint a very pretty picture of Canada's military presence, our capacity and our strength on the global stage and even nationally here at home.

In your opinion, sir, what are our top military threats and shortcomings, and what should our government be doing now to fix those shortcomings and address those threats appropriately?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

The major threat is geopolitical. I tried to stress that in my opening remarks. It's not [Technical difficulty—Editor] that Russia poses to our NATO allies and obviously to our friends in Ukraine right now, but it is the other bully on the global stage, and that's China, which is bullying its neighbours, flexing its military power and muscle. We're hoping through the new Indo-Pacific strategy for Canada to diversify our trade in the Indo-Pacific to take advantage of what is the world's most populous neighbourhood, and increasingly the richest neighbourhood. It has the biggest growing middle class in the world. It's where the action is, but it's also increasingly unstable as a result of China's geostrategic ambitions. China's interests are not—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

I'm sorry for interrupting you. I want to get to the thrust of my question. What are CAF's, our military's shortcomings? What do we need to do as a country to address those threats and address our shortcomings?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

We need to build the size of our armed forces with more personnel, certainly fill the shortfall that we have now. We need to acquire new ships, new aircraft, new cyber-capabilities of the kinds that were discussed, and to work more closely with our allies, not just in Europe but also in the Indo-Pacific. We're coming late to the party, if I can use that metaphor again. [Technical difficulty—Editor] that has seen what the threats are and is taking action to deal with it.