National Defence Committee on Feb. 16th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I call the meeting to order.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk, for testing all the various pieces of technology.

I thank the witnesses in advance for their patience.

Colleagues, I see we're about 35 minutes past our starting time. I would propose to go to at least six o'clock unless there are wild objections to the contrary. We have extraordinary witnesses today, not the least of whom are Mr. Kolga and Mr. Hampson.

I appreciate both of you and what you have to say.

With that, I'm going to ask Mr. Hampson for his five-minute opening statement, after which we'll turn to Mr. Kolga for his five-minute opening statement and then to questions.

Thank you.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson, Chancellor's Professor, Carleton University, President, World Refugee & Migration Council, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'll jump right into it.

Let me start with some hard truths.

Today, Canada's armed forces are seeing their lowest overseas deployment since the Korean War. Four years ago, the Trudeau government announced a commitment to increase military spending by $62.3 billion over the next 20 years, which included a commitment to increase spending by $6.5 billion or $6.6 billion over the next five years, yet budget documents have shown that the government has fallen short by more than $2 billion annually on new military equipment expenditures because of project delays, although some projects have come in under budget.

At full strength, Canada's military should number around 100,000-plus troops, regular forces and reserves, but today it's facing a shortfall of 12,000 and the situation appears to be worsening.

Today, the world is a much more dangerous place. There is no peace dividend to enjoy and certainly no holiday from history. The international system is becoming highly competitive and unstable with the rise of China and Russia's resurgence. Both countries threaten their neighbours and aspire global influence. There are also regional actors—Iran and North Korea— that threaten their neighbours with new provocations, and instability in many parts of the world, including our own hemisphere.

With the return to geostrategic competition and rivalry, Canada's armed forces confront the challenges of what might be characterized as twin or two-front deterrence: how to contend with the growing military threat posed by both Russia and China. Russia and China are now joined at the hip with their new friendship without limits pact that challenges the current political and military order.

I think we can agree that Russia's actions against Ukraine take place against a background of a series of interventions in its near abroad: Georgia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Russia's defence spending is focused on deploying new weaponry, including nonstrategic systems equipped to carry nuclear or conventional warheads, new anti-satellite weapons, directed energy weapons and sophisticated cyberwarfare capabilities that will exploit asymmetrical capabilities against more powerful adversaries.

There is a similar disturbing pattern of aggression in China's behaviour under President Xi Jinping and its own military buildup. Between 2010 and 2020, China's military expenditures rose by 76% and the People's Liberation Army's war-fighting abilities have vastly improved. By 2030, China's navy will be more modern and bigger than that of the United States. Like Russia, China is investing heavily in modernizing its military with hypersonic ballistic and cruise missiles, anti-satellite weapons, cyberwarfare, and the list goes on.

The leisurely pace of modernization of our armed forces to confront new geostrategic realities stands in sharp contrast to our Australian cousins, who have put their foot on the accelerator. Despite being two-thirds the size of Canada in terms of both population and GDP, Australia's military budget is 2.2% of GDP, which is $26.9 billion U.S., versus 1.4% for Canada, which is $21 billion U.S.. That's 28% more than Canada. Australia is committed to a major increase in its own defence spending over the next four years, boosting its air and naval capabilities in order to prepare for what Australia's prime minister, Scott Morrison, calls a “poorer, more dangerous and more disorderly” neighbourhood, and a world in which “we have not seen the conflation of global, economic and strategic uncertainty” experienced since the 1930s.

No such warning has come from Canada's leaders.

Given the importance of the Indo-Pacific region to Canada's economic future and the government's new Indo-Pacific strategy, Canada has a key stake in the region's security and stability. For our economic partners in the region, economics and security are two sides of the same coin. They have repeatedly told us that, if Canada wants to strengthen its commercial and economic ties in the region, it must be a much more engaged and reliable security partner.

Former ASEAN secretary-general, Thailand's Surin Pitsuwan, was uncharacteristically blunt in his assessment of Canada as a security partner. “Canada knows that it has been rather absent from the region”, he remarked in 2012, and I dare say not a whole lot has changed in the intervening years.

In fact, we were blindsided by the U.S., U.K. and Australia security pact. Australia is considered a serious defence and security partner in the Indo-Pacific. Canada is clearly not in that first tier. Australia received seven mentions in the just-released Indo-Pacific strategy of the United States. Canada had none. We weren't mentioned at all.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Hampson, I apologize for interrupting you, as I apologize all too frequently, but we're way over time here.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

Okay. The bottom line is that we have to run faster, jump higher and stop punching below our weight.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Kolga, you have five minutes, please.

[Marcus Kolga, Senior Fellow, MacDonald-Laurier Institute, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to speak with you today about the threat posed to our security and our democracy by foreign influence and information operations.

In addition to being a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier and CDA Institutes, I am the director of DisinfoWatch, a platform that is dedicated to monitoring and exposing foreign information warfare that targets Canada and our allies, and to helping Canadians develop the cognitive resources to allow them to recognize and reject disinformation and influence operations.

As has been repeatedly noted by Canada's intelligence community and the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, the threat of foreign information warfare and influence operations—known more broadly as cognitive warfare—is persistent and growing. Canada's a significant target for Chinese, Russian and Iranian actors who seek to manipulate our media, elected officials, civil society, armed forces, ethnic communities and Canadian interests with information operations.

During the 2021 federal election, DisinfoWatch first alerted Canadians to a coordinated Chinese government-aligned influence operation that included disinformation on Chinese state media platforms. The Atlantic Council's DFR lab and researchers from McGill University later published similar findings.

Since early 2020, we've observed Russian state media and its proxies here in Canada trying to polarize our society by promoting narratives that take advantage of public fear, anger and confusion that have grown during the COVID pandemic.

I'd like to stress that the Kremlin does not share any ideology or values with any major Canadian political party. Vladimir Putin's only ideology is corruption and power. As such, our democratic values represent an existential threat to his regime, which is why he targets us. Vladimir Putin can only compete with democratic nations that are divided and whose defence alliances, like NATO, are broken.

To achieve this, Russian state actors operating in the shadows of the extreme political left and right seek to divide our society by eroding our bonds within it. In the United States, we've witnessed state actors exploit civil unrest, environmental issues and other sensitive political issues. In Canada, we recently observed Russian state media exploit COVID protests by promoting extremist voices who seek the overthrow of our democratically elected government.

Our armed forces serving in Latvia and Ukraine have also been targeted by Russian information warfare. In efforts to subvert the trust of Russian speakers in Latvia towards Canada's NATO mission and troops, Russian state media published an outrageously false report about it in 2017. The news report featured photographs of a former Canadian officer and convicted killer, Russell Williams, wearing women's underwear and falsely claimed that he was leading a gay Canadian army to convert Latvians into homosexuals.

In order to remain in power, Vladimir Putin needs his people to believe that Russia is in a constant state of conflict and crisis with enemies all around it and that only he can protect his people against them. This is one important reason why he's created the current crisis on Ukraine's and NATO's borders. Vladimir Putin is seeking to gaslight Ukrainians, Canadians and the western world to believe that NATO and our friends in Ukraine have caused the crisis that he has manufactured.

He wants everyone to believe that NATO has encircled Russia and that nations like Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and yes, even Canada, pose a threat to Russia's sovereignty. The Russian government also wants us to believe that Ukraine isn't worth defending. That's why Russian state media promotes disinformation about Ukraine's government being controlled by neo-Nazis when it is actually led by a democratically elected government whose president is a member of the Jewish Ukrainian community.

A 2019 Russian state media report even accused the Ukrainian Canadian community of controlling our foreign policy. This is a conspiracy theory narrative that is directly intended to delegitimize the voice of this community and discriminate against them. We've seen this tactic before with other minority communities.

Cognitive warfare, disinformation and influence operations along with cyber is the primary battlefield of 21st-century warfare. Our government and our armed forces must be equipped with resources to defend against this growing menace that threatens our security and our democracy. Canada should take the immediate steps of placing economic sanctions on Russian and Chinese state broadcasters to limit their ability to pollute our information environment and profit from it.

Finally, the Canadian government's understanding of cognitive warfare must develop beyond one that focuses primarily on elections and social media. As many of us, including our intelligence community, have repeatedly warned over the past few years, this threat is persistent and growing. We must start taking cognitive warfare seriously. We should begin by creating a task force to learn from our allies and develop capabilities and resources to defend our democracy against it.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Kolga.

With that, we'll commence our six-minute rounds, starting with Ms. Findlay, Mr. Fisher, Madame Normandin and then Ms. Mathyssen.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Hampson, on our Canadian government finally providing lethal aid to Ukraine, you were reported to have said, “It's a bit like showing up at a potluck dinner party with the canapés when the guests are already into dessert.” Can you elaborate further on those remarks?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

I don't think there's that much to elaborate. There were predictions that an attack was imminent.

By the way, those remarks were quoted in the The Globe and Mail.

There had been a lot of discussion in this country about providing lethal aid, pivoting away from our commitment and efforts to provide non-lethal aid. Other countries have been doing that in some cases for quite some time. It's very late in the game, when an attack is imminent. If you're providing even small arms, they have to be put on a plane. They have to get there. It's a challenging situation, as I think we all know, on the ground right now, and—

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

In your view, that decision should have been taken earlier. Is that correct?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

Yes, correct.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Also, it should be a broader range of what's been offered as well. Is that what you're saying?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

I think we're limited in terms of what we can offer and certainly what we make. What Ukraine needs are anti-tank weapons. It also needs surface-to-air missiles. We have attached conditionality to the guaranteed loans that we're giving Ukraine so they can't use that money to make those kinds of purchases.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Something like our RADARSAT technology would be very helpful to Ukraine, wouldn't it?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

Certainly, but again, it's difficult to provide that now.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

How would you characterize Canada's place in the international system as a middle power? Is that description even still accurate in your view?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

I've never liked the term “middle power”. There are almost 200 countries in the world and “middle” suggests you're somewhere around 100 in the tier. We're a principal power. We're a member of the G7. We're a member of the G20.

We traditionally, as I indicated earlier, have been a major guarantor of global peace and security, not only through our diplomacy but also through our defence spending. The last time we hit the 2% level of GDP defence spending—and I agree, it's a crude metric, but again, it shows you in general terms what kind of contribution we are making—was in 1988 under the Mulroney government. It has been a steady downhill ever since.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Mr. Kolga, you talk about cognitive warfare. That's something that certainly concerns many of us, that state of cyberwarfare.

We see that now being used by the Russians, it would appear, against Ukraine. Do you believe that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent?

[Marcus Kolga]

Thank you for the question.

I think it's very difficult to say whether an invasion is imminent. It would appear, because of the number of troops and the hardware that has been placed around Ukraine to its east, south and north, that some sort of activity is imminent.

How and what that will look like is difficult to say at the moment, but we have seen cyber-attacks against Ukraine over the past number of days. Its defence ministry servers were brought down with a massive DDoS attack, and a number of experts have predicted that a cyber-attack would occur ahead of any sort of military action, so I think we all need to be aware that something may happen imminently.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

I have just a minute left, so for either of you, how would you describe the threat to Canada's Arctic region and our grip on the Arctic archipelago?

Jump in quick.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

I don't think we have a grip, to be honest. The threat up there is growing from the Chinese who are building heavy icebreakers equipped with weapons and others who see the Arctic as not just a place to exploit natural resources but of transit and military competition.

[Marcus Kolga]

If I may add quickly, the Russian government has engaged in a mass mobilization of the Arctic over the past 10 years. They've built over 20 new bases or refurbished 20 new bases, including offensive bases for long-range bombers. They've also created superweapons for the Arctic, high-speed torpedoes, nuclear-armed torpedoes that are designed to irradiate our Arctic coastline. Last spring, Russia laid claim to all of the resources underneath the Arctic sea right up to Canada's coastline. There's definitely a growing threat in that region.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Findlay.

Mr. Fisher, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses. My questions are going to be for Mr. Kolga.

This committee was recently briefed on the threat of foreign influence and interference, a subject that you have been very vocal on. How are foreign actors using disinformation tactics to advance their interests?

[Marcus Kolga]

I'll focus specifically on Russia right now.

We know that over the past two years during the pandemic the Russian government has focused its disinformation efforts on exploiting the pandemic and COVID. We were warned already in March of 2020 by the European Union that the Russian government would in fact be doing this. They would try to amplify the effects of COVID and use it to divide us and erode the trust within society, and this is something that we've been tracking all along.

Later that summer, in August 2020, we saw massive anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown protests in Berlin that were covered live by Russian television and certainly promoted by them. The effect of this is that these protests are then legitimized.

Again, these protests may be legitimate. People feel these emotions. They have the fear. There is confusion about COVID. A lot of them are coming out with the best intentions. The fact is that Russia is exploiting those fears and those emotions and is promoting, quite frankly, anti-government narratives within them. This is something that we've seen come out over the past number of weeks in Ottawa. I don't believe that Russia has had a hand in directing what we've seen in Ottawa, but it certainly adds fuel to the extremist elements who are involved there. This is one of the ways they try to undermine our democracy and erode Canadian trust in media, in our elected government and certainly eventually in each other.