Public Safety Committee on May 12th, 2021

[Timothy Hahlweg]

Bravely....

I'll give you one example. We are quite proud of the work we're doing in the service on our outreach. We've been actively engaged with academia and with biopharma during the COVID pandemic. We've been engaged with NSERC about FI threats to various educational institutions. We're really out there and we're engaging.

One of the things that we have an issue with and we're trying to address is that, in our engagement with non-security-cleared individuals, under section 19 of our act, we are allowed to provide only unclassified information. This makes it difficult for us to really provide to the community the information they need that is useful to protect them and to make sure they're resilient against the threats that are coming our way.

When we talk about this service and the CSIS Act not being fit for purpose, this is one of the things that I think we need to look at in the future.

[C/Supt Mark Flynn]

If time permits, I can add to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Go ahead. I'm sure Mr. Kurek will be happy with that.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Yes, absolutely.

[C/Supt Mark Flynn]

Outside of any legislated ask, internal to the RCMP and in collaboration with CSIS, we're doing significant work in looking at what we can do better internally and collectively. We've implemented new programs after an operational program review.

We're implementing a leads program, where we collaborate at the early onset of knowledge around a problem. We're bringing psychologists into the police response to these problems so that we can better understand the people and what will aid in moving them away from the violent extremism or offer an early opportunity to mitigate the harm they cause or move them away. I could go on several different routes, but I think it would use up more time than is available.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

I'm very curious about the foreign influence aspect of this and some of the efforts to destabilize our democracy. I'm wondering if there are any comments that any of you—maybe CSIS or CSE—have on those foreign influences and their impact on Canada related to IMVE.

[Timothy Hahlweg]

I can start.

Foreign interference is one of the most important strategic threats to Canada's national security. The CSIS director has mentioned this at numerous venues. It undermines Canadian sovereignty, our national interests and specifically our values. It is a very complex threat.

It's also a national threat. It targets all levels of government, as you know, in communities all across the country. The threat activity has always been persistent in the FI space in Canada, but the scale, speed, range and impact have grown considerably as a result of globalization and technology. It encompasses a range of techniques, including human intelligence operations, state-sponsored or foreign-influenced media and sophisticated cyber-tools.

I'm sure my colleague Mr. Wilczynski can talk further to that, but it is a significant threat that we are absolutely seized with from a CSIS perspective.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I'm sure Mr. Wilczynski would love to answer that, but he's not going to be given an opportunity because Mr. Kurek is out of time.

Ms. Khera, you have five minutes, please.

[Kamal Khera, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all our witnesses for being here and, more importantly, for all the work you do.

My question is for CSIS.

Back in 2010-11, Canadians were informed by the government of the day that right-wing extremism has not been a significant problem in Canada and that the antics of certain high-profile white supremacists were extremely rare.

Since that time, we've seen the proliferation of threats posed by IMVE, such as incels and those inspired by xenophobia. How can we explain this growth? Were these threats always significant and perhaps not addressed, or was there truly a rapid increase that may have been spurred by external forces over the past few years?

[Timothy Hahlweg]

It's a very good question. It's a complicated question.

If I go back in time to when we still had the nomenclature of right-wing extremism and we had the attacks in Quebec and some other attacks.... At that time, just for context, we were dealing, in 2014, with the attacks against Parliament Hill and a lot of other attacks that fit more into the religiously motivated violent extremism category. This is an exercise that all of us undertake at all times. It's reprioritizing threats and allocating the resources to deal with those threats.

With the re-emergence of IMVE and the recalibration that we took as a service, we absolutely saw, with regard to the second part of your question, a more sophisticated threat actor than we had seen before. You had new online tools. You had new ways of communication. You had accelerated interaction whereby these people could sit in their basements and never have to meet face to face. This accelerated the IMVE space, and it has actually grown ever since then, making it very difficult and complex to follow.

Thank you.

[Kamal Khera, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Thank you.

Artur, do you have anything to add?

[Artur Wilczynski]

Yes.

To go back to what Mr. Hahlweg said and to part of the earlier questions, I want to emphasize that this truly is a global phenomenon. When we're engaging with international partners, when we're talking to our Five Eyes colleagues, this is something that is increasingly on our colleagues' radar. From a foreign intelligence perspective, it's why we believe that we need to continue to be engaged in this question and, again, to work with our colleagues at CSIS and other clients to make sure the international dimension of it, the global nature of it, is understood and how that connects to the phenomenon as it may manifest itself in Canada.

[Kamal Khera, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Thank you for that.

I have an additional question for CSIS or even, perhaps, the RCMP. We are aware that gender-based violence is a very serious threat, and I know that we're developing a national strategy to address it. In your opening remarks for CSIS, you did mention that one of the faces of this violence is misogyny. Can you, perhaps, explain a little bit further how IMVE is gender-driven?

[Timothy Hahlweg]

When we look at groups such as incels, involuntary celibates, that ideology bears many of the hallmarks of many more traditionally recognized ideologies, from our perspective.

Incels belong to a misogynistic community of males. They, like most others, associate primarily through online platforms. They use a unified terminology. They're not really an organized group, from our perspective, and they have no centralized structure or planning. They believe, though, at their core, that their genetics determine the quality of their life and relationships, meaning that they blame their unattractive physical features for their inability to attract women. They attribute their perceived failings in life to women and society in general.

We're also seeing subcategories of these types of ideologies. The manosphere is one that has cropped up. This is a network of online misogynistic and male-supremacy communities talking about men's rights issues to glorify the violence in violent misogyny. These subgroups are very concerning to us.

From a service perspective, I would say that not all of them are are violent. From a service perspective, in terms of the act and meeting our threshold, a lot of that activity takes place in that first tier that I was talking about. However, it is absolutely something that is concerning from a national perspective.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Khera.

Madame Michaud, you have two and a half minutes, please.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We understand that religiously motivated violent extremism that relies on social networks is an extremely modern threat, and it becomes difficult to legislate against it. As you were saying, Mr. Duheme, people will likely find a way around these new laws, quickly rendering them obsolete.

You are probably all aware of the Christchurch massacre, which the Prime Minister of New Zealand called an act intended to be broadcast on the Internet. As a result of this event, Australia passed the Criminal Code Amendment (Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material) Act 2019, which amends the Australian Criminal Code by adding as an offence the act of hosting or disseminating violent content on social networks or on any sites.

In your opinion, should Canada adopt similar legislation?

[D/Commr Michael Duheme]

I'm going to ask Mr. Rochon to talk about what's being done right now and the issue you raised.

[Dominic Rochon]

Thank you.

As it happens, I don't feel like continuing to pass the torch.

However, I'm wondering whether Jill Wherrett might want to step in from a Public Safety perspective, in terms of Canada's participation in the Christchurch call. We certainly have been supportive, standing shoulder to shoulder with our New Zealand colleagues. There's a two-year anniversary event coming up later this week.

Jill, would you care to weigh in on Madame Michaud's question?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Again, I'll give the same caution I gave to Mr. Kurek, that it's properly a minister's question as to whether there should be some legislative initiative.

But you all seem to be brave souls and you certainly have opinions, so I'll just let it proceed from there.

[Jill Wherrett, Assistant Deputy Minister, Portfolio Affairs and Communications Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Thank you.

Thank you for the question.

I won't comment on government policy in terms of legislation, but I would say that, as my colleagues have described, there really are a variety of tools that can be brought to bear, whether they're legislative tools, working with civil society organizations or voluntary work that can be done between governments and social media platforms and the digital industry. That's certainly a big focus, in fact, of the Christchurch call that my colleague was just speaking about, where there's a series of commitments for governments, commitments for technology companies and shared commitments.

One of the elements—and something that we've been working on here—is that there's the legislative aspect, but there's also the crisis protocols that can be put into place, so that when there are streaming activities happening, as in the case of Christchurch, we can mobilize quickly to work with companies to make sure that content is no longer disseminated. That's another tool that we can use. Legislation, I think, is one part of the picture.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Madame Michaud.

Mr. Harris, you have two and a half minutes, please.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

With regard to my first question, perhaps the representative from CSIS could deal with this as well.

We have, of course, reports of activity by extremist groups within the military. The gentleman, Mr. Hurren—I call him a gentleman, not advisedly perhaps—who went to Rideau Hall with a truckload of weapons and broke down the gate, was a military reservist.

We're told that there are pockets of supporters of the extremist view within the military. Do you actively engage in investigations regarding the military, or is that left to the military police?

[Timothy Hahlweg]

Thank you for your question.

The service is actively involved and engaged with the military on IMVE and all other manners of threat activity. What I can say is that, if there's an individual within the military who meets our threshold to investigate or engage our TRM authority, just because they're in the military won't stop us from doing our job.

We actively engage with the military in terms of education—frontline education. We get out there and tell them about the things they might want to look for, and if they are concerned, these are some of the things we are seeing analytically, investigatively, on IMVE, to try to educate them so that they're better able to spot some of these issues on their own.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

According to statistics, we know there are about 1,250 police officers in the military police, so they have a lot of personnel.

Has your service noticed, perhaps more often than not, that you have military personnel you come across? Is that something that happens often? Do you refer them to military police, or do you carry on as if it were anybody else?

[Timothy Hahlweg]

While I can't get into specific investigative activities or files, I can say that, globally, the IMVE phenomenon has increased. In every pocket of society, we're seeing more of that activity. I think it might be natural that we're seeing that in that area as well, and we're actively engaged in dialogue with our DND colleagues.