Public Safety Committee on Oct. 1st, 2024

[Guillaume Sirois]

I agree with my friend.

As to the narrow point of RRM Canada, they are active and they are trying to identify these threats, but Lauren Chen, who helped set up Tenet Media, was actually very active during the 2021 general election in amplifying content related to the People's Party of Canada and discrediting the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party.

She hosted a debate with Maxime Bernier and one PPC candidate, which received 16,000 views, right on September 10 of that election year. That wasn't detected by RRM Canada, and the Tenet Media operation was not detected by RRM Canada, so even though they are trying, for some reason they are not able to detect these threats, from what we've seen.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you for that.

We also looked a lot at the roles that Internet service providers play in this, and at the platforms themselves. You can look at Twitter, now known as X. If I were to put up a tweet out there about Ukraine, the replies would be instantaneous.

I guess maybe I'll turn this question to you on just anything you would.... Because we have tackled this issue, we've made our recommendations in the past. It seems that Internet service providers and major social media platforms continue to operate in a way that allows this misinformation and disinformation to spread. It appears to much of the public that nothing has really changed in the last couple of years. Is there anything you can add that our committee should really be pushing on this front?

[Alexandra Chyczij]

Yes. I agree completely. I think we need to complete the ban on RT, and that is to block them on Internet channels, on Internet providers. Other countries have done this, and some social media platforms have. Meta/Facebook has. TikTok has. If we block them on the Internet servers because there is....You don't need cable television to see Russia TV in Canada today, and that's the problem.

Another solution is to block the source of some of this information. Canada is the only country that has not expelled a single Russian so-called diplomat since the full-scale invasion. The EU and other NATO countries have kicked out 600 of them. We have yet to throw out one. Also, we have a huge disproportionality in diplomatic representation. We have 69 Russian diplomats registered in Canada, but we have only 17 in Moscow. Where's the proportionality here?

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

I'll just end my first round on this. I think everyone around this table is fairly well aware of how important this subject is and why we're looking into it. However, just to get it on the record for Canadians watching this, how is that serving Russia's strategic interests if the Canadian public is being flooded with misinformation and disinformation?

[Alexandra Chyczij]

We know they're struggling on the battlefront. The battle for Kyiv that was supposed to last for three days is now in its third year. The Russians are looking to other means, and that is to undermine support for Ukraine around the world. We know the Europeans have uncovered politicians who were paid directly by the Russians. We know the Europeans have a whole commission that has been established to look for disinformation and identify and combat it. I believe that the EU commissioner responsible for this is actually in Canada, meeting with our foreign interference commission.

There needs to be greater co-operation among allied countries and a pooling of resources, because it's hard to do it alone, but if you're working with like-minded partners, you can amplify the results of your work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.

We're starting our second round, and we'll go with Mr. Lloyd, please, for five minutes.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today. This has been very interesting. I appreciated Ms. Alexandra Chyczij's reference to Finland. Recently, with my other hat—being in the Canadian military—I had the pleasure of meeting with a colonel from Finland and talking about the military and cyber-preparedness that that country has as opposed to our country. I was very impressed by that.

However, getting back to this, actually at this committee back in June 2022, we had former minister Bill Blair at committee. He was the minister of emergency preparedness at the time, but during the 2021 election he was the minister for public safety. At that time, I was very concerned, and I remain concerned about foreign interference in our elections. I asked him point blank, as the record shows, “Has your government identified disinformation in the 2021 federal election as being from foreign sources?”

His words were, “I can advise you—I checked in anticipation of your question—that I have not received any information that Russia was involved in any effort at foreign interference in the last federal election.”

Now, I said:

I understand that, but if Russia sees that one country can influence our elections, they might be emboldened to try to do that themselves.

Has your government identified any foreign interference in the 2021federal election?

He replied that his agencies were very alert and that they had not identified any foreign interference.

We now know that not to be the case. There was foreign interference in our election. Was it surprising to you that back as early as 2022, we had ministers in this government who said there was no foreign interference happening in our country? Is that surprising to you at all?

[Alexandra Chyczij]

I think there's a definitional question that we need to establish. What does foreign interference mean?

I know that at the foreign interference inquiry we are struggling to convey that interference doesn't mean busing voters to a nomination meeting. That's the most obvious form of interference. It also includes the kind of disinformation that has been prevalent in Canada for 60 or 70 years, and so I think it's understanding terminology that is important here.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

I noted in your testimony that you were talking about barriers within the government to taking effective action on foreign interference, including Russian interference. You were talking about people at Global Affairs who have a naive view. Could you elaborate on what their naive view is? What is the issue there?

[Alexandra Chyczij]

Well, I don't want to reveal my age, but I remember going to school in the eighties. The academics who taught history, whether it was Russian, eastern European or whatever, were all schooled in the Soviet school of academia. They all spent their summers in Moscow being wined and dined by the KGB, and they would come back and repeat, really, Soviet lines of thinking.

There is concern in the academic world that Slavic and eastern European studies have been colonized by the Russians, so we need to start with our educational institutions, start decolonizing them and focusing not on the Russian imperialist view of the world but on the other countries neighbouring Russia, namely Ukraine.

We have politicians, staff and advisers at Global Affairs who take a very benign view of Russia. When the full-scale invasion started, many of them were sitting there and saying, “Oh my God, the lion ate my face. What happened here?”

It's a question of restaffing with individuals who understand what Russia is today. The Helsinki Commission is recommending to the U.S. government and to other governments that they need a reset, and I'm not talking about the Obama reset. We need a complete rethinking of our approach to Russia and to identify it as a global security threat.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you for that. I can remember, in the weeks preceding Russia's second invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when Conservatives were calling for expedited shipments of essential military equipment for Ukraine...that Conservatives were accused of being warmongers. Do you think that, in trying to assist and prepare Ukraine in anticipation of an imminent invasion, being called “warmongers” is an example of how Russia has been able to infiltrate the thinking and debates in this country? Is that an example?

[Alexandra Chyczij]

It's not just in this country. I mean, Canada works with its allies. What President Zelenskyy experienced in Washington, and is experiencing, is a slowdown in the delivery of weapons. The current thinking is that the Americans and the allies are giving Ukraine enough not to lose, but certainly not enough to win. We are hopeful that, in the remaining days of the Biden administration, this will be rectified.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

We go now to Ms. Zahid. Ms. Zahid, go ahead for five minutes.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses for appearing before the committee today.

My first question is for Alexandra. To follow up further on my colleague MP O'Connell's question about the Danube Institute and its ties to the Kremlin and Russian propaganda, we know that four Conservative MPs—Stephen Ellis, Philip Lawrence, Rosemarie Falk and Shannon Stubbs—accepted a lavish sponsored trip, funded by the Danube Institute and Canadians for Affordable Energy, that included a $6,000 dinner bill, with $600 bottles of champagne. Should Canadians be concerned about trips like this and potential ties to Russian propaganda?

[Alexandra Chyczij]

I think any ties to any.... There are other conflicts in the world. There are other governments that attempt to wine and dine Canadian politicians, but it's not just restricted to politicians. We have the Valdai club. There are at least four or five tenured academics in our Canadian universities who regularly travel to Moscow at the invitation of Putin, are wined and dined by him and continue to teach in our universities.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

My next question is, do you think that Russia's disinformation, misinformation and influence campaign played a role in the Conservative Party's decision to vote against implementing Canada's free trade agreement with Ukraine, despite the request from President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government for the Canadian Parliament to do that?

[Alexandra Chyczij]

I think it was unfortunate that Canada could not demonstrate all-party support for the free trade agreement, but as to the influence, I'll ask Mr. Bezan to answer that question.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Mr. Chair, to suggest Russian interference, when the Russians call me a Nazi and they continually—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Excuse me.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

—dish me on their national television.... I think it's very rich to have that coming from the member.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Sir, you're not recognized on a point of order.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

It's my time, so I have a point of order.

Would you like to comment on that?

[Yuriy Novodvorskiy]

Yes, I agree that, for any organization that has ties to the Russian government in any capacity, those ties should be critically analyzed before government officials accept invitations from institutions like that.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

My next question is, what role do western social media platforms play in amplifying Russian-backed misinformation campaigns, and how are these platforms being used to create the divisions within these societies?

[Alexandra Chyczij]

Well, we heard about Tenet. That is, if you read the indictment and, of course, look at the platforms of these influencers, you will see exactly what they did. I referred to the themes and the narratives that they are promoting.

However, as I said, Facebook has now banned RT. That's not enough. I think there need to be better filters on social media to look at bots, bot farms. You said, “You post anything on Ukraine and you're flooded by, you know, artificial intelligence.” It is a phenomenon that we as a country have to deal with and address, because it's not just the “Ukraine question”: It's pervasive throughout all aspects of our society and political arena.