Evidence of meeting #121 for Public Safety and National Security in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was russia.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Glen Motz Conservative Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB
That's fair enough. I appreciate your limited candour on that issue, Mr. Kolga.
Mr. Shull, you made a comment about digital literacy and how Canada needs to step up with digital literacy for its citizenry.
What prevents this digital literacy? What barriers exist currently in this country with government or legislation...to give this the priority it needs?
Managing Director and General Counsel, Centre for International Governance Innovation
It's probably two or three things.
Number one is a lack of political will and leadership. It's hard to do.
The second barrier is section 91 and section 92 of the Constitution Act, which I won't bore people to death with. The point is, once you get into this interjurisdictional ball of yarn, it gets trickier and trickier.
Then add school boards to that, so there are a lot of players that need to be coordinated. That makes it harder, but just because it's hard doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't do it. It's about equipping our kids with the skills they need: logic, reasoning, comprehension and analytical ability. Those skills will help here, for sure, but they will help in life generally. We should be teaching them that stuff anyway.
Liberal
October 1st, 2024 / 12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Heath MacDonald Liberal Malpeque, PE
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here today and for the resilience you've shown, especially Mr. Kolga with all that you've faced.
Obviously, fighting the interference is key to maintaining a nation's sovereignty and democratic values.
Can each of you, relatively quickly, give this committee three points on what and how we could improve the outcome of this study to ensure we're on the right page? We talked about a lot of different things, and there are a lot of different witnesses here today, so some of it is repetitious.
To prioritize three items we could focus on in our study, could each of you give me a very quick synopsis?
Managing Director and General Counsel, Centre for International Governance Innovation
Marcus, why don't I shoot first on this one?
Number one, I talked about a national strategy for digital literacy. This will require political leadership. It is one of the most non-partisan issues I could ever imagine—making sure the next generation is equipped for this. Lean into that, because we have a problem. The digital citizen contribution program I mentioned was good. It's just a dosage problem. It didn't do enough. It didn't go far enough, and it was one government department at one level of government doing interesting things. We need to spread it around and make it a national priority.
Number two—I already tipped my hand on this—is looking at the RCMP and making sure they're equipped for the 21st century and have the tools and capabilities they need—whether or not the institution is fit for purpose, both on counter-intelligence and on combatting state adversaries. What Marcus said shouldn't be allowed to happen. We need to know who's running point in this country. If we can't do that, and if we get to where everyone's pointing at somebody else, we have a serious problem that needs to be remedied.
Number three is this: Do it fast and do it with seriousness and purpose, because this is all going to get way worse. You just need to look at the trend lines on AI. This is set to get supercharged like you wouldn't believe, so my third point is this: See points one and two, and do them with purpose.
Senior Fellow, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, As an Individual
Yes. Listen to what Aaron suggested, and do that. That's the first point.
Second, I'll go back to the influencers. We need to be working with our allies and figuring out a way to expose them. This is the best way to protect us and our democracy against these sorts of operations. Exposing influencers using our existing legislation, and working with journalists and our allies to do that—that's very important.
We need to ban all Russian state media. We took some leadership back in 2022, by banning RT from our satellite and cable systems. We need to follow Europe's example and completely ban RT, Sputnik and all of these Russian state media outlets from the Internet and our airwaves.
I would also say media literacy—following Finland's example, working with the provinces to make sure our school curriculum in all provinces, from kindergarten to grade 12, includes digital media literacy. This doesn't mean just one course or one hour per year. This means baking it into every single course so that our children, our future generations, become resilient against these sorts of information operations and disinformation.
As Aaron said, this is only going to get supercharged. We've seen Russia already use AI to start producing content. They are producing content at a rapid rate in various different languages across Africa and South America. They are winning the disinformation game in those territories, thanks to AI. We need to be prepared for that.
Liberal
Heath MacDonald Liberal Malpeque, PE
Thank you for those comments.
One you've left out—and I think I'll just touch on it briefly—is that around this table, we need to work together. This is a turning point for Canada. It's a scary situation that we find ourselves in. You talk about our future. You're talking about our children. I think it's extremely important that partisan politics, not only around this committee table but also in the House of Commons.... When we do come to votes, we've seen what we can do with Bill C-70, and I will get to that in a second. I think the more pressure that people like you put on politicians of all stripes is certainly important as well.
In saying that, apply Bill C-70 to this case—the foreign interference. How could Bill C-70 help in this type of situation that we find ourselves in?
Managing Director and General Counsel, Centre for International Governance Innovation
I'll say quickly that it's a triple bottom line.
Number one, CSIS's data provisions have been cleaned up a little, so they're going to be better as a consequence.
Number two, they're going to be able to share information with people who have been targeted by this type of activity, in a manner that they would have been unable to do.
Number three, should someone fall within the parameters of the agent registry, they can basically get nicked for that. In some ways, it's like Al Capone, right? They didn't get Al Capone on murder. They got him on money laundering. Failing to register, in and of itself, is now a crime.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. MacDonald.
Go ahead Mr. Kolga. You may quickly answer.
Senior Fellow, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, As an Individual
I agree with all of that.
Going back to the point of taking a non-partisan and all-party approach, I completely agree with this. This is not a partisan issue. I've long advocated for the creation of a task force within Parliament, an all-party group that meets on a regular basis to receive briefings about dominant and emerging disinformation narratives, so that all parties are aware of what they are. They can report back to their own caucuses, so that their own members don't fall prey to them.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you.
Mr. Fortin, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll be brief.
Mr. Kolga, Mr. Shull, you are basically saying the same thing. You conclude that we have to work with our allies, determine who they are and support genuine journalists. We need to ban fake media, if I can put it that way, or influencers, from social networks. There are a lot of suggestions like that.
I think it is important to provide training in schools. However, we have a problem here because training and education are a provincial responsibility, not a federal one. That's a hurdle to be overcome. There would be administrative hoops to jump through, but nothing insurmountable.
Something has been bothering me for a while. I would like to put a question to Mr. Shull, who works as general counsel.
How can we do all of this effectively while protecting freedom of expression, which is an important pillar of our society? In my opinion, there's a problem there, or at least a hurdle.
Maybe we'll start with Mr. Kolga and then go to Mr. Shull.
Senior Fellow, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, As an Individual
It's that freedom of speech that our foreign adversary has exploited.
I would argue that platforms like RT and Sputnik, and Global Times in China, don't enjoy that right to freedom of speech in this country. What they are doing is weaponizing information to try to undermine and destabilize our democracy.
In terms of banning Russian state media from our airwaves, I have no concern about freedom of expression. Canadians can express themselves freely on social media. In the media itself, anyone can write to their editor or write an opinion piece. No one is suggesting a ban on that. What we are suggesting is to clean our information space of these foreign adversaries and the weaponization of information they engage in.
Bloc
Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
When we decide who we want to exclude, will we not be slapping a muzzle on certain individuals or organizations? Aren't we going to fall into that trap?
Senior Fellow, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, As an Individual
It's not a question of muzzling. Freedom of expression does not mean freedom from scrutiny—
Bloc
Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
I'm sorry to interrupt, but I wasn't talking about Muslims.
You may continue, but I wanted to clarify that I didn't use the word “Muslim”.
Senior Fellow, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, As an Individual
The word I used was “muzzling”, as in silencing.
Liberal
Senior Fellow, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, As an Individual
No one is suggesting silencing anyone or preventing anyone from speaking. Freedom of expression does not mean freedom from scrutiny. Exposing those individuals who are appearing willingly on Russian, Iranian or Chinese state media channels is not an effort to silence them. It is just bringing out this very important fact in terms of Canadians understanding who they're hearing and what subjects they're hearing about, and building awareness of these sorts of operations.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, sir.
We'll go now to Mr. MacGregor for two and a half minutes.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Shull, I want to give you an opportunity to flesh out this idea around your digital resilience strategy. Many members of Parliament, through private members' bills, have come up with the legislative parameters for differing national strategies. Usually that legislation or that bill spells out what the components of the strategy have to be. The benefit of that is that it can prevent policy lurch, because if you have it enacted in law, then no matter what stripe of government is at the helm in Ottawa, they have to follow that law and continue with it.
Do you have a preference? Would you like to see this as a role that the House of Commons takes upon itself, to enact legislation that puts in the guidelines for this kind of a strategy, or are you satisfied that the federal government could do this as a policy initiative on its own through its relationships with provincial premiers and territorial leaders?
Managing Director and General Counsel, Centre for International Governance Innovation
Yes, please, to all of the above.
If you were to take it on yourselves to legislate, that would be the highest and best signal. We live in a system of parliamentary supremacy for a reason, and should that be the case, I would be your number one fan.
Also, it would require that we have an FPT table on this, which should be at the leaders' level. In my mind, there's probably no more important topic than keeping Canadians safe. The bad guys are here, and they're trying to poison our information society to make it harder for us to live in a democracy. To the extent that we should be doing everything we possibly can to do that, it starts with that leadership.