Public Safety Committee on Oct. 8th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 122 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format.

I would like to remind participants of the following points. Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. All comments should be addressed through the chair.

Members, please raise your hand if you wish to speak, whether participating in person or via Zoom. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on September 19, 2024, the committee is resuming its study of Russian interference and disinformation campaigns in Canada.

Ms. Damoff.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thanks, Chair. I have a question for the clerk, if that's okay, just before we start.

I understand that some of the witnesses have not been responding to your outreach. There were three witnesses named in our study to whom we had all unanimously agreed—Liam Donovan, Lauren Chen and Lauren Southern.

First of all, have you heard back from them at all?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Simon Larouche]

They were contacted twice and no answers were provided.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I'm wondering if the committee would be agreeable to having the clerk send a letter from committee members inviting them again, but this time having it come from the members of the committee—and, as we do have powers beyond just an invitation if we want folks to appear, just listing what our options are if they choose not to respond.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'll take that as a motion.

Do we have unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Very well.

Thank you.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I would now like to welcome our witnesses for the first hour. As an individual, we have Anton Shekhovtsov, visiting professor, Central European University, by video conference; and from Reset, Ben Scott, chief executive officer.

I now invite Mr. Shekhovtsov to make an opening statement of up to five minutes.

Please go ahead, sir.

[Anton Shekhovtsov, Visiting Professor, Central European University, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair and committee members, thank you for your kind invitation.

Technical difficulty—Editor] and members of Parliament, it is my long-time observation that Russia is waging a—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Excuse me, sir. You're breaking up on us here.

While we'd like to see you, maybe if you shut your video off that would give you more bandwidth for your speech.

Okay. Try again, please.

[Anton Shekhovtsov]

Is it better now, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

The sound is much better now. Thank you.

Go ahead. Start from the top, if you wish.

[Anton Shekhovtsov]

It is my long-term observation that Russia is waging political warfare against western nations. By “political warfare” I imply, not necessarily limited to the context of the Russian activities, a grey area in international relations where nations influence the behaviour and thinking of others using methods beyond legitimate instruments, such as diplomacy and soft power, yet don't escalate to open military conflict using regular armed forces. Russian political warfare against the west is nothing new, but it has escalated since 2022, when western nations decided to provide political, military and economic support to Ukraine in its defensive war against the full-scale Russian aggression. As a country in the world's top 10 donors to Ukraine, Canada is one of the targets of Russian political warfare.

In the context of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one prominent element of Russian political warfare against the west, including Canada, is information war in which Russia advances two types of narratives: strategic and tactical.

Strategic narratives reflect genuine, deep-seated beliefs of the Russian leadership linked to Ukraine or the broader context of the aggression. Strategic narratives demonstrate some internal logic and are generally coherent, although that does not imply that they are right or correct. Three major strategic narratives related to the Russian invasion and directed at the west, including Canada, are as follows: First, Russia is a global power that has a right to have its own sphere of influence, and Ukraine belongs there. Second, Ukraine, as part of the west, poses an existential threat to Russia. Third, NATO is using Ukraine to wage a war against Russia.

Tactical narratives serve as individual steps that aim to strengthen the validity of strategic narratives or respond to emerging themes and to current events and developments related to the Russian aggression. Unlike strategic narratives, however, tactical narratives are less coherent because they are extremely manipulative and usually appeal to emotions.

There are many dozens of tactical narratives produced by the Russian information warfare machine. I will highlight some of them that are especially relevant to Canada: Ukraine is run by Nazis. Russia defends Russian people from Ukrainian Nazis. Canada has an immense Nazi problem. All western sanctions are damaging for western businesses and households. Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world; it cannot be part of the west. Financial aid sent to Ukraine is being pocketed by corrupt Ukrainian leaders and officials. The west attacks Russia because of inherent western Russophobia, or hatred of Russians. Ukrainian nationalists heavily influence policy decisions of the Canadian authorities. western weapons given to Ukraine will end up with international terrorists or on the black market. Providing military aid to Ukraine does not help Ukraine win the war; it only extends the suffering of Ukrainians. The west should not oppose Russia because it can eventually use nuclear weapons.

Russian pro-regime stakeholders use a wide range of instruments in their attempt to deliver both strategic and tactical narratives to targeted audiences. I'll identify four major types of these instruments. The first type is official Russian channels: statements by the Russian president and his presidential administration, and statements by Russian ministries, especially the foreign ministry and the defence ministry. The second instrument is Russian state-controlled media, especially those producing contents in the English language. The third is social network accounts openly or secretly run by Russian pro-regime stakeholders. The fourth is western-based agents of malign Russian influence, be they academics, experts, journalists, celebrities, producers, politicians, businesses or religious organizations—namely, entities in western countries created and/or used by Russian pro-regime stakeholders to conceal the pro-Russian agenda of the people behind them.

While the main objective of the Russian information warfare, which relies on a variety of instruments listed above, is to reduced western support for Ukraine's defensive efforts, Russian pro-regime stakeholders appear to rely on a three-tier approach in evaluating the efficiency of their information operations.

The first one is delivery. One-third of the success of a particular information operation is the successful delivery of a strategic or tactical narrative to a targeted audience. If the targeted audience consumes that narrative, that is one-third of success.

The second tier is legitimacy. Two-thirds of success is when a malign narrative is not only consumed by a target audience but also becomes a legitimate point of view in western mainstream discussions—for example, in the media or in Parliament.

Third is acceptance. A complete success of a malign influence operation is achieved when a viewpoint rooted in a malign narrative produced by Russian stakeholders is not only seen as legitimate but is also accepted as the only correct perspective. [Technical difficulty—Editor]

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Sir, you're breaking up again.

[Anton Shekhovtsov]

I will stop here, and I will be happy to answer questions.

Thank you.

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

On a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

The latter part of your speech was a little choppy.

Ms. Michaud, you have the floor.

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

The interpreter pointed out on several occasions that the sound was cutting in and out and that it was difficult for her, in these conditions, to translate what was being said. We were able to hear most of the interpretation, but if the problem continues during the question and answer period, it may be to our disadvantage.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

We'll have to see how things progress, but we can ask for his opening statement to be translated and distributed to the members as well, if that's okay.

We'll go now to Mr. Scott to make an opening statement of up to five minutes.

Please go ahead, sir.

[Dr. Ben Scott, Chief Executive Officer, Reset Tech]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It's a pleasure to be back before the Canadian Parliament. I spent several years living in Canada and have a great deal of respect for the work you do.

I am the CEO of Reset Tech. We're a global non-profit that works to support research, policy development and public attention focused on fighting digital threats to democracy, including the kinds of Russian information operations targeting democratic states that we're here to talk about today.

I have done quite a bit of work with my team in looking at the case of Tenet Media, which has sparked this hearing, so I want to talk a bit about what Tenet Media looks like.

I think all members of the committee are likely familiar with the details of this case, but just to recap, this was revealed in a sweeping indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice back in September, just over a month ago. It indicated that a company based in Tennessee but, importantly, is a subsidiary of a Montreal-based company run by two Canadians—Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan—was paid $10 million by the Russians to subsidize the production of video and social media content that was distributed over all of the major social media platforms. This was done by the two of them, as well as a set of six other influencers, including Lauren Southern, who is another prominent Canadian social media influencer.

It's notable that a lot of the media attention has described this activity as being focused on the U.S. market, but it's really important to note how much of the content had a Canadian focus, and how many Russian information operations we have observed over the years have not distinguished much between an American audience and a Canadian audience. Russian tactics, as the professor's comments clearly illustrate, are intended to divide and to destabilize with disinforming and conspiratorial narratives, and that's certainly true as for Canada as it is for the U.S.

I want to highlight here for you in my opening remarks some of the evidence we have uncovered in our forensic work to look at what Tenet Media did with its $10 million in Russian funding.

First, all of these accounts that Tenet was subsidizing across all social media platforms had a total subscriber base of about 16 million, which is quite large. What does that mean in terms of total audience? Over the course of the last year, we were able to see Tenet media channels on Twitter alone get 20 billion impressions. I'll repeat that. They had 20 billion impressions on Twitter alone over the course of the last year. Add to that an additional 1.1 billion video views across YouTube, TikTok and Rumble, and the creation of a podcast, The Rubin Report, which is consistently ranked in the top 0.01% of podcasts in the world.

This is a very successful social media influencer campaign that has a variety of important features, not least of which is something the researcher community has called “the Elon effect”. This essentially means tweeting at Elon Musk, who has a giant social media presence on X, formerly Twitter, to try to get him to retweet or amplify posts. He amplified Tenet Media posts 70 times over the course of the last year, dramatically increasing the audience for this content.

What does this mean? How is this relevant for us in evaluating the threat level posed by the Kremlin in information operations?

I think we need to be very concerned. The Kremlin is innovating. It used to buy Facebook ads. It used to do little bits and pieces of influence campaigns. I'm happy to talk about some of the others that we've seen over the years in the question and answer part of this hearing, but for now, I think it's important to note that $10 million for 20 billion impressions is extraordinary value for money. It means we can fully expect to see more attacks of this kind if we don't already have them in the marketplace today.

This one was discovered only because of FBI signals intelligence intercepts on the Russians, who were supplying the funding to Tenet Media. It's very difficult to detect. It's important to call out the fact that the Silicon Valley companies that run these platforms, with all of their money and talent, do not seem to have any kind of defences in place to protect against this kind of dark money payola that's using social media channels to secretly influence public opinion in both Canada and the United States.

It's an urgent issue. It is critical that this inquiry is happening and that Canadian forces in law enforcement and national security pay close attention and develop defensive measures.

Thank you very much for your time. I look forward to the questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you both very much.

We'll go, now, to our questions.

We'll start with Ms. Dancho for six minutes.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Lloyd is going to take my time.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank both witnesses. My wrist is hurting from all the notes I took during your testimony. It's been very interesting.

Mr. Shekhovtsov, in supporting Ukraine in this fight, how important is it to present a united front among countries?

[Anton Shekhovtsov]

Mr. Chair, Ukraine is heavily dependent on external support for its defensive war. What is more important is the unity that western nations have exhibited since the very beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, although there are some problematic cases in some member states of the European Union. Ukraine also heavily relies on American and Canadian support. In this case, consensus and solidarity among western nations with respect to Ukraine are crucial. This is existential for Ukraine's fight for its independence and sovereignty today.

Of course, Russia and the malign Russian actors related to the Kremlin or Russian authorities understand how important this consensus and solidarity are. They are trying all they can to ruin this solidarity, to create divisions and polarization, and to undermine that solidarity and support for Ukraine; hence, the information attacks.