Public Safety Committee on Oct. 10th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

We'll owe you 10 seconds. Thank you.

We're going to Ms. O'Connell now for four minutes, please.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here.

Mr. Zivo, I'm going to start with you. I'm not sure if you were able to hear it, but in our last panel, we had representatives from Meta speak about the fact that.... My colleague here, Mr. MacDonald, gave an example where Canadian media content could not be shared on Facebook, but Tenet Media articles could be shared.

The reason I'm asking you this is that you mentioned that you wrote an article for the National Post and others. You are a journalist who is not paid by Russia. Because Facebook doesn't want to pay for work like yours, they're okay to keep up content—Russian propaganda—that is free and paid for by Russia.

How can the Canadian public and the public at large discern between what is misinformation and what is truth when Canadian journalists are not able to be paid by platforms for their work, but platforms are okay making profits from work that is being done and paid for by Russia?

[Adam Zivojinovic]

What I would say is that if Canadians are unable to access mainstream news sources on popular social media networks like Facebook or Instagram, that certainly predisposes them to consuming alternative sources, which may be less trustworthy, may have lower editorial standards and may have opaque financing. I think that is a concern. At the same time, I don't think it's the only factor at play, but I do think it is one that is often underappreciated, so I would agree with your analysis here.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you.

Russian propaganda being free for Facebook to promote but Canadian journalism costing them too much should be of grave concern for all Canadians, I think.

[Adam Zivojinovic]

Well, I agree.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Seaboyer, one of the other areas of concern.... You mentioned some recommendations. In Canada, with the passage of and royal assent on Bill C-70, we were able to create a foreign agent registry.

Certainly, one of the things that came out of the U.S. indictment that actually initiated platforms to act was their Foreign Agents Registration Act. As our registry rolls out, could you speak to some of the sanctions models that you would like to see to punish those who break those rules?

[Anthony Seaboyer]

I recommend looking closely at what the EU just introduced yesterday, which is much more targeted and which enables preventing individuals who have been found guilty of supporting Russian influence operations from entering the country, seizing their financial resources and preventing them from flying through the country. It's much more strict, and I think we should co-operate.

This is a problem that does not affect just any one country. We should co-operate as closely as we can with our NATO allies and with partners in the European Union. To do that, we need to be able to have, within the government, capabilities and resources allocated to this, to take it to a level where we can actually co-operate with them. Right now, in NATO, we're at the level, unfortunately, where we not only can't co-operate on the same level, but we're not even interoperable with other major NATO partners, which is a huge problem in the information space.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you.

This isn't just a Canadian problem. This is an attack on western democracies. Is that fair to say?

You mentioned NATO. Is there a broader coordination that you're seeing in terms of dealing with the fact that, again, it's not targeting just Canada, but it's to undermine democracies around the world?

[Anthony Seaboyer]

Absolutely. As I said, any democracy is a threat to authoritarian regimes, because it's a model. It shows how well it functions. There is freedom of speech, and people are not arrested for posting stuff online, like in China, for example. We're a model, basically, and the citizens in those authoritarian regimes think, “Why can't we live that way?” That puts pressure on their systems. One way they're dealing with this is throwing as much dirt at western democracies as they can. They do this with disinformation and misinformation.

Yes, more and more, there are efforts within NATO—and also coordination with the EU—where countries are working together, sharing information on attacks and also sharing lessons learned on how to prevent or better defend against these attacks, but these are really all at early stages, where we are right now.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Ms. O'Connell.

Mr. Fortin, you now have the floor for four minutes.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks as well to the witnesses for being here with us.

Mr. Seaboyer, in your presentation, you discussed five recommendations that you had for us. Could you please forward them to us in writing?

[Anthony Seaboyer]

That's already been done.

I gave that to the clerk, including a lot more additional points on that, because I didn't have time enough to mention them.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you.

I'd like to ask you something else. I hear everything you say. We had a witness panel before you, and there were others before that. I wasn't here, but my colleague was.

In 2019, you published a research report on the impact of information generated by special Russian missions and Russian intelligence agencies. Your report concluded with a review of tactics, techniques and procedures used and potential countermeasures.

I'd like you to tell us about those countermeasures. What do you think Canada could do? What countermeasures could we establish to thwart the plans and impact of those types of Russian interference in Canada?

[Anthony Seaboyer]

Thank you for that question.

There's a lot that can be done.

First of all, the very first thing I'm going to say, as an academic, is that we need to have an understanding of how this actually works and a proper understanding of the threat that comes from this. There's still this prevalent thinking that if it doesn't explode, if there's no direct, visible blood, it's not dangerous, and that leads to resource allocations. Other security threats—and we have lots of other security threats as well—are prioritized over this, but I believe that, long-term, this is a very serious threat. The first point is to raise understanding in the population and to include leadership. We've made progress there, but it's still not anywhere close to where we need it to be.

The second approach is.... There are two sides. My recommendation is hardening the target. Hardening the target is always, long-term, the best strategy. That is about making people media-literate, enabling people to better understand the difference between legitimate information and mis- and disinformation. There are promising models. We see what states like Finland, Sweden and Denmark are doing. They are very effective at this. We can take from their programs. That's one point.

The other one I mentioned is on the government side. You'll see my recommendations. We need, on the military side, to have updated policy that clearly states what the CAF can do in the space and what it can't do, and gives clear guidelines on what can be done. I also recommend more effective sanctions and implementing the current law we have—for example, going after companies that are enabling the circumventing of the sanctions for accessing Russian media in Canada.

These are some recommendations: hardening the target, on the one hand, but also understanding the threat better and providing resource and training for security services to be more effective in this space.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Seaboyer.

Earlier this week, Mr. Oksanen appeared before the committee and told us, in response to questions from my colleague Ms. Michaud, that the Russians do things differently from country to country depending on context. From what I understand, the Russian mission in Canada is to undermine Canada's support in Ukraine.

In a few seconds, since I have almost no time left, please explain what encourages Russia to use that method here, and why do its methods differ from country to country?

[Anthony Seaboyer]

Well, this is one of the goals they have: to undermine popular support for the support of Ukraine, particularly the financial support we're giving and the potential weapons support. That's one of the goals.

I want to emphasize that Russian disinformation campaigns are not electoral cycle-bound. They're not focused on one issue. Over the long term, they're generally trying to change the world views of people, citizens and democracies and make democracy appear less attractive and less well-functioning than it is.

Yes, in individual campaigns, their effort, their clear goal right now—probably their major goal—is to undermine support for Ukraine so that the Canadian government does not continue to support Ukraine as it has.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Fortin and Mr. Seaboyer.

We'll go now to Mr. MacGregor for four minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both witnesses for joining us today.

Professor Seaboyer, I'll start with you. I appreciated your opening statement when you were outlining the threats that exist against Canada, particularly how the Kremlin uses that information overload strategy to find those fissures in Canadian society and blow them apart. Eventually, we end up with an apathetic populace that seems to doubt the institutions that we all once had a great deal of trust in. Certainly, as members of Parliament, we see that effect almost on a daily basis in our dealings with constituents.

One of the interesting things about this study is that we've had the chance to interview witnesses who reside in eastern Europe and for whom Russia has always been an existential threat—we're not talking over the last decades, but for centuries. In particular, for Sweden, I've been really interested in how there is the existence of a Swedish Psychological Defence Agency.

We've also had some witnesses talk about how Canada needs to enact a digital resilience strategy and really equip our citizens with the proper tools to detect these misinformation and disinformation attempts, while still allowing—and this is the challenge, of course—a free exchange of ideas.

Do you have any thoughts on that Swedish model? Do you think it might be something that Canada has to one day employ as a stand-alone agency? Is that something you can offer some comment on?

[Anthony Seaboyer]

Yes, long-term, I think that's definitely a step we need. We need a much more coordinated, better-resourced and better-trained central organization that engages in that. I think the Swedish model is great.

Yes, there are challenges with this. We want, on the one hand, to keep free speech, but a clear line we can draw is that Canadians in Canada can have free speech, but foreign intelligence organizations have no right to any speech on Canadian soil. If we look at what they're doing through RT and other organizations, that's a clear line we can draw, and that is the major threat we're facing, particularly from China, Russia and Iran at this point.

Yes, we need a centralized, coordinated organization, with lots of oversight and accountability, of course, as it is our culture in Canada to have in our public institutions, so it would match that, but yes, we need that. I agree with that.

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

Thanks.

Mr. Zivojinovic, I'll turn to you.

I think one of the challenges today is that so much of our public discourse is happening on social media platforms that are owned by a handful of billionaires, and their primary motive is to make more money for themselves. Not everyone's voice is equal on social media. It's not like all of us gathering in a town square. We know that some voices are amplified over others and that algorithms push people down certain rabbit holes. For many people, it's still a mystery how that all happens.

I think this is a similar question and, really, the theme of the challenge before us: How does the Canadian government approach this problem without there being a perception of it censoring the Canadian public? How do we put in those tools to defend our democracy so that we can still have a free exchange of ideas, but without the corrupting influence of a foreign government that is seeking to undermine us?

[Adam Zivojinovic]

If you're talking about some voices being privileged over others in social media, I think that X, formerly Twitter, is a great example of that. After Elon Musk purchased Twitter, many Ukrainian influencers reported that they saw a significant decrease in their reach and the impression of their posts. For months, they wondered whether this was just something they were imagining, and then it seemed as if the algorithm was revealed to actually penalize posts that mentioned Ukraine. However, it's been a while since I wrote an article about this, so I've forgotten some of the specific examples here. However, we do know, for example, that Musk did, at one point, boost his own posts over others, and we do know that at this point there is almost no real accountability at X, so it's conceivable that in the future Ukrainian content could be politically marginalized.

Now, on what the solution is, that's a very complicated question, and one that I am not qualified to answer, but intuitively I would trend towards ensuring that social media companies have a kind of widely distributed ownership between a large number of shareholders. If you have private ownership and power is concentrated with one individual or one family, then there is a complete lack of accountability, versus when you are accountable to a large number of shareholders and there is less opportunity for abuse.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

We will start our second round with Ms. Dancho, please.

You have three minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here. I appreciate your excellent testimony. It certainly is clear that Canada faces very serious public safety and national security threats as a result of foreign interference.

Mr. Chair, as a result of that, I'd like to give verbal notice of the following motion:

Given that:

Samidoun is a proxy for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a listed terrorist organization in Canada since 2003, to raise funds to finance PFLP's violent attacks on Jewish people;

On the first-year anniversary of the horrific October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, Samidoun hosted a protest in Vancouver in which a speaker told the crowd, “We are Hezbollah, and we are Hamas,” and chanted “Death to Canada! Death to the United States! And death to Israel!”;

Samidoun openly supports Hezbollah and Hamas, which are both listed terrorist organizations in Canada;

Samidoun is banned in Germany, with the German government saying they serve as an “international network which disseminates anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda” and “supported and glorified various foreign terrorist organizations, including Hamas”;

Samidoun's leadership was deported from Germany in 2019 and denied entry to the European Union in 2022;

Samidoun demonstrations promote Jew hatred and pro-terrorism messages that encourage anti-Semitic threats and violence in Canada.

And given that:

Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, is a Yemen-based terror proxy of Iran that, since the October 7 terror attacks, has disregarded international law by launching attacks on innocent civilians and merchant vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden;

That our closest allies, the United States, Australia, and Israel, have already designated the Houthis as a terrorist group;

Canada has provided logistical support to the armed forces of the U.S. and the U.K. that have conducted air strikes against the Houthis.

The committee report to the House that it recognizes that Samidoun and the Houthis are a threat to public safety and recommends that they both be listed as terrorist entities under section 83.05 of the Anti-terrorism Act.

In fact, Chair, I would like to seek unanimous consent from all parties to adopt this motion now, at this meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

You said that it was a notice, but now you want unanimous consent.