Evidence of meeting #123 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 russian.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, are we going to be permitted to debate this? It's been going on for a while so I want to make sure we can respond.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
I would like to invite these three witnesses back for another hour so we have more time with them. That's what I was suggesting.
With the agreement of the committee, the clerk would invite these three witnesses back for an hour.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Do we have the agreement of the committee?
Ms. Dancho, go ahead, briefly, please.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
I suggest we discuss it in the subcommittee, because there are a lot of different witnesses we can bring back.
I'm happy to discuss it in subcommittee, or openly, but with its own time.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
I'm taking it that Ms. Damoff has moved a motion.
Is the committee in agreement with this motion?
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, if she hasn't given adequate notice for the motion, she'd need UC, wouldn't she, to move it?
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
The motion is to invite these witnesses back for another hour.
Does the committee wish to support the motion?
(Motion agreed to)
We will invite the witnesses back.
We thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your testimony. Obviously we want you back, so the clerk will be in touch when we figure out a time for that. Thank you all for your valuable contributions to this study.
With that, we are suspended.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
I call this meeting back to order.
I would like to welcome our witnesses for the second hour. As individuals, we have Mr. Anthony Seaboyer, assistant professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, and Adam Zivojinovic, who is a journalist.
Thank you, gentlemen, for being here.
I would now invite Mr. Seaboyer to make a statement of up to five minutes.
Anthony Seaboyer Assistant Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. It is reassuring to see how seriously the public safety and national security committee is taking the threat that Russian disinformation and influence operations are posing to Canada and Canadians and to our democracy and society.
The points I am making today are my own and do not represent the position of any organization.
My research focuses on the weaponization of information by authoritarian regimes. I research how Russia, China and Iran target democracies with hybrid grey-zone warfare and disinformation to undermine rules-based democratic countries like Canada. I look specifically at how AI-enabled applications are affecting information attacks on democracies and what we can do to defend democracies against information attacks and other attempts to influence and undermine our societies.
Today I will focus specifically on what the Kremlin is doing when it's targeting Canada, why and how it's targeting Canada, and what I recommend we can do about this.
What is Russia doing? Russia is deliberately and systematically targeting Canada and its allies 24-7 in—
Bloc
Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
I'll have to interrupt you because I don't have any interpretation.
Assistant Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
What is Russia doing when it's targeting Canada? Russia deliberately and systematically targets Canada's allies, 24-7, in the information space. The Kremlin sees itself as being at war with the west and believes that, as in a zero-sum game, the worst off the west is, the better off the Kremlin is.
It is important to note that this is not the position of all Russians, of course. It is the position of the governing elites and those who benefit from Putin's corrupt regime.
The Kremlin seeks to leverage and exaggerate societal fault lines and to disrupt our political system and societies as part of a strategy called Russian reflexive control, aiming at changing long-term world views and mindsets of citizens. The goal is to effect behavioural change in western countries toward Putin's personal goals.
All Canadian residents are targeted by Russian disinformation and influence operations, not just selected politicians. The targeting of Canadians and Canadian interests happens not only at home but also globally, and it is also aimed at generating an effect or impact on Canada beyond our borders.
Some Russian influence activities are designed to provoke a response, which can then be leveraged by the Kremlin to harm Canadian interests abroad. They are part of the following larger, hybrid threat that Russia is targeting the west with in general: to undermine electoral processes and the function of democratic institutions; threats against and sabotage of economic activities, services of public interest and critical infrastructure; the use of coordinated disinformation, foreign information manipulation and interference to radicalize and disenfranchise citizens; and cyber-attacks. This is a whole bouquet of which disinformation and foreign influence are a part.
Why is Russia influencing the west? For the Kremlin, like other authoritarian, undemocratic regimes such as China, the sheer existence of democracies is a threat to their regime survival. Countries like Canada show every day that the repression, violence, censorship and corruption we see in authoritarian, undemocratic regimes are not only unnecessary but harmful, and fundamentally not in the interest of citizens.
The prevention of the free flow of information and competition of ideas, violence and corruption, and the repression of dissent lead to societies that cannot compete with rule-of-law-based democracies like Canada. Neither in terms of living conditions, economic development, political stability or general happiness of the population can the system compete with us. Therefore, the way we live and how much we thrive directly challenges and threatens authoritarian systems, as this shows citizens living under authoritarian regimes how much better we live in democracies.
How is Russia influencing the west? Russian influence operations aim at eradicating organic political will formation—the actual will of the people. This is achieved through increasing the cognitive load of target audiences to the point where they turn away from the political processes. Russia achieves this cognitive overload with information in the following way. First, they flood the information space with targeted disinformation campaigns and with misinformation that additionally creates noise and confusion. This leads to a so-called information overload. At scale, which is enabled through AI applications, they create information suffocation. Citizens are then overwhelmed by information and find it so difficult to find out what is actually happening that they turn away from news sources, leading to what we call “information apathy”. Over time, this results in a “deer in the headlights” effect—an information paralysis. Target audiences are so overwhelmed that they stop participating in the political process. This leads to the end goal of authoritarian regimes exploiting information, which is the feeling of loss of agency by citizens.
In the end, this eradicates civil society and prevents organic political will formation because citizens feel they cannot participate, cannot find out what's going on and have no agency. AI-enabled applications make this much easier to achieve and faster than what was possible in the past. You see in the notes I have for you—I'm not going to read all of this—how this is actually done with AI, and how this changes what Russia can do.
In the interest of time, I'm going to go to my recommendations. I have five.
First, what I believe we need to do is consider an information policy revision across the board in the Canadian government. Where are we vulnerable to information attacks? This should be updated with what's possible with AI today.
Second, adapt a sanctions framework, similar to what the EU just introduced yesterday. That enables a much more effective targeting of individuals who support Russian influence operations.
Third, approve an updated DND information operation policy, replacing that of 2018, which clearly does not match the security situation we have right now.
Fourth, focus more on the role of influencers in Russian influence campaigns.
Finally, hold Canadian companies accountable that are helping us get around the sanctions that have been put in place to access Russian media.
I will leave it at that. You will see more in my notes.
I am looking forward to your questions.
Journalist, As an Individual
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for the privilege and opportunity to testify before you today.
I've spent the past two and a half years living part time in Ukraine. I have written, as a freelance journalist, almost 100 articles about the country. Through my work, I've tried to dispel some of Russia's disinformation narratives, mostly by working with Ukraine's LGBTQ, Jewish and racialized communities.
Reporting the truth in this context can feel Sisyphean. Russia's propaganda machine is formidable and well funded. As we saw with the recent Tenet Media scandal, influential commentators are sometimes paid to disseminate poisonous falsehoods. We also know that many people happily share Moscow's narratives for free, because they have been seduced by propaganda that has been carefully tailored to flatter their ideological world views. It is difficult to distinguish these useful idiots, who genuinely believe what they say, from paid or unpaid actors who work under the direct or indirect orders of the Russian government.
Dimitri Lascaris, an eco-socialist activist who is popular among Canada's fringe left, is a seminal example. Since Russia's full-scale invasion began, Lascaris has promoted Moscow's propaganda narratives with aggressive obsession. In the spring of 2023, he visited Russia, met with foreign ministry officials and sycophantically whitewashed Putin's regime and war crimes. He has also made repeated appearances on RT, a sanctioned Kremlin-owned media outlet that Global Affairs Canada has identified as an arm of Russia's intelligence apparatus. He has done this despite recognizing, in his own writing, that RT is propagandistic.
Lascaris's Potemkin adventures, which he says were fully self-funded, were widely criticized, including in an article I wrote for the National Post and, more importantly, in an essay written by Alexey Kovalev, a prominent Russian dissident journalist who now lives in exile. Yet it remains unclear whether Lascaris is an agent of foreign influence or just a zealot. It is also unclear to what degree he is receiving assistance from the Russians, whether wittingly or not.
As a simple journalist, I lack the capacity to make these determinations. The media may play a vital role in reporting on disinformation, national security and foreign affairs, but our resources are limited. It is up to Canada's state institutions, with their formidable investigative powers, to review ambiguous cases and build legal frameworks that define, identify and punish unacceptable collaboration with hostile foreign governments.
I want to emphasize that this is not a partisan issue. While Lascaris exemplifies the failures of the far left, the far right has been just as toxic. In early 2023, for example, there appeared to be a coordinated campaign among MAGA Twitter influencers to portray the war in Ukraine as a hoax and to assert that no footage of it exists. Their claims were so exasperatingly absurd that they seemed impossible to respond to. How do you argue with someone who insists that the sky is red, not blue?
I cannot offer much insight into the specifics of Russia's propaganda operations, nor the tools available to thwart them, as that is beyond my expertise. What I can provide, however, is a sense of how this propaganda plays out on social media, along with analysis of the knowledge gaps that have allowed disinformation to proliferate.
Insofar as recommendations go, I advise that Canada proactively protect its information environment by funding public and media education initiatives. It is not enough to shut off a sewage leak. Some environmental remediation is needed. One way this could be done is by amplifying minority voices within Ukraine, particularly LGBTQ Ukrainians, who could dispel myths circulating in ultra-progressive circles, and Jewish Ukrainians, who could engage with conservative audiences.
I also believe that first-hand experience is a powerful, if imperfect, antidote to disinformation. Many of the journalists I met while in Ukraine said that they were surprised when they first visited the country. It seemed that, beforehand, their perceptions had been coloured by outdated, negative stereotypes about eastern Europe. Upon seeing Ukraine in real life, it was apparent to them that Russia's narratives, predominantly regarding neo-Nazism and the so-called persecution of Russian speakers, were ridiculous.
To that end, I would recommend funding opportunities for media figures and thought leaders to visit Ukraine, so long as this is done in a careful manner that does not undermine the independence of the Canadian media.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, sir.
We'll start our questions. We'll be abbreviating the question slots to four minutes.
Mr. Shipley, you have four minutes, please.
Conservative
Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to both witnesses for being here today.
First of all, Mr. Zivo, I need to apologize. I passed you in the hallway and didn't realize who you were, so I walked right by you. I apologize for that.
My first question is for you, sir. You mentioned Dimitri Lascaris in your opening remarks. I just want to make clear who this person is and what you did in this case. Dimitri Lascaris is a left-wing Canadian influencer with tens of thousands of Twitter and YouTube followers. He also ran as leadership candidate for the Green Party in 2020 and narrowly lost, winning over 40% of the vote. Last year, you exposed his role in endorsing Kremlin propaganda and exposed the proliferation of Russian information operations against left-wing influencers in Canada.
Can you speak about your work and why the far left is a target for the Kremlin interference operations?
Journalist, As an Individual
I think there's been a problem for decades, where some individuals on the far left endorse a brain-dead version of anti-imperialism, in which anything that is considered anti-western is good. We saw, in the 1970s, people apologizing for the Khmer Rouge. We saw people shilling for Maoist China. We saw people apologizing for the Cultural Revolution. This is not a new phenomenon.
Dimitri Lascaris fits into this long tradition of people on the fringe of the left doing this kind of behaviour. Regarding his work, I was only invited to speak here about three days ago, so I wasn't able to systematically go through some of his content, but I did take a quick look today and yesterday. One example that stood out was an article that he wrote when he visited Russia. It was titled “10 Days in Moscow”. There was a segment there concerning Putin's regime legitimacy. There were approximately 24 paragraphs, of which about 22 justified Putin's rule. It basically said that most Russians love Putin, and this is why their living standards are great. He did mention the repression of dissent, but there was only about a paragraph and a half of that. I thought that spoke quite loudly to his approach to this topic.
When I interviewed him last year, one of the things that stood out to me was his insistence that neo-Nazism is a problem in Ukraine, a significant one. I asked him how he was able to justify this, given that far-right parties have never had more than 2% of the vote since 2014. He seemed a little bit confused by that, and he emphasized a few anecdotal accounts that would suggest that maybe some far-right figures have outsized influence in Ukraine. At that point, I mentioned that LGBTQ and Jewish Ukrainians disagree, and they've said that there is no issue with the far right in Ukraine—not any significant one—and that it's being exaggerated. He seemed unwilling to believe that, which I thought was also quite illuminating.
Conservative
Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Thank you, Mr. Zivo.
Mr. Seaboyer, my next question is for you. I only have about a minute left, because we're on a short timeline today.
Could you please discuss RT's connections to the Kremlin's intelligence apparatus?
Assistant Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
RT is misleadingly labelled by many as a media organization. I would say that it's not a media organization. It's not state media. This is the wrong use of the terminology. It's basically a propaganda organization that directly coordinates with the Russian intelligence service. It's a de facto part of the Russian intelligence service, in terms of messaging.
All Russian media now functions in a similar way, in the sense that if the journalists don't say exactly what the Kremlin wants, they're shut down. They go to jail, or their organization is shut down. There is no free media or any kind of state media in Russia right now.
Conservative
Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
I only have 10 seconds left, so I'll give that up.