Public Safety Committee on April 5th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Mr. Perry, can you hear us?

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Could I ask another question of another witness? Do I still have some time left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You just have a few seconds, sir, yes.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Okay, I'll give it back to the chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Mr. Noormohamed, you're now up.

You have a six minute block. Whenever you're ready, take the floor.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, I'd like to echo my colleagues in thanking all of you for being here with us today.

Dr. Al-Rawi, since our world here at SECU does not necessarily allow us to think about defence spending or defence procurement, I'd like to focus on some of the areas where we do have some responsibility.

I'd like to talk a little bit about some of what you said with respect to the Russian trolls. You talked about their areas of interest right now being around the war.

Can you talk about some of the other areas of interest that they are particularly leaning into or curious about?

[Dr. Ahmed Al-Rawi]

Historically, the Russian trolls have been very much invested in supporting the far right in different countries. It's not only in Canada, but also in the U.S. and in many places in Europe. The reason is definitely to create tension.

There is a term called “agitainment”, which means making people really agitated, but at the same time entertained. That is done using, for example, funny memes and funny messages, but they are very much militant, aggressive and often racist.

You can see a pattern. This pattern shows that the Russian trolls usually align themselves with extremes and sometimes even with the far left.

That's the strategy in general. Often the targets will be the minority groups, especially refugees and immigrants in different countries. The focus sometimes will be on the Netherlands or in the U.S.A., but that will be the main issue.

I hope I answered your question. Did you want me to focus on today?

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

You did. Maybe we can dig a little bit into that.

You've talked about them being anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-refugee. You mentioned anti-liberal in the last election.

Are they just anti or are they actually doing things to promote other causes? Are they pro certain things that we should be concerned about here in Canada?

[Dr. Ahmed Al-Rawi]

Usually they promote far right groups. Sometimes they don't show a lot of animosity towards Conservative figures and politicians, but that kind of animosity is usually shown against Liberals and NDP figures. That's their strategy. Again, it's about what aligns with their own world view and with what they want to achieve.

It actually echos Putin's policies inside and outside Russia. It makes a lot of sense. For instance, when they talk about the White Helmets in Syria, they consider it a terrorist group because the White Helmets are actually trying to undermine the Russian efforts in Syria by documenting human rights violations and so on. They do this with the help of allies, as well as friends from the region and elsewhere.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you, Dr. Al-Rawi.

My next question really is for you, but I would also like Dr. Cooley to weigh in once you're done,.

We had seen a lot of the impact of Russian misinformation in the lead-up to January 6. On January 6 in the United States, there were clear links and support for what was happening with the QAnon movement. There was a very successful attempt by Russian bots to try to tie what happened on January 6 to antifa. Evidence in the January 6 reports shows that there was a pro-Trump effort on the part of Russian bots. Harvard Law School Professor Yochai Benkler said that the primary goal of Russian propaganda is to “create a world where nothing is true and everything is possible”.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the impact on Canada and whether or not Canada needs to worry about those trends we saw in the January 6 uprising in the U.S.

I'd like Dr. Cooley to weigh in on that one once you're done, sir.

[Dr. Ahmed Al-Rawi]

I think we definitely need to be concerned because the goal is to confuse people and make their vision of reality blurred in a way that they will not understand what is right and what is wrong or what is real and what is fake. This is very concerning. This is definitely related to what is going on in Ukraine and also in terms of COVID-19 and so on.

I can talk a lot, but I think maybe Dr. Cooley wants to also add here.

[Dr. Alexander Cooley]

I would agree with that. I think from the Russian world view, there's sort of an outside world, which is this drive towards multipolarity and not having the liberal west dominate the international system and having spheres of influence. There's also a domestic internal component with that: breaking down consensus for this kind of movement to collective liberalism, whether it's NATO, support for transnational co-operative solutions or respect for human rights and liberal values. Any time they can poke holes in that, either by exacerbating partisanship or political polarization or by targeting vulnerable communities, they will do it.

I want to emphasize this. The goal is not to make Russia look better. It really is to try to show what they think are contradictions and weak points in our own messaging and our own societal debates, and take that from being a strength to somehow being a weakness of our own domestic institutions.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Dr. Cooley, if I could, I'll ask you to follow up. Can you talk a bit about—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have 10 seconds.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

In that case I'm going to give my time back.

Thank you so much to all of you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you.

Now I would like to ask Ms. Michaud to take her six-minute block, please.

Go ahead, whenever you're ready, Ms. Michaud.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being here.

Mr. Al‑Rawi, I'm going to take advantage of your expertise in social media, communication and disinformation to ask you a few questions. I would like to know what influence you think Russian disinformation has on the population of Canada.

We know that several means are used, for example misleading claims, manipulated photos and conspiracy theories. We know that this is used a lot in social media and that this may have been exacerbated not only by the COVID‑19 crisis and the rise of the anti-vaccine or anti-system movements, but also by what is happening in Ukraine.

What is the influence of this phenomenon and what could the consequences be?

[Dr. Ahmed Al-Rawi]

In terms of the actual impact of disinformation on the population, it's a really difficult question to answer because I don't think anyone has quantified that or fully understood this kind of influence. However, there are indications of the impact of disinformation on Canadians. For example, we saw some kind of violence against the Ukrainian diaspora community in Canada, and this is a clear indication or evidence of the influence of Russian disinformation—or if you want to call it propaganda—on certain communities.

If you look outside Canada, I'm seeing very worrying signs about the outreach of Russian disinformation. For example, when I looked at Arabic language disinformation spread by the Russian government on social media, I was really [Technical difficulty—Editor] so widespread and so overreaching in so many places in the Middle East.

Our problem here is that we're mostly focused on English and French in Canada. We forget that we have millions of people who do not only speak these languages; they speak other languages. I think this is a major gap in our understanding of the real influence of Russian disinformation on our diaspora communities. There is a very direct connection, but we miss a lot. These are all gaps in our understanding, unfortunately, but there are clear indications that a lot of people were influenced.

We also have some people who are replicating this kind of disinformation. One example is Global Research, which is a so-called news organization based in Montreal that is only echoing Putin's propaganda on its website.

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

Thank you.

I am trying to understand how the government can intervene to protect the public from this disinformation. Perhaps banning Russian state media broadcasts like RT or Sputnik would be a good way to protect the population who would tend to associate themselves with this kind of movement of very anti-system “Putin” rhetoric. I know that Canada is doing it in the case of RT, but I don't know if it is doing it in the case of Sputnik. The European Union, on the other hand, has gone that far.

Do you think this can have a positive effect for the people of Canada?

[Dr. Ahmed Al-Rawi]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I need to explain why banning RT, as I mentioned in my speech, might not be fully effective. The reason is that RT could be viewed in different ways—through TV apps, the Internet and so on. I think if anyone wants to view RT, it's there, and I don't think it's the only source.

As I said in my speech, the Russian government is now using its own diplomatic missions to spread disinformation using these fake websites and so on. They are trying to create another information source because the focus has been on banning RT, and now they are looking at producing more disinformation from other places.

I think the best way to protect Canadians from this kind of disinformation is by debunking, by fact-checking, anything that is related to Canada or Canadians in relation to the war on Ukraine.

We cannot catch up with what the Russian government and its allies are doing. It's really hard to do so unless, of course, there is some kind of collaboration between Canada and other countries, but what we can do is debunk what is related to us so that we can better protect Canadians, especially if something is related to what happens inside Canada or within the diaspora community living in Canada.

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

Thank you.

In fact, in this sea of information, it's very difficult for citizens to sort out the real from the fake. How do we analyze all this? I know that Canada is doing some prevention. For example, the Communications Security Establishment runs campaigns on Twitter, advising people to check the source of the information they consult.

But beyond that, what role can the government play in prevention and in helping citizens sort out the real from the fake?

[Dr. Ahmed Al-Rawi]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It will sound self-serving, but I think academics need more funding to run maybe research projects, fact-checking in an ongoing way, these incentives—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you.

I now would like to turn to Mr. MacGregor.

Sir, you have a six-minute block of questions, whenever you're ready to go.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'll start with Dr. Al-Rawi.

In your opening statement when you were talking about the role that Russian diplomatic posts in Canada have in spreading disinformation, it's always very tricky when dealing with diplomatic outposts because, of course, we have to be concerned about reciprocal actions against our own diplomatic missions, particularly in Russia.

Do you feel that we are effectively countering the Russian embassy's role in spreading disinformation currently? Is there a heightened awareness of what they're doing, or do you feel that our committee could make recommendations for further countermeasures by the Canadian government?

[Dr. Ahmed Al-Rawi]

Sorry, Mr. Chair, with regard to the Russian mission?