Public Safety Committee on April 5th, 2022

[Dr. Veronica Kitchen]

Certainly providing true information I think is always a good strategy, but for true information to be effective, it has to come from institutions that people trust. Maintaining that trust in institutions through transparency, as Dr. Huebert mentioned, is vitally important.

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

Do you think that censorship would undermine trust in those institutions?

[Dr. Veronica Kitchen]

Quite possibly.

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

Thank you. I have a remaining one minute or so.

I'm just amazed that North America has such superiority in information technology, and obviously we have to work on improving that. Militarily, with our allies—and this is for Dr. Fergusson—we also have tremendous superiority. I'm amazed to see the footage out of Ukraine, with Russia's superior technology being shot down by relatively cheap technology like MANPADS and Javelins.

What I'm wondering, though, is on the missing piece, economic security. It seems that we have a gaping hole when Europe is completely dependent upon oil and gas from Russia, and copper and palladium.

What do you think the government could have been doing better for the last 20 years in this country—multiple governments—to address that economic insecurity?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

I don't know if there's much the government could have done. Remember, we're living in a world of globalization. This is the downside of globalization. It's not just about Russian resources being provided to the Europeans, but how that international marketplace is structured and works out.

Certainly, we could have been more aware of this potential; I don't think a great deal of attention has been paid.... We tend to see globalization as good, in economic terms, but we didn't pay attention to security.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I would now like to invite Mr. McKinnon to take the floor for two and a half minutes.

Go ahead, Mr. McKinnon.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

My question will be for Dr. Fergusson.

In our world, of course, we're becoming evermore interconnected electronically. That includes domestic and international communications. To get from A to B, our messages end up getting routed all over the place and in-between.

The core functionality that makes us secure is encryption. One of the key aspects of encryption are that at some point there will be asymmetric encryption involved there. We know that asymmetric encryption has a public part of it and a secret part of it, and we know the secret part can be brute force, if the adversary has enough time and willingness to do so.

State actors such as Russia, China and so forth have possession of massive computing facilities, with massive parallel processing. I'm wondering what we can do to change our communications infrastructure to protect our communications security and our encryption.

That's a big question, and you have a minute and a half.

[Dr. James Fergusson]

I can only comment in terms of the defence side, and keeping closed, highly encrypted and the most advanced encrypted systems in the intelligence and the defence world.

Again, it's not necessarily the case that government or Defence are going to let anyone know when they get hacked and these systems are actually penetrated. However, this is an interactive process—not so much for Canada, but certainly for our allies besides the United States, so there's always the capability that we retaliate. This is nothing new. This is what we used to call “electronic and counter-electronic warfare”. This is something that's gone on. It's become more sophisticated and it's become quicker because of the nature of the technological piece and the changes that have occurred.

There's no 100% guarantee, but certainly ensuring that you know when you get hacked is the most important thing. The biggest danger is not the hacking, but the implanting of viruses, such as the one planted in the Iranian nuclear system years ago, and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you.

I would now like to invite Ms. Michaud to take a minute and 15 seconds.

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

That is generous of you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Make the best of it.

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

I will now turn to Mr. Huebert.

As you were saying, cybercrime is such a fast-moving world. Given that, and given that you know Canada's preparedness, do you think we are in a position to deal with the worst-case scenario, whether the threat comes from Russia or another country?

In terms of public safety and national defence, do you believe we are prepared?

If not, what should the government's priority be?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

We never know if we're ready.

At the University of Calgary we were hacked with ransomware even though we have computer science and individuals that do.... We weren't prepared for that. In fact, our entire computer system was shut down.

Part of the problem is that until we know the level of what's coming in...what that requires is a very well-funded counter-cyberwarfare capability.

Be it the CSE or whomever you're giving that to, it's that grungy day-to-day.... Make sure that you have the best computer analysts that are able to look at it and constantly be re-evaluating. It's dull. It can't be shared, so people like me, Dr. Kitchen and Dr. Fergusson won't know how good or weak it is, but it's something that the government needs to be totally on top of.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

Mr. MacGregor, you have 75 precious seconds. Go for it.

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

Thank you.

Very quickly, this is for Dr. Kitchen, on the disinformation subject.

There have been a lot of parallels between this study and our study into ideologically motivated violent extremism and the way major companies, social media companies and companies like Amazon, can be exploited using their algorithms. Even in some cases like Amazon, their platforms are used to sell hateful propaganda. The potential exists for a determined state actor to take advantage of that.

If not through censorship—I think there's an argument to be made to remove untrue information—in what ways can the Canadian government effectively make sure that social media companies are not going to be vulnerable to these types of attacks?

[Dr. Veronica Kitchen]

This is where possibly regulation does become helpful to make sure that we're getting rid of bots, to make sure that we're getting rid of things that act automatically. Working together with those companies who are open to the idea of trying to control extremism—many of them—on their platforms is important. It's also important to recognize that there are a whole series of secondary platforms where this kind of misinformation spreads that are a little more underground and less willing to work with governments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Shipley, I'll now turn to you for two and a half minutes of questioning, sir, whenever you're ready.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

I'd like to direct my first question to Mr. Fergusson and Mr. Huebert.

I was trying to frantically take notes as both of you were talking. I was finding it very interesting and informative. We don't have time to have an open-floor debate here for a long time. I'd like to have answers on both of these from both of you, please.

Mr. Fergusson, you stated that disinformation is overblown, exaggerated and doesn't pose a real threat. That's as close to a quote as I could scribble at the time.

Mr. Huebert, I took from some of your quotes that you are very concerned about Russia's social media and the weaponization of social media.

I'm sensing a bit of a difference there. Perhaps I could get some clarification, first from Mr. Fergusson, on the threat seen by that and then Mr. Huebert after him, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Dr. James Fergusson]

My answer to that is simply the lack of confidence and trust in the public. You're certainly going to have small proportions, as Professor Kitchen pointed out, of extremists who can be manipulated, but there's already fertile ground to be manipulated.

If you look at the overarching component of the public, who are more involved in this than I am, I think we can trust them. I think they understand when they are being taken down the garden path. Issues of the small minority becoming radicalized and violent probably existed prior to any misinformation or disinformation, whatever you define that to be. One person's disinformation is another person's truth. It's complicated.

I think we put too much of a scare sense, a panic, if you will, around this without stepping back and saying.... I'll put this bluntly: Trump won the 2016 election and it was not because of the Russians. That's an excuse that's then dragged out to explain this anomaly which the elites couldn't understand.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Huebert.

Where I disagree and where I think we're being complacent is when we look at the type of advice we are now seeing in society. In other words, there is no question that this has been attempted before. We know that from the Cold War period, but now because of algorithms and the efficiencies of these new systems, I think the divides within Canadian society on the COVID issue alone illustrate that it's not simply a sort of silent majority in the middle that is always going to get it. We see the divides between families and friends, and it's directly a part of the problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

You have two and a half minutes to pose the last question, Mr. Noormohamed. Take it away.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thanks very much.

Given the brevity of time and recognizing the limitation of the scope of this committee, I have a question for Dr. Kitchen.

Can you spend a little bit of time talking about the specific concerns related to disinformation and the way it is starting to have an impact on Canada, and in particular how you are seeing it impact action in Canada? Are there specific ties to international actors, particularly Russia?

I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

[Dr. Veronica Kitchen]

Dr. Huebert already gave some of the international examples. We also know that SITE identified international attempts to influence the 2019 election. We've seen individuals who have been inspired by Russian propaganda. For instance, there was a threat to the Prime Minister. I'm blanking on the date; it was earlier in the year.

Where this is important is the way it interacts with tendencies that already exist in Canadian society, such as on the appeal of COVID misinformation. Where we will see Russia and other international actors acting is in trying to exacerbate those existing social polarizations.

This is a Canadian problem that is exacerbated by foreign interference.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I may be out of time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You actually have about 45 seconds.