Public Safety Committee on April 7th, 2022

[Marcus Kolga]

Thank you for that excellent question.

I think the federal government needs to take, first and foremost, an inclusive, all-of-society and all-of-democracy approach to this. Of course, government needs to be part of that discussion to develop a strategy to combat this, but it also means reaching out to civil society actors who are often, like me, on the front lines of this battle against foreign information operations.

It also means reaching out and working with the social media giants. I know from my discussions with them and observing how they have reacted to regulation in the past that they don't react well to it. There are very good examples of governments reaching out to social media and actually working with them and continuing to work with them very effectively to combat foreign disinformation.

I look to Taiwan. Taiwan has developed a strategy whereby they work very closely with civil society groups and with social media to quickly detect information operations and information warfare when it's targeting Taiwan. Taiwan is at the receiving end of a lot of that coming from China.

They've worked specifically with Facebook, quite remarkably, because they don't seem to want to co-operate too much, at least here in North America. In Taiwan, once the civil society detects an incoming information operation, the government and Facebook are alerted. Facebook has agreed to throttle those sorts of narratives when they appear, pulling them off of people's news feeds when they come in.

The government itself has produced a policy whereby when that information operation comes in, the specific ministry that's being targeted is then tasked with producing a counter-narrative within 60 minutes, usually using humour or something like that. This has turned out to be very effective for the Taiwanese, so I would look to other countries in this way.

As well, Sweden announced in January the formation of a government psychological defence unit, which also brings in civil society actors, to protect Swedes from cognitive warfare, and specifically Russian cognitive warfare.

I think this is—

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

Thanks, Mr. Kolga. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I have only a couple of minutes left. I would invite you to provide our committee with a written brief if you can, if you want to delve into those subject more fully. That would be fantastic.

[Marcus Kolga]

Absolutely.

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

My final question is for Dr. Charron.

The challenge with this study is that we are sometimes, I think, veering into the mandate of the Standing Committee on National Defence. It's very important to realize that our committee's mandate is specific to national security and public safety. The two most obvious examples are the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

In the context of the theme of continental defence, do you have any recommendations our committee should be making in regard to those national security agencies in the face of Russia's subversive measures, espionage and spying? Are there better ways that we need to use in working with our American partners? Can you suggest any improvements?

[Dr. Andrea Charron]

I think you've demonstrated the issue, which is that we do tend to think there is the defence domain and there is the security and safety domain. What we're trying to say is that we need to bring these together. We cannot work in isolation anymore.

I would suggest you look at the Marine Security Operation Centres as the model. To help with the NORAD maritime warning function, members of the military, RCMP and Coast Guard, etc., share information. They use a common lexicon so they do not prejudice court cases, but then they have a common operating picture. All agencies and the military know what they're looking for. Then they can share things like surveillance time, which is very precious. It doesn't make sense to have DND looking for just one thing when they could also be looking for safety and security issues.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, that completes the allotted time we have available for these witnesses.

On your behalf, I would like to thank them for their insight. We understand just how present and intense these issues are. You have provided us with very useful information and opinion. On behalf of not only the committee but of all members of Parliament, I thank you.

Colleagues, we now move into the in camera portion.

I will have to log out and log in, so we will suspend the meeting for five minutes. I'll see you shortly.

[Proceedings continue in camera]