Public Safety Committee on April 7th, 2022

[Dr. Paul Goode]

Well, I'm not sure to what extent the Canadian government can counter those strategies within Russia.

One thing that we can support, of course, is access to alternative sources of information. That means pushing back on any sort of moves to potentially exclude ordinary Russians from access to channels that provide them with those kinds of access. For instance, excluding people from YouTube is not necessarily going to benefit people within Russia, much less outside of it, because so many are dependent upon those sorts of channels for access.

I think it's important that the government does support a free circulation of alternative sources of information so that people who are willing to seek that information out are able to find it. That is something that can be done from within Canada's borders.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you.

Yesterday Twitter deleted a post from the Russian embassy in Canada that was rife with disinformation and laden with conspiracy theories regarding the Russian massacre in Bucha. We also heard that more Russian embassies around the western world are becoming the authors of disinformation being disseminated on social media.

As a government, what do you think we can do about these types of disinformation?

[Dr. Paul Goode]

The ways that the government can potentially manage these kinds of disinformation is simply to provide citizens with a means to identify and debunk disinformation. I think that there are already media outlets that are starting to do this. I believe that governments can also assist with that.

The information that is being circulated by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I should add, is also useful data for us, so I am also hesitant to completely silence them. There is a clear link between the kinds of narratives and conspiracy theories that are promoted by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other state actors and the dynamics of the war. In this sense, we gain a lot of vital information that might be lost if they were summarily dismissed.

That's not to, in any way, shape or form, justify the disinformation that is being put out by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs or by other Russian state actors. It's merely to point out that we would lose a great deal from completely cutting them out from access, not just in terms of our observations but also in our understanding of Russia's motives and the valences in the war.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you so much, Dr. Goode.

My time is running short, but my next question is for Dr. Etkin.

Have you researched the relationship that exists between the Government of Canada and critical infrastructure providers to ensure that critical infrastructure providers continue to practise excellent cyber-hygiene?

[Prof. David A Etkin]

I'm not really very familiar with that cyber-threat in particular, but in terms of our critical infrastructure in general, for decades pandemic planning has been a high priority for everybody. In spite of that, when we were faced with a pandemic, our plans failed miserably. We do really well with small events, but when we get into major events, I really believe we don't have the knowledge and systems in place to deal with them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I will now turn questioning over to Ms. Michaud for six minutes.

Whenever you're ready, go ahead, Ms. Michaud.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome and thank you to the witnesses.

I have a few questions for you, Mr. Goode.

I have here a La Presse article that discusses the overall issue of cyber-attacks and related fears. Author Richard Hétu states that, as soon as it was revealed that Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine, the threat of mounting Russian cyber-attacks loomed. According to him, many of Ukraine's banks and government departments were the target of denial-of-service attacks in the hours leading up to the arrival of Russian troops in the Donbass. Experts also detected malware on hundreds of computers in Ukraine.

Russia's capacity to shut down entire systems, including the Internet, is very worrisome.

The author goes on to say that, in the fog of war, it can be difficult to know what is really going on, even more so in cyberspace.

As we all know, the cyber threat landscape is rapidly evolving and Russia appears to be a fierce adversary. Even if we have strong defence capability, Russia could still hack into our networks.

In your view, how do we properly defend ourselves or protect our cyberspace against an adversary like Russia?

[Dr. Paul Goode]

That's an extremely important question. I am not an expert on cybersecurity, so I don't know that I am the best person to answer this question. I do have a number of colleagues and students who are working on this topic at the moment, and they are deeply invested.

I speak here more as an observer than as an expert on cybersecurity, but we have seen that there has not been a radical evolution in Russia's cyberwarfare capabilities since 2014. A lot of the forms and means of attack, as well as the non-attributable forms and means of attack, have not altered radically. That probably lends a certain degree of predictability. We may have seen that already, as the extent of cyber-attacks on Ukraine, and more broadly on western targets, has not met the expectations we had prior to the start of the war.

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

Thank you.

You're an expert on Russia, so in light of world events and the rise of the far right, do you think the reach of pro-Russian nationalist groups could extend all the way to Canada? Should we be worried for the security of our critical infrastructure and democratic institutions?

[Dr. Paul Goode]

I think this is the threat. I think you have correctly identified it, or at least I agree with your identification of this kind of threat. We know the Russian government has promoted far-right actors throughout Europe as well as in the U.S. and North America generally.

The way these groups are funded often tends to be cloaked in a variety of secrecies, but the way you counteract that is partly by means of first cutting the purse strings where possible, cutting off the flow of resources to these groups. The second way you approach it is by making sure that we are working closely, where possible, with Russian diaspora communities to ensure they understand that they are part of this national community and a valued part of this national community, and that they have benefited from the freedoms and benefits of living in this society. They usually have a sense of responsibility in that regard, and I think we should appeal to that. We should promote that where possible. We need allies in the Russian community to be able to fight this kind of threat precisely.

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

Thank you.

How do we guard against disinformation?

Russia leverages a number of tools in its disinformation campaign, especially social media. That disinformation reaches all the way to Canada, showing up on our platforms, and it's hard to tell what's true and what isn't.

How can Quebec and Canada guard against this disinformation, to protect and help not just citizens, but also businesses and communities?

[Dr. Paul Goode]

I am perhaps biased, being in higher education, but I think education and training can go a long way towards helping people to be able to fight this threat on their own, to be able to recognize that this is disinformation and understand where it comes from and understand that the purpose is not to persuade but to disempower and divide. These are the things that I think are often forgotten.

Disinformation typically plays on emotive characteristics or emotive themes, so I think having a dispassionate response, a trained response, is perhaps the most efficient way to be able to counter it, because widespread suppression is not a democratic response to this kind of threat.

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

Thank you.

My next questions are for Mr. Etkin. I'm going to call on his environmental expertise.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have just 10 seconds left.

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

Very well.

I will save my questions for the next round, Mr. Etkin.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

Mr. MacGregor, you are next and the last for the first round of questions. You have a six-minute block. Whenever you're ready, the floor is yours, sir.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Dr. Goode, I'd like to start with you. There have been calls within Canada to expel the Russian ambassador and to also expel Russian diplomats. Of course, that would put our Canadian embassy in a similar position for reciprocal actions.

How important is our on-the-ground diplomatic intelligence-gathering for informing Canada's national security stance vis-à-vis Russia?

[Dr. Paul Goode]

I can't claim specific knowledge of the relationship between Canadian diplomatic presence and its information-gathering or intelligence-gathering functions. In general I would say that they are extremely important, especially when you have trained civil servants who have been integrated in local spaces for years and perhaps decades.

Severing those diplomatic ties is often treated as an important signal in international relations, but rebuilding those ties takes much longer. It's not something that can be simply reinserted. You would definitely run the risk of losing access to whatever back-channel sources of information are currently still available.

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

Thank you.

A lot of your opening remarks echoed what we heard in our meeting two days ago from Dr. Cooley. He was talking a lot about the new Russian exiles: journalists, IT workers and academics. He was really recommending that our committee find ways to enhance and strengthen those networks. I think your opening remarks were very much along that vein.

You talked about strengthening the ties in Russian studies among universities here in Canada, overseas, in the U.K. and in the United States. If our committee is going to make a recommendation to the federal government in a national security context, I would like to know how we can best partner think tanks at universities and abroad with these Russian exiles as well as with our security and intelligence agencies.

If we're going to make recommendations to the RCMP and CSIS, do they need to have more in-depth training of their personnel and a better understanding of how Russians operate and what Russian society is like, etc.?

[Dr. Paul Goode]

I believe this is one of the crucial lessons that we drew from the Cold War, in learning that it was very important to have an understanding, not just culturally but also politically and organizationally, of how things worked in the Soviet system. I believe that was still the case throughout the last 20 to 30 years, even though other international security priorities took the forefront of attention. This is especially the case today, and certainly one way that we can facilitate it is by accommodating the Russian exiles to become integrated in various different ways.

I think that academic centres have always been willing to reach out to provide some sort of public access. I think those could be institutionalized. The federal government could certainly incentivize its own institutions and agencies to work with existing academic centres or provide funding to set up new academic centres or umbrella groups that could coordinate with them.

Certainly we would need the ability to create places for these new Russian exiles to be able to move into, to give them the opportunity to provide advice and a voice. They can also be very critical in speaking to the domestic threat of disinformation from far-right groups, which was mentioned earlier in the questions.

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

Thank you. Those are some great recommendations for us.

Dr. Etkin, I appreciate your comments putting Canada's national security in a climate change context and realizing that it may be some time before Canada and Russia have normal relations.

Can you talk about your reference to the importance of our two countries one day going back to co-operating in the Arctic? How important is that co-operation in terms of addressing climate change within the context of national security? I ask because national security is really what our committee's mandate is.

[Prof. David A Etkin]

That's a great question.

I think it's critically important.

When we're talking about climate change, it's a tragedy of common issues. Unless all the countries work co-operatively together, we're just not going to be able to deal with it effectively. The future threats associated with climate change are, in my opinion, just going to be simply catastrophic eventually.

It is absolutely critical that eventually we work together as partners to try to solve these things down the road, so it cannot be more important that we have some sort of global co-operation in terms of dealing with it in the future.

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

Mr. Chair, I'll cede my time back to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, we now move into the second round of questions. My look at the clock says that if I cut a minute off all of us, then we'll end more or less on time.

The first questioner, with four minutes, is Mr. Lloyd.

Mr. Lloyd, the floor is yours when you want to have it.

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair. My questions will be for Professor Goode.

I really enjoyed your feedback today.

Russians don't handle defeat well. After the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, less than a decade or so later they got rid of the czars, and in the 1980s the defeat in Afghanistan probably led to the fall of the Soviet Union.

Do you think Ukraine in 2022, with the setbacks we've seen at Kyiv, could spell the end of the Putin regime in a number of years?