Public Safety Committee on April 7th, 2022

[Marcus Kolga]

If I were in Europe, especially in the Baltic states, I'd be far more concerned about a Russian invasion than I would be in North America.

I think that Russia's primary objective—Vladimir Putin's primary objective—is to expand the availability of resources. They have already been engaging in research in the Arctic and have been increasing their claims of the resources underneath the Arctic sea for the past decade. They have a very clear aim.

This still represents a challenge to Canada's own claims and claims of other Arctic nations in that region, including Norway and Denmark. I think that we need to be concerned. We've seen Vladimir Putin's escalation. We saw it already on the border with Ukraine earlier this summer. We've seen his appetite for conflict over and over again.

I don't think that we can rule out any sort of potential conflict in the Arctic region. If there were a conflict, it would probably be limited more to the European area, but again, we cannot rule out a conflict that would draw us into that, and I don't think that Canada is prepared. I think that Professor Charron can speak more directly to that. I don't think that we are prepared for any sort of serious conflict in the Arctic, and this is something that clearly Vladimir Putin has spent the past number of years building up to.

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

We will give the opportunity to Professor Charron to answer the same question. Could you comment on immediate threats to Canadian sovereignty in the north in the face of Russian aggression? What we can do to deter them?

[Dr. Andrea Charron]

I think one of the things we need to do is think about sovereignty in a more nuanced way. One of the biggest deterrents to Russia is having communities in the Arctic that are healthy and that see themselves staying in the region because there are employment opportunities.

We don't want to think about the Arctic as solely a battle space, but recognize that it is part and parcel of Canada and that there are infrastructure challenges that face not only the military but also the civilians there. As we are talking about indigenous homelands, we need to have them as part of this conversation.

With regard to Russia's claim of the underwater continental shelf out to our exclusive economic zone, the one thing I would be careful of is becoming too alarmist. Russia wants us to walk away from and abandon the UN processes because they reinforce the rules-based order that we thrive under. It's fully within their right to submit whatever data they want to, but there is a process.

We need to make sure that we continue to respect that process and follow it, and not abandon it just because we think that Russia will not hold true to its obligations, because then they have won. That is exactly what I'm talking about. Deterrence by denial does not allow them to dictate our actions.

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

I have one quick follow-up question to you, Professor Charron.

Do you agree that Canada should invest 2% of its GDP, as NATO is suggesting, in military defence? How much of that should go to NORAD and to upgrading our north warning system?

[Dr. Andrea Charron]

As for the 2%, we technically have until 2024. The Wales summit in 2014 made that indication.

Rather than thinking about the actual number, we have to think about whether we have the capacity to spend those monies. I think that NORAD modernization and a focus on continental defence are essential, but not all of them are big-ticket items. For example, a program called Pathfinder, which is an investment in artificial intelligence, allows our analysts to now see and interpret more of the data that the north warning system is picking up. We can't discount those sorts of solutions as well. It doesn't have to be spending solely on hardware.

I'm very concerned about the CAF's abilities to be able to absorb all this money, given that we are down about 10,000 personnel. We're missing key trainers and we're missing key senior NCMs, captains and majors.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I would now invite Mr. Noormohamed to begin his six-minute round of questioning.

We go over to you, sir.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like thank the witnesses for your very insightful comments. I would like to start with Mr. Kolga.

I really got to know you a little bit after you wrote a piece for the Toronto Star on January 12, 2021, long before the protests in Canada and long before the convoy. You wrote about how Canada was not immune to the Capitol Hill riot. In that article you pointed out very presciently a lot of the things that unfortunately we've seen unfold over the course of the last year. In that article you talked a lot about what misinformation does when it's spread, and of course what happens when Russians and others amplify it. Having written that article over a year ago, can you share what you have seen take hold since that article came to life? What are some of the proof points that you talked about then that trouble you most today?

[Marcus Kolga]

That's a great question. When we saw the emergence of the pandemic in March of 2020, a lot of us who have been keeping an eye on Russian disinformation, those tactical narratives that they use and the types of issues that they target, saw that COVID would provide a fertile ground for those Russian propagandists to sink their teeth into, with issues on the far left and far right, and pull us apart. In fact, already in 2018 and 2019 we were observing Russian propagandists promote anti-vaccination narratives regarding polio vaccines, smallpox, chickenpox vaccines, any sort of vaccines. They were promoting vaccine hesitancy about those specific narratives. It wasn't surprising that we saw those same narratives emerge around COVID.

What they did, again early on in the pandemic, was identify anti-lockdown movements that were quite small at the time, and anti-vaccination movements, and promote those narratives. On their embassy websites we actually saw the Russian embassy in Canada directly promote vaccine hesitancy using their state media platforms like RT and others, and this constellation of proxy platforms that I mentioned before. The information that was posted there was then picked up by these anti-vaccination movements, and it created a feedback loop whereby the Russian state media and those proxy organizations would then echo what was being promoted by what were then rather fringe groups to legitimize them.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, what we saw was an injection of anti-government narratives into those anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination narratives. You could see that the Russian government was going to use those narratives to try to, again, polarize our society, divide it, and we saw the result really on January 6 on Capitol Hill. That was part of it, but you could see that Canada was headed in very much the same direction and you could see Russian state media continuing to fuel that shift.

Again, with regard to the Ottawa protest I'm not suggesting that the Russian government or Russian propagandists were behind it, but they do exploit situations like that. We saw Russian state media provide a platform for fringe elements within it, which served to discredit the actual legitimate protesters in there and the narratives there. They provided a platform for these individuals who were calling for the violent overthrow of our government. This is how the Russian disinformation system works, and that's really representative of the threat that it poses to our democracy.

I should also note that for one of the larger organizations that was already promoting anti-lockdown protests early on here in Canada, starting in the summer of 2020, and that became one of the larger organizations doing it, as soon as the invasion of Ukraine occurred on February 24, their anti-vaccination, anti-lockdown narratives quickly switched to anti-Ukrainian narratives, and exactly the same ones that the Russian government was promoting about the de-nazification of Ukraine. There was a clear correlation between the two. Again, it's something that we anticipated early on, and this is something that the government should be learning from, because we can anticipate where Russia and other foreign actors will seek to try to polarize us just by keeping an eye on the most sensitive issues in society.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Kolga.

You've actually answered two or three of the other questions that I had. I'm going to thank you and I'm actually going to take the remainder of my time to put forward a motion for this committee, Mr. Chair, if you will permit. That motion is as follows, and it's been circulated:

That the evidence and documentation received by the committee during the 2nd Session of the 43rd Parliament on the subject of Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremism be taken into consideration by the committee in the current session.

Would you permit me to put that forward, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Notice has been given, Clerk. Would you be my eyes and ears in the room?

We have a motion from Mr. Noormohamed. Do we have consensus that this motion should pass?

I see a thumb up, but I don't hear anything.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Wassim Bouanani]

Go on to the discussion, sir. I will let you know as soon as possible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

All right.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

For explanation, this was discussed before. It just brings the evidence from the last Parliament into the study that we put forward. It's pretty straightforward, and I think everyone agreed that the evidence should be brought forward. That's for some clarity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Is there agreement, Clerk?

[The Clerk]

Yes, sir. It appears there's unanimous consent.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

We now move to Ms. Michaud. You have six minutes in your round.

Whenever you're ready, take it away.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I want to start by apologizing to the interpreters because I don't think my mike was close enough to my mouth when I was speaking earlier. I want to take this opportunity to thank them for the extremely important work they do. I'll try to pay more attention from now on.

My questions are for you, Ms. Charron. You know a lot about Russia, and with the budget coming down today, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about government spending on security and cybersecurity.

Do you think Canada is prepared to deal with potential cyber-attacks? Should today's budget contain additional investments to help Canada deal with potential attacks or cyber-attacks?

[Dr. Andrea Charron]

I'm not a cyber specialist, but insofar as I study continental defence, I think one of the persistent problems we have is that we are still very stovepiped. One, we tend to think about threats and particular domains, so that's land, air and maritime, including the cyberspace. We have very particular mandates for agencies and no one organization that's responsible for getting an overall cyber operation picture, so we really have no idea of where we are being hit with cyber-attacks. We know they are happening often. We know they're even happening against critical infrastructure, which is particularly worrying. Each of the different agencies and private companies and citizens are experiencing these attacks, but because we have no organization that can bring them all together so that we can see the full extent of the damage and maybe start to look at mitigation methods, we're really hamstrung.

I also note that we simply don't have a cyber-command, like the U.S. has. We have a much smaller military, but it's increasingly clear that we are going to have to go to more of a digital transformation within the military and governments. This is going to be a painful event. There are going to be setbacks, but if we are going to achieve what is ultimately called joint all-domain command and control, which is what the U.S. and allies want to achieve, we are going to have to make significant investments in our digital architecture and our knowledge and training to be able to achieve it.

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

Thank you, Ms. Charron.

Mr. Kolga, I was fascinated by what you said in response to Mr. Noormohamed's question. It was about the use of media tactics as a foreign policy and defence tool.

You talked about Russia's interference in the infamous “freedom convoy” that occupied Parliament Hill for weeks. You also said that the Russian embassy was promoting vaccine hesitancy, among other things.

Exactly how far can these disinformation campaigns go? What consequences can they have on our citizens?

[Marcus Kolga]

I think we've seen exactly how far they can go. In the case of the United States and the 2016 presidential elections, we saw Russian efforts to destabilize that election that came very close to successfully doing so. We've seen, with regard to the invasion of Ukraine, the effectiveness of disinformation, certainly domestically in Russia, and Vladimir Putin's ability to seal off his entire nation from outside information and to repress and suppress the independent media within Russia.

This is a very inexpensive tool for these authoritarian regimes. Often, as in the case of the U.S. presidential elections, it costs a few million dollars. There's what's called a “bot farm” that they call the St. Petersburg troll farm. It's just outside St. Petersburg and employs several hundred people who engage in this sort of activity, and the impact of it is incredibly significant. I wouldn't expect Vladimir Putin or other hostile nations to let up on these efforts, because of their impact, and the cost is low, so we can only expect this to continue.

Certainly, in the context of Russian information warfare, we know that Vladimir Putin changed the constitution of his own country last summer, and that change will potentially allow him to remain in power until 2036 and perhaps beyond. Barring any sort of change in the regime in Russia, we will see this sort of activity going on for quite some time.

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

I don't have much time left, but I would like you to comment on the fierce adversary that is Russia.

As I said earlier, even if we have strong defence capability, the Russians can attack and paralyze entire cyber systems. How can a nation like Canada guard against a threat like that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

I'm sorry. We're out of time.

Perhaps the witness would be so kind as to offer a written response to that question at his leisure.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

I would ask Mr. MacGregor to take the last round of this section. Whenever you're ready, sir, go ahead.

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

Thank you.

I'd like to start with Mr. Kolga.

Mr. Kolga, thank you for providing your testimony today, especially on the extent of Russian capabilities and cognitive warfare. I know that all members of Parliament, no matter what political party we're a part of, over the last two years have been on the front lines of disinformation. We've had to spend a lot of our time trying to clear up many of the myths that are sent to our office.

What is problematic is that misinformation and disinformation manifest themselves in physical ways, such as on January 6 in the United States and more recently in the occupation of Ottawa. The problem is the potential that exists for disinformation and misinformation to manifest itself physically and the fact that Russian operatives very much want to exploit that for their own use.

Our committee's main mandate is on national security and public safety, so if we want to effectively combat this, what kinds of recommendations should our committee be making to the federal government, with the understanding that if you clamp down too hard on social media, you're simply going to diffuse those problematic voices onto other platforms? What kinds of recommendations should we be making to have the federal government effectively counteract this?