Public Safety Committee on May 12th, 2022

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This is for the witnesses from CSIS.

Mr. Hahlweg, another official who appeared before the committee, talked to us about the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, or CLOUD Act, in the United States. Such a law would theoretically give CSIS easier access to data stored on servers located outside Canada.

Knowing that many such cases of violence begin online, can you confirm that the enactment of legislation similar to the American law might help you in your work?

Ms. Soper noted earlier that we have to keep dialoguing with our allies, internationally, on how to counter the rise in IMVE. Would it be helpful to enact that kind of legislation? What changes might it mean for CSIS?

[Cherie Henderson]

Yes, this sort of legislation could help us, because it then allows us access to greater volumes of information, but what we would need to do is ensure that any sort of legislation on this front also respects the privacy of Canadians, because we want to ensure that any investigations we are doing are in the rule of law of our land and respecting our democracy.

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

Precisely, on that point, perhaps you could reply, Ms. Soper.

[Lesley Soper]

I believe our minister announced that we've entered into negotiations in relation to the CLOUD Act agreement. It would be a lengthy process. Two of our international partners, Australia and the U.K., have also commenced negotiations that are nearing completion with the U.S.

A CLOUD Act arrangement would put in place some mechanism that is as robust in its adherence to rule of law and civil liberties protections as the current mutual legal assistance arrangements. However, it would allow much quicker access to warranted access to communication, which are housed through communication service providers in the United States, such as Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you.

[Lesley Soper]

It is a very important mechanism.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Mr. MacGregor, it's over to you. You will take us to the end of this hour with two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Quickly, to Director General Soper, can you confirm, as the national security policy director for Public Safety Canada, that it is right-wing extremism that is on the rise in the world today?

[Lesley Soper]

I hate to disappoint. It is not. I don't think I can state that clearly.

What my colleagues in the intelligence world could explain more cogently is that there are a significant number of individuals who are adhering to diverse sets of voices out in the world. They're galvanizing their discourse. It may be aligned toward what we would traditionally call “right-wing extremism”. It may be motivated by other factors, such as being anti-mandate. It could be motivated by other societal factors.

Cherie can speak much more cogently to this question, but I—

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

I want to get to the RCMP, as well. You spoke about the training that's going on for RCMP officers in relation to IMVE. I know there's a broader conversation about what the appropriate role of the RCMP should be with respect to community policing or a more specialized role.

Could you maybe, for our committee, specifically elaborate on what the training involves for the RCMP with IMVE? I'd like you to expand on that point a bit further for us, please.

[D/Commr Michael Duheme]

Really quickly, considering the time, there is a better understanding of what IMVE is all about. How do we reach out?

This is not only within the RCMP. We want to join with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police to have that same training for all law enforcement people across the country on what those key indicators are that we can identify early on. These would alert us, if you wish, to a possible IMVE group or maybe a person who is going in that direction.

The work is in progress, but it's not limited to the RCMP, as I said. We want the whole law enforcement community across Canada to be trained in the same manner.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, that ends this panel. We will now take a very short break, but before we do that, I want to say thank the witnesses on your behalf for the testimony that has been brought before this committee.

You live these issues every day. You have brought your wisdom, your expertise and your experience to this committee. On the members' behalf, I thank you.

Colleagues, I think it's going to be a very short turnaround.

Clerk, will we be ready in, say, two minutes? It's a two-minute break, and then we'll be off to the second hour.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

I call the meeting back to order.

I'm very pleased that we have this morning, as individuals, Mr. Richard B. Fadden and Mr. Vivek Krishnamurthy, who is the Samuelson-Glushko professor of law at the University of Ottawa. They will each have five minutes to make their opening comments.

Mr. Fadden, I'll turn to you first, sir. The floor is yours for five minutes.

[Richard Fadden, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak to you on a topic that I think is of growing concern, but one that has been around for awhile, which is something I think we sometimes forget.

As you know, my knowledge today of IMVE is based on what I glean from the media, but I hope that my experience over the years will enable me to make a few useful points and to answer any questions you might have.

As I noted above, IMVE has been around for awhile. Indeed, it was on our radar, although not with the priority it has today, when I was at CSIS. The difference is that then there were far fewer people involved, and in some ways it was less intense, and it was less organized and less coordinated. To state the obvious, the better organization and coordination today are because of the Internet in its various manifestations. Also, those involved with IMVE clearly feel much more intensely about their concerns than was the case I think a couple of decades ago.

This last point, the growth and intensity over the years, is the case in part because no one has really tried to get at the root of the causes of the dissatisfaction that is at the base of IMVE. I know that your order of reference does not specifically direct you to examine the causes of IMVE, but I would urge you not to ignore that aspect of the problem.

Whatever preventative and legal measures are necessary to deal with violence, I'm convinced that alone they will not be enough to stamp it out. Even if we succeed in doing so, it will not be the end of IMVE because, like most national security issues, it is not purely domestic in nature. Whatever the origins of IMVE, it always receives some ideas and moral support from abroad, if not sometimes funding and training.

Unless we do what China does, and isolate Canada from the Internet, which is unthinkable, I do not see how we can stop ideas and support from abroad, which brings me back to my point about addressing the causes of IMVE, as well as its kinetic effects. To deal with the violence, we will need control and punitive measures, but these must be built as narrowly and transparently as possible, or, without intending it, we will be promoting the further development of IMVE.

This leads me to the question of who is best suited to deal with the root causes of IMVE? While they may have a role, in my view at any rate, it is certainly not CSIS, the RCMP, nor police more generally. Provinces, cities and civil society will have to be involved. Perhaps the federal role should be developing a framework, coordinating and perhaps providing some funding.

In summary, IMVE has been with us for awhile and has deep roots. It goes to the effectiveness of our democracy. Violence is not acceptable even if we must accept extreme views. Dealing with IMVE's root causes is an integral part of dealing with the problem, and this must involve more than the police and security agencies. Control and punitive measures are certainly necessary to suppress violence, but they must be narrowly targeted, lest we make things worse.

Thank you.

I think for the first time I've appeared before this committee I finished before my five minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

It gives me a chance to thank you, not only for your testimony, but also for your many years of distinguished public service to Canada, sir. Thank you.

Now I would ask Mr. Krishnamurthy to take the mike for up to five minutes for opening comments, sir.

[Vivek Krishnamurthy, Samuelson-Glushko Professor of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It is a pleasure to be appearing before you today. My testimony will focus on how we should think of the role of different kinds of online platforms in facilitating IMVE and what we should do about it.

To begin, I'd like to start with an analogy as to how we can think about online platforms. The analogy, since I'm travelling internationally, is to an airport. An airport is sort of a real-world platform that allows passengers like me to connect to airplanes going to many different places around the world. We can think about online platforms in a similar way. Online platforms are points of connection that connect people to different kinds of organizations or other individuals around the world for different purposes.

Until now, the focus of legislative efforts in Canada has been around regulating platforms for expression, such as YouTube, Twitter and the like. These are platforms that curate and distribute user-generated content. I'm very honoured to be on an expert panel, appointed by Minister Rodriguez, to think about the regulation of these kinds of platforms and the harms they cause. Platforms come in many different stripes. As we've seen with the Ottawa convoy protests, there is now a focus on crowdfunding, but this is not the only kind of online platform that is in need of regulation. There are many others that impact our daily lives as Canadians. We think about platforms for transportation, Uber and the like, and platforms that enable the sharing economy, Airbnb and so forth. There are many different kinds of these.

It seems to me that a useful approach for this committee and for Parliament to consider in dealing with the kinds of harms that can be facilitated by platforms is to move beyond a focus on platforms that facilitate expression to those that facilitate various kinds of real-world impacts. Certainly, expression can have a tangible impact in the real world. It can incite violence among other things. It can cause harm to people's dignity. Of course, the challenge in regulating platforms for expression is the constitutional protection of free expression in Canada under the charter. By contrast, it is far easier for governments to regulate conduct on other kinds of platforms precisely because of the nature of the activity they facilitate—economic exchange, the movement of goods, the sale of goods and the accommodation of other services.

The previous witness spoke about root causes. Certainly, online platforms that permit the sharing of extremist content have an important role to play in reducing the flow of extremist ideas that lead to recruitment and the like. There's an important role for governments working in international partnerships. As the previous witness mentioned, this is a transnational problem. There is certainly an important role there, and an important interest to reconcile, but I would suggest that we also need to deal with the problem in public policy that we've provided other kinds of online platforms with a sort of digital exceptionalism from regulation.

This is now being corrected with regard to crowdfunding through the extension of generally applicable rules that apply to other financial intermediaries that facilitate transactions in the bricks and mortar world to crowdfunding sites. This is a welcome development. I would suggest that it would be a useful approach for Parliament to consider to extend regulation that applies in the bricks and mortar physical world to activities online, especially those that could be used to facilitate and incite online violence or violence in the real world.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you, sir.

We'll now move to our opening round of questions. We may not get beyond an opening round of questions. It will be close.

I'll start by inviting Ms. Dancho, who has six minutes for questions, to go ahead, please.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

My questions will be for you, Mr. Fadden. Thank you for your service to our country.

I'm very interested in what you said in your opening remarks about the root causes of IMVE. Can you just give the committee, in perhaps a minute or less, an overview of what you believe to be some of the causes? What drives people to extremism in this regard?

[Richard Fadden]

Thank you.

I think fundamentally what drives people to this sort of thing is the sense that they are not being listened to. Fundamentally, they come to the conclusion that the political structures we have at various levels are ignoring them. We find their views sometimes distasteful and they are driven over time to what we would call “acts of desperation”.

I think fundamentally our democratic institutions have not adapted to dealing effectively with people who have views that fall outside of the mainstream. That is infuriating and I think it drives people to violence.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

If the Prime Minister of the country says certain people have fringe and unacceptable views and he calls people misogynistic, do you think that fuels any of that?

[Richard Fadden]

I don't think that attacking views is helpful on the part of anybody—not by you, not by me and not by the Prime Minister. You can disagree with them. That's a different issue, but I think the Prime Minister went a little bit beyond that and I don't think it was helpful. It's the sort of thing that reinforces the sense that they're not being listened to.

I actually disagree with most of the views that were being expressed in that general context, but that's neither here nor there. We need to find some means of dialoguing. When I used to work, I used to argue that we have to find some means of dialoguing, for example, with the Taliban. If you don't talk to them somehow, you aren't going stop fighting them.

My argument is that we cannot start a priori by arguing that they're wrong. You can argue that they must not engage in violence. That's an entirely different issue and I want to separate that very carefully. If they pass that line and become engaged in violence, you have to do something about it, but we need to find some way of talking to them.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

That was certainly the position the Conservative Party took, which was that we need to not be pouring fuel on the fire because that only makes it worse. It sounds like you would be overall in agreement with the position that we need to open up that dialogue.

Do you feel that any government's exclusionary policies could drive people to extremism? For example, there was the impact of vaccine mandates—although I'm not looking to debate the mandates specifically—of excluding certain people from society.

[Richard Fadden]

I think it can.

On the other hand, if we're going to live in a society that believes in the rule of law, if you take that view, you have to face the consequences. I don't think you should be ostracized for doing it, but if the law says you have to be vaccinated in circumstance X, Y or Z and you're not, and the law provides for penalty, then you have to deal with the penalties.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Certainly it's important to maintain the rule of law and order in society, but I appreciate that you used the word “ostracized”. We've had several different witnesses talk about those who are ostracized from society—lone wolves and those who feel isolated.

Again, do you feel that anything that isolates those people from society or ostracizes them from public life could drive them to extremism? When we see this again, we could talk about radical Islamic extremism as well or really any form of extremism, but in particular I'm asking about a side effect of the vaccine mandates and their exclusionary impact on society in certain areas. Again, I'm not debating the necessity or validity of that.