Public Safety Committee on May 17th, 2022

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

It's one tool in the tool box. I'd have higher priorities. Having a proper, independent, stand-alone foreign intelligence collection service would be a higher priority. Other priorities would be having a stand-alone criminal intelligence commission in Canada like Australia has, having a five-year annual review, having proper doctrine in terms of cyber-engagement and having red lines for Canada and its sovereign capacity to hit back at countries that compromise our critical infrastructure.

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

Now—

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

I'm sorry.

There are probably things that I'd say have a higher payoff than the registry, but the registry is certainly one element in a tool box.

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

Dr. Leuprecht, are you aware of what happened to my colleague Kenny Chiu in the last election? It was primarily because he introduced a bill that proposed making this foreign influence registry.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

I'm aware of some of the online activity that was directed at your colleague, and I believe that this activity had a material influence on the outcome in that particular riding.

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

You might be aware of a McGill study that said that for the overall election, it didn't have a material impact, but at certain riding levels, they can't discount that it had a material impact on the election.

Would you say that his was one of those ridings, primarily because he brought forward this bill that was targeted by foreign disinformation campaigns to defeat an incumbent candidate in a Canadian election?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Yes. I think it clearly undermined our democracy, and it was quite nefarious, because the activity—as you well know—was conducted in neither English nor French. It was primarily conducted in a third language. It is a language in which our security intelligence and law enforcement agencies have rather limited capabilities. We also did not have a plan of how we would actively identify such influence activity and be able to counter it.

Yes, I think it is a canary in the coal mine of what any member of Parliament faces when they actively engage in activity that displeases some of our adversaries.

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

That's great.

I'm reading the 2021 Elections Canada report, and it talks about misinformation and disinformation, but it seems like they're really downplaying the impact of disinformation and misinformation, saying that Canadians can trust the election. I think overall, the vast majority.... We can trust the election, but we know how sometimes elections in Canada can literally be decided by a single riding or a single handful of ridings.

Do you think Elections Canada needs to take this more seriously and alert Canadians—not only in their reports after the fact, but even during an election—that there is a disinformation campaign being conducted during the election?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

It's not an online problem. This is a long-standing problem in Canada, where riding associations are captured by certain entities that are close to certain countries, certain ethnic groups or certain religious groups. I would say the online attempts at clear interference in our democratic processes are simply a continuation of a long-standing problem that is related to a riding, its constituency association levels and insufficient attention, but also inefficient constraints—

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

Do you think Elections Canada should have done more?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

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

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Absolutely.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I would now like to invite Mr. Noormohamed to take a five-minute question slot whenever he's ready.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Vancouver Granville, Lib.]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again, thank you to all the witnesses for being here.

Dr. Leuprecht, I was struck by something you said in your opening statement, when you talked about the link—as my colleague Mr. MacGregor mentioned—to our study on IMVE. You talked about separatist ideation and the impact on human security, and the role foreign actors are playing in feeding into this particular trend to foment discord in Canada.

Can you talk a bit more about that?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

I think what we need to understand here is that often we focus—as Mr. Lloyd just did—very specifically on the direct interference in our democratic process. However, what these actors are really up to is simply trying to undermine our values and our institutions, and their legitimacy along a broad range, from politics to the economy, to our diplomacy and the cyberspace.

What we have here is effectively—and the pandemic has been a great laboratory for our adversaries—a systematic attempt to undermine the public confidence in our institutions that are critical for the effective functioning of democratic societies. These are the public health institutions, law enforcement institutions and, I would say, even some of our intelligence institutions inadvertently, I think, made very significant mistakes here in not being able to [Technical difficulty—Editor] some of these challenges.

That's what I mean by shifting from a national security to a human security lens, where we understand that our adversaries are constantly pressing us hard in every way they can to undermine our institutions, our democracy and our legitimacy.

[Taleeb Noormohamed]

Thank you.

Who do they tend to exploit? Can you speak to a specific demographic? Can you speak to a specific kind of....political spectrum? Not partisan, but is it broadly on a political spectrum? In spreading this misinformation, who do these foreign actors tend to exploit? What do they tend to amplify to do exactly what you just talked about, which is to undermine institutions in Canada?

Is there a trend that you have seen?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

The trend we've certainly seen is an uptake in people who sympathize with views on both extremes of the political spectrum—the extreme left and also the extreme right. The challenge with the growing sympathies on the extreme right is that, unlike the sympathies on the extreme left, they tend to be actively associated with incitement to violence, seditious activities and other active engagements to undermine our institutions and our government.

This is why I think it is embarrassing that the Government of Canada has not called a royal commission into the incident that transpired in February, which was the single greatest failure of our national security infrastructure in decades. I think it is embarrassing that we are not having an open and honest conversation to identify precisely the sources and causes that you've just identified and the influence that this had on what effectively brought a democratic capital of a G7 country to a standstill for three weeks.

[Taleeb Noormohamed]

Just leaning into this a little bit, in the United States we have seen the devastating impact to democratic institutions when political actors and political players start to lean into this very same narrative.

Are you concerned at all that this is starting to happen in Canada? How should we all, as parliamentarians across party lines, work together to stop it, if it is in fact an issue?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

I think parliamentarians need to be very careful not to sympathize with activity that is criminal or that is clearly illegal. When we start to blur those boundaries, we get ourselves into trouble.

At the same time, I think we're starting to get ourselves into trouble where we get these wink-wink, nudge-nudge sort of hints from governments to police that suggest not to go too hard on these protesters because we're sympathetic to them, but go hard on those protesters because we're not sympathetic to them.

I think we need a multipartisan consensus to make sure that the rule of law is enforced equally and equitably in this country, so that law enforcement always has intelligence and clear direction into what its approach needs to be.

I'm deeply concerned about the extent to which we are increasingly politicizing especially law enforcement activities in this country because of the extent of the sympathies a government might have for these protesters or those protesters, instead of drawing a clear line. If a protest is illegal—let alone if a protest is criminal—we need to let the rule of law take its course.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I now would like to call upon Ms. Michaud.

You have two and a half minutes and the floor is yours.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to use my remaining time with you, Mr. Shull.

I really liked your Wayne Gretzky analogy, to the effect that we must skate to where the puck is going to be and not to where it is. That's not only great advice for the young hockey players of this world, but it is also good advice for Canada's security.

Considering the current context, what should be the next step for the Government of Canada or Parliament to strengthen the country's security?

Charles Burton, from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, testified last week. He said that transparency may be lacking at the RCMP, CSIS and CSE when it comes to potentially sensitive information they gather on national security, including on Russia. He said that may be preventing parliamentarians from doing their job properly, as they don't have access to that information to enact legislation intended to enhance security.

What do you think about that? Do you agree?

What do you think we should do about it?

[Aaron Shull]

I would just come back to my broad observation that we tend to do things in a siloed format. There's this policy framework, the defence policy, the national security strategy, the innovation policy....

We need to look at this holistically because it's all connected. The reason I know it's connected is because adversarial states are leaning into every crack they can with their state power. They're treating this as strategically connected and we need to do the same.

The role that Parliament can play in this is to have that wider view of the nation as a whole, recognizing that this is all deeply connected and that we need a new strategic framework.

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

Thank you.

I have a bit of time left. I would like you to talk to us about the disinformation Russia is currently spreading and the repercussion that can have in Canada. Are we well prepared for it?

How do you think we can protect Canadians against that?

[Aaron Shull]

Dr. Wark and I are going to submit a brief to the committee. I'll submit a disinformation “kill chain”. It shows exactly how it works and how the campaigns are formulated. We'll offer specific recommendations on how I think we can intervene, because it's not helpful, that's for sure.

I've also never heard anyone argue on behalf of a Russian troll farm. There's no will there.