Public Safety Committee on June 2nd, 2022

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

Minister, you've now heard from the DM that there was foreign influence in the 2021 election. What do you have to say about that?

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Perhaps I misheard, but I heard the deputy minister say that there was no foreign interference impacting on the integrity of the election.

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

On the overall election, but the deputy minister did just clearly state that there was foreign....

You did say that there was foreign interference in the election.

[Rob Stewart]

No, sir, I did not.

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

You just said that the overall integrity of the election was protected, but you did cite social media attempts at foreign interference in the 2021 federal election.

[Rob Stewart]

No, I said there were social media efforts to influence the outcome of the votes, which we did not adjudicate to be foreign interference.

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

Oh, you have not adjudicated that to be foreign interference.

[Rob Stewart]

No, we did not adjudicate individual ridings, and we did not adjudicate them to be foreign interference.

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

Is the case now closed on that, or are you continuing to investigate that?

[Rob Stewart]

No, we're not continuing to investigate. We're obviously monitoring, in both public and national security institutions, the environment for—

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

Are there any lessons that you learned from that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

We're out of time.

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

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

I'm glad we were able to clarify at the end exactly what was said so that there was no misinterpretation of what the evidence might have said to us all.

Now I will call upon Mr. Noormohamed.

I think you're with us virtually, sir. You have six minutes from whenever you take the floor.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister and Deputy, for being with us today.

I'm very pleased that my colleague Mr. Lloyd led off with the question about cybersecurity, at least at the outset of his question, because I think it's important for Canadians to hear directly from you, Minister, about the preparation we have for our critical infrastructure, our grid, our water supply and so on and so forth in respect of potential cyber-effects.

Can you share with us a little of your view as Minister of Emergency Preparedness around how prepared we are and the type of work being done by your department and others to ensure that Canadians can feel assured that the power supply, water and other critical infrastructure will indeed be in a position to withstand potential cyber-attacks that may affect computer and other systems that regulate that infrastructure?

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you very much. It's a very important question, Mr. Noormohamed.

First of all, I've had a number of discussions with, for example, the Communications Security Establishment, which is the federal department that primarily has responsibility for ensuring the protection of our government systems. I am assured that the world that we sometimes would define as the “gc.ca” data environment is very robust in its resiliency and security. There's been significant work done by CSE and all of government in order to make sure that those systems are well protected.

We're also working very closely with the provinces and territories, as well as municipalities and the private sector. Critical infrastructure is quite diverse and spread across the country, and is often under the purview, authority and responsibility of the provinces, territories, and in many cases municipal and even private sector interests.

I will tell you that I believe there's a strong level of resiliency and strength within the financial sector and with other certain areas of critical infrastructure, but we have seen quite recently cyber-attacks that are directed towards critical infrastructure in the United States, for example, with pipelines. In this country we've seen similar attacks, sometimes taking the form of ransomware attacks, which are not necessarily foreign interference but rather criminal attacks on systems that are directed towards health care data, for example, in one of our provinces. We've seen attacks on municipal transportation networks, which also form part of our critical infrastructure.

It's an important part of the work that both CSE and CSIS and our government are doing, working with our provincial and territorial partners and with private industry in order to go out and provide them with support and information to help them become better prepared in the face of these types of attacks, and also developing supports. We provide that support to our provincial, territorial and private sector partners when they are subject to these types of attacks. Our government goes in and provides expert assistance to help them recover.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you, Minister.

Deputy Minister, you cover a very large remit. You have a lot, indeed, to be worried about. I want to make sure you understand that the question I'm asking you now is not at all intended to be a political question, but one for a public servant whose service we value. I would very much like you, as a public servant, to give us an answer from the perspective of the public service.

One thing that this committee has looked at in great detail is misinformation. We have looked at the way in which the voices of the far right, the conspiracy theorists, etc., have been amplified by Russians in order to sow discontent, to foment discord and frankly to destabilize Canadian society. As a public servant with purview over our national security and public safety establishment and our preparedness establishment, how concerned are you about this? Can you share with us some of the things you are doing to buffer and to prepare our institutions against these concerns and potential risks?

[Rob Stewart]

As a starting point, I will say that we are constantly trying to monitor and improve our ability to monitor the risks associated with mis-, dis- and mal-information. There is an institution in the Global Affairs portfolio called the rapid response mechanism, which was agreed to by the G7 and was tasked with the monitoring of media and social media for this kind of threat. It works in concert, obviously, with allies.

Inside the national security community and in the policing community, we are also doing the same thing. We are obviously concerned about the risks that mis-, dis- and mal-information pose to Canadians and to the stability of our democracy. We feel that this is an area in which we have to spend a lot of time and a lot of effort. That is certainly something we are doing.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you.

Minister, I'll go back to you.

As a British Columbian, I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to, first of all, thank you for your visit to B.C. recently and to ask you this as we head towards summer and hopefully not another forest fire season.

We've seen terrible devastation of infrastructure in British Columbia over the course of the last year or so and responses from all levels of government to address it. With the experience of the last couple of years, how prepared do you feel we are as a province and how prepared do you feel the federal government is to be able to respond to risks that are likely to find their way to British Columbia again through the forest fire season this summer and beyond?

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

I will tell you that we work very closely with Emergency Management B.C. on its firefighter response. After a number of years of experience in working with them, I will tell you that they are quite expert at this and provide a very robust response; however, as a result of the fires that we've seen over the past few years—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

I'm sorry, Minister; you have 10 seconds, please.

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

We're investing a lot of money in training additional firefighters and providing additional equipment. We're also investing pretty significantly in a new wildfire detection satellite system. Although we have a robust response, we know it needs to be better.

By the way, we're including traditional indigenous knowledge and greater engagement with aboriginal communities in that response.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I now invite Ms. Michaud to begin her six-minute slot.

The floor is yours.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, minister, for being with us today. Welcome back to the committee.

I also thank you, Mr. Stewart, for being with us.

Minister, in your opening remarks, you mentioned the economic sanctions imposed on Russia by Canada, in an attempt to isolate Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. We are studying the situation in committee. The Standing Committee on National Defence is also looking at it. Since the situation fluctuates considerably, it is difficult to anticipate. In the same way, we did not anticipate the invasion of Ukraine at all.

Do you think that Canada could be adversely affected in the short to medium term because of these economic sanctions?

Are you preparing for it and, if so, how?

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

That is a very important question. When we imposed these sanctions, we looked very carefully at whether we were vulnerable to reciprocal actions on the part of Russia.

Canada does not use Russia as a particularly significant trading partner, but there were some impacts. For example, a very significant impact is that Russia is a source of much of the nitrogen fertilizer essential to Canadian agriculture and farmers across this country. The sanctions that were imposed had an impact on the availability and the cost of that much-needed fertilizer. I know this is an issue that Agriculture Canada is very much seized with and is working on in order to provide support and assistance to our farmers impacted by that measure.

We're obviously seeing, as a result of the sanctions—not just imposed by Canada, but imposed globally, particularly among Europeans—a very significant impact on supply chains and, in particular, around energy products such as petroleum and liquid natural gas. The impact is most severely felt in Europe, but it's having a reciprocal impact here. We're seeing impacts on the supply chains here and in the cost of gasoline for Canadian consumers.

Those are all issues of significant concern to this committee and to all Canadians, that we all, unfortunately, have to pay a bit of a price for our response to Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, but our support for the people of Ukraine is unwavering and we have joined a global effort in order to respond with these sanctions

I believe that the sanctions are quite impactful on Russia. They are often motivated by the profits they make from their trade, in particular in gasoline and liquid natural gas. Those sanctions, I believe, will have a detrimental effect on them.