National Defence committee  Good afternoon. Thank you very much for your question. I would reinforce that our budget is significant. It's almost $800 million and a 12% increase over last year. I mentioned earlier that some of that funding is for cryptographic equipment, but also to increase the security and reliability of Government of Canada systems.

National Defence committee  Thank you. I would note that, in the CSE portion of the budget for this year, we have a submission for a new year in a multi-year funding proposal to modernize aging cryptographic equipment and infrastructure, which will allow us to safeguard classified information, including in the CAF systems.

National Defence committee  CSE has a mandate to collect foreign intelligence and also a long track record of supporting military operations with CAF, so that money has been dedicated to analytic resources to produce intelligence that can help Government of Canada decision-makers use foreign intelligence to inform their policies, but also to help CAF with the Operation Impact objectives and to provide force protection for the forces that are deployed.

National Defence committee  It is predominantly based on analytic resources that are required to do that work, so people.

National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Chair. I would note that CSE and CAF have a very long-standing partnership of almost eight decades of collaboration. CAF's cyber-authorities were laid out in the “Strong, Secure, Engaged” policy, and CSE has its authorities laid out in the CSE Act. We have a clear national mandate for protecting Canada's most important systems and information and for conducting foreign cyber-operations as well, within certain parameters, and also a new authority to assist CAF with technical and operational support.

National Defence committee  As you know, CSE has a mandate to conduct foreign intelligence, and a large part of that is looking at foreign cyber-threats. I've also just mentioned that we try to decant the knowledge we have into our public threat assessments. The last national cyber-threat assessment highlighted four countries—Russia, China, Iran and North Korea—as the most significant strategic cyber-threats to Canada, but we also talked about how pervasive cybercrime is as an ever-present threat as well.

National Defence committee  Shall I take that question?

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for the question. It's very front of mind. CSE's mandate is first and foremost in cyberspace. Whether we're collecting foreign intelligence through cyberspace or we're helping to protect systems through our cybersecurity mandate, it is our raison d’être, so this part of the minister's mandate letter is very near and dear to our hearts.

National Defence committee  Our mandate exists across the entire country. We have a mandate for defending Canadian government systems. I feel like there is some more work that needs to be done there. However, the defences that we have built so far are quite dynamic and resilient. We are really working on a more national campaign to get Canadians, small and medium enterprises, and critical infrastructure owners and operators to really try to raise the bar by just adopting basic cybersecurity hygiene measures.

National Defence committee  The government's decision will be forthcoming.

National Defence committee  As you know, the CSE has a very significant mandate when it comes to cybersecurity. We are very interested in telecommunications security and have been working with the other partners in the government on the proposals that will inform a decision for the government.

Canada-China Relations committee  I'll assume that's directed at me, unless somebody else wants to weigh in. I can't really speak to the specifics of your question, but I can confirm that disinformation and misinformation are very serious matters and we are looking at them very carefully.

Canada-China Relations committee  I would say first of all that we were very pleased to hear the reports of Facebook disrupting the campaigns that were directed against Uighurs around the world and [Technical difficulty—Editor] in Canada. It's important to note that CSE does not have a mandate to direct any of its activities at entities in Canada—so we're a foreign intelligence agency—and that prohibits [Technical difficulty—Editor] but when we detect information or indications that foreign actors are targeting individuals in Canada we can work with our domestic partners to ensure they have that information and can take action.

Canada-China Relations committee  It takes a very broad group of different players in the private sector and in government to monitor all of this space and to work together. Facebook plays a very specific role, and when it takes down these kinds of campaigns, we learn about it usually at the same time as everybody else.

Canada-China Relations committee  CSE is not a regulator. We do not comment, endorse or ban specific technologies or specific companies, but we publish advice that helps Canadians to choose wisely and to understand how an app works, where their data resides, how to turn on the security features, how to update those apps when prompted and how to delete them when they're no longer used.