National Defence committee  Thank you. That's a very good question. I don't think it's just our forces. I think there needs to be broader awareness in general for all Canadians so that they can recognize information operations and defend themselves against them. In the context of our forces, again, I think we need to develop that capability to directly address those sorts of narratives that I mentioned earlier and challenge them and push back on them.

National Defence committee  I think that Canada had, and all of our allies had, a huge wake-up call on February 24 of last year. I think that most of us, including Canada, rapidly developed our capabilities to try to address this threat. I think now, finally, our government and certainly our forces and those of our allies are taking the Russian threat seriously.

National Defence committee  I don't have an assessment of how well defended our energy industry is. I think that each company probably has its own protocols. I think we would be wise as a nation to try to create some sort of standards for cybersecurity for various different industries and such so that there would be guidelines for those companies, whether it's the oil patch or pipeline companies, so that they have an understanding of the minimums that they need to meet in order to secure themselves.

National Defence committee  We can always do more. The threat is always evolving, and we need to make sure that we're keeping up with it. My understanding is that the capabilities of CSE are growing, but we need to make sure that in those specific organizations that control the various different parts of the infrastructure, the people there are well trained and have an understanding of how to defend against these cyber-attacks.

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. I think CAF intelligence command is doing a great job of posting and debunking various different Russian disinformation narratives right now. In terms of public affairs, that capability certainly is there. However, when it comes to our forces tactically, if they were engaged in a conflict, the capability that was being developed up until 2020 is no longer there.

National Defence committee  Well, absolutely. I mean, disinformation is often a form of digital communication. It's used by our adversaries, as I mentioned earlier, to destabilize our democracy, to turn each of us one against another. They do this using various different platforms of social media. I mentioned as well that email is used to do that, and then, of course, in the cyber realm, we see doxing and phishing attempts to try to lure individuals to provide data and such and we see individuals opening up their computers to cyber-attacks or cyber-hackers to steal data and such.

National Defence committee  There have been clear instances in which provincial parliamentarians in Ontario fell victim to foreign information operations during the pandemic. There was an Ontario MPP who supported anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown views, which is perfectly normal in Canada, but the Russian government, the Russian state media, recognized this and asked him onto RT.

National Defence committee  —so yes, there are definitely parliamentarians who've been—

National Defence committee  Again, that's a very good question. Having read some of the information about those capabilities when they were being developed, I know the Canadian Armed Forces take information and psychological warfare very seriously. As I mentioned earlier, Vladimir Putin's partner, Alina Kabaeva, has mentioned that information is like a Kalashnikov.

National Defence committee  I find that any future technologies are a deep concern, especially when it comes to the information realm. AI is developing very quickly. The speed with which our foreign adversaries can put out information and disinformation is going to be quite alarming. I'm not sure we're prepared to address that growing threat.

National Defence committee  Thank you for that question—

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Foreign information operations—cyber-operations—in that context were absolutely targeting Canada during the pandemic. We had anticipated this already in 2020, when the pandemic was just starting. Our allies in the EU at the eastern StratCom also anticipated that foreign actors, including Russia, would use disinformation and online platforms, etc., to intensify the effects of the pandemic.

National Defence committee  There are lots of countries that are doing a great job in this area. These are frontline countries—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. Taiwan is doing an exceptional job in combatting Chinese disinformation. Finland and Sweden as well have adopted early childhood education programs into their curriculum to make sure that all future generations of Swedes and Finns have the cognitive resources necessary to critically assess the information they're consuming.

National Defence committee  In terms of the information realm, we know that China has targeted Canada with various different nefarious activities to try to undermine our democracy during the past three elections. During the last election, my organization, DisinfoWatch, detected Chinese state actors trying to inject narratives through state media into our information space.

National Defence committee  No, unfortunately I don't have data on which candidates received funding and which received support from the Chinese government.