Public Safety committee  Absolutely.

Public Safety committee  Both the United States and Australia have these. One of the things that it avoids is having people showing up in front of Parliament under spurious conditions, for instance, and not realizing that these are actually entities that are effectively paid for, or otherwise resourced or tasked by a foreign government, so I think certainly it helps to enhance the ability to distinguish what effectively foreign agents....

Public Safety committee  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.

Public Safety committee  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.

Public Safety committee  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.

Public Safety committee  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.

Public Safety committee  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—

Public Safety committee  There is always a risk of horizontal or vertical escalation by Russia, either toward Ukraine or toward allied or partner countries. The relationship with Russia is definitely difficult. We have to remember that Russia is a threat to our interests not only in Europe, our second strategic partner in terms of importance after the United States, but also in the Arctic, which requires considerable investments, as you mentioned, in NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and in other organizations.

Public Safety committee  My comments show that, for two decades, the government has neglected investing in the Canadian Armed Forces' basic capabilities for the defence of the continent. That is clearly important, as a state's primary objective should always be its security and its citizens' security. We should also consider that the security of North America is an investment in NATO.

Public Safety committee  That's a very good question because, in part, this is sort of the dog that didn't bark. We assumed that we were going to see a lot more and a lot more sophistication than we did. The challenge with Russia is this. The SolarWinds attacks showed that Russia, China and a handful of other actors have extremely sophisticated capabilities to be able to build targeted exploits, compared with the 98% or 99% of attacks that are reasonably medium level and that you can defend against them with reasonable capabilities.

Public Safety committee  A very simple place to start is government networks. There's no plan for significant reinvestment in government networks. There is no strategy to further fortify and innovate Canadian networks compared to our allies, and in particular, compared to our adversaries. The first place we should start is by having a strategic plan to reinvest in Government of Canada corporate networks.

Public Safety committee  Over the last 25 years the amount of demands on the Canadian Armed Forces has increased significantly, both qualitatively in terms of the complexity of the security environment and quantitatively in terms of what's required of the Canadian Armed Forces. The Canadian Armed Forces are currently, as of February this year, 7,600 people short of their authorized troop strength of 72,500, but they are about 10,000 people short on the operational side.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will speak in English, but feel free to ask your questions in either official language. Ideologically motivated violent extremism and seditious activity in Canada and other western countries are being exploited by foreign actors. Russian misinformation and disinformation on open source social media platforms are undermining police and the sitting government.

Public Safety committee  Mr. MacGregor, the fundamental failure in Ottawa during the illegal occupation was an absence of the rule of law in a democratic G7 country for the better part of three weeks. That is absolutely inexcusable. The state was absent. We were not able to enforce the legislation that we have on incitement, hate crimes, sedition, on whatever else you might want to include here.

Public Safety committee  The situation in Ottawa showed that our national security structure and apparatus are simply not aligned with the threats we are facing in the 21st century, xnot only in terms of issues surrounding extremist ideology, but also in terms of money laundering and other factors. We need a more significant reform and critical overview of our national security apparatus.