National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the committee and Parliament. It's a great honour to be here to speak with you about Canada's role in NATO, and specifically about information warfare and the serious threat of disinformation. The sovereignty that we have poole

National Defence committee  Well—

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to speak with you today about the threat posed to our security and our democracy by foreign influence and information operations. In addition to being a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier and CDA Institutes, I

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. I think it's very difficult to say whether an invasion is imminent. It would appear, because of the number of troops and the hardware that has been placed around Ukraine to its east, south and north, that some sort of activity is imminent. How and w

National Defence committee  If I may add quickly, the Russian government has engaged in a mass mobilization of the Arctic over the past 10 years. They've built over 20 new bases or refurbished 20 new bases, including offensive bases for long-range bombers. They've also created superweapons for the Arctic, h

National Defence committee  I'll focus specifically on Russia right now. We know that over the past two years during the pandemic the Russian government has focused its disinformation efforts on exploiting the pandemic and COVID. We were warned already in March of 2020 by the European Union that the Russia

National Defence committee  In the context of COVID?

National Defence committee  It's been persistent. It's been there all along. We have seen the transformation of these protests and the introduction of anti-government narratives. We saw that happen already in the fall of 2020 when the first protests started appearing in Canada. I think the first one was in

National Defence committee  There are two answers, quickly. Russia has become an expert in creating completely fake news. They've used scenes from video games in the past that they've tried to pass off as real television news reports. The other thing is that Russian state media doesn't only broadcast thr

National Defence committee  I'll just quickly answer that. I think it's extremely important that our forces be equipped to deal with cognitive warfare. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, this is the 21st-century battlefield, and our forces are being targeted regularly, especially in places like Latvia a

National Defence committee  Yes, absolutely. They need to be trained. I know that some training was occurring about a year and a half ago, two years ago, which was unfortunately derailed. I know there was a unit within the armed forces to deal with cognitive warfare, which has now been sort of pushed aside.

National Defence committee  I think members of our own military are allowed to believe and think and speak the way they feel appropriate, but if these members of our military and members of our law enforcement and others are active in these sorts of anti-government movements, then I think we should be more

National Defence committee  I can't really speak to how these movements are being financed, especially the ones in Ottawa right now. What I can speak to is the first part of your question about these proxy platforms. There is an entire disinformation ecosystem being created by the Russian government. We're

National Defence committee  This is definitely part of that hybrid warfare and cognitive warfare. As for any suggestions that there's some sort of a genocide, as Vladimir Putin said in his presser just two days ago—that there was some sort of genocide going on in Donbass—this is disinformation. Russia de f

National Defence committee  I think there's a certain timeline on a full-blown invasion of Ukraine, but let's not forget that Vladimir Putin can continue intimidating Ukraine, can continue intimidating NATO for quite some time and he's benefiting from this. The price of oil is reaching record highs, and let