MPs call on government to act to counter foreign interference now

Members of the House ethics committee are calling on the federal government to urgently act on their nearly two dozen recommendations to counter foreign interference in Canada, including putting in place a foreign agent registry.

Speaking to reporters about a new report on foreign interference, co-chairs of the House of Commons Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee Bloc Québécois MP René Villemure and Liberal MP Mona Fortier said the government should not wait for the recently launched public inquiry to wrap before taking steps to shore up Canada's democracy from foreign threats.

"We're looking at the same thing from different lenses with different goals," Villemure said about the public inquiry. "I think that eventually these two will merge into something, but what, it's too early to say."

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On Tuesday, the ethics committee released an 82-page report, wrapping its months-long study on foreign interference. It details 22 recommendations, including:

• Tamping down on high-level leaks by strengthening the "rules and penalties governing illicit disclosure of national security intelligence";
• Updating policies to reflect the threats posed by artificial intelligence (AI) and investing in digital literacy to counter foreign interference activities using AI;
• Holding "online platforms accountable for publishing false or misleading information," specifically when it comes to linguistic minority communities not represented by the mainstream media;
• Working with minority-language and diaspora communities affected by foreign interference to "provide them reliable information on the Canadian democratic process";
• and tasking Parliament's top-secret national security committee with conducting a yearly review of foreign interference threats in Canada. 

The report also recommends the federal government "establish a foreign influence registry as soon as possible."

Consultations on the process to implement such a registry — an online searchable database of agents working for foreign governments — are already underway, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said it is a "complex" file.

On his way into question period on Tuesday, Trudeau said the federal government is "continuing to work on that, because it's an important issue."

The report also details a number of recommendations as they relate to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), including:

• That the organization help increase national security literacy using "increased and regular" information sharing with the public;
• and that it "directly warn" MPs of foreign interference-related threats, something that's recently started to occur.

The committee's study included a focus on meddling by China and Russia, particularly as they relate to "the rise of xenophobia, illicit disclosures of national security intelligence, and the risk of technological advances."

The ethics committee's probe and report are apart from the work being done by the Procedure and House Affairs Committee (PROC), which has also been studying foreign interference in Canada, amid heightened scrutiny of the issue in the last year.

CONSERVATIVES WANT TRUDEAU FOUNDATION AUDIT

Members of the committee were not able to unanimously agree on recommendations in the report, with Conservative members of the committee adding a supplementary report to call for a forensic audit of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

Former members of the Trudeau Foundation — including former CEOs Morris Rosenberg and Pascale Fournier, and the prime minister's brother, Alexandre Trudeau — all testified before the committee last spring.

The heightened scrutiny of the organization followed reports the Trudeau Foundation had accepted $140,000 in donations from a Chinese billionaire and a Chinese businessman with ties to the regime in Beijing.

"It is clear, through testimony heard by the Committee from current and former Members of the Trudeau foundation that the foundation had no bylaws for foreign interference, no oversight of donations, and no due diligence done of donations," the Conservatives' supplementary report states. "Seemingly, it was the perfect conduit for a foreign dictatorship to influence Prime Minister Justin Trudeau."

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The committee as a whole, however, states in the report it "cannot take a definitive position in this case."

Villemure said the committee devoted a lot of time during the study to the Trudeau Foundation, but that "the report speaks for itself, and things were different at a different time."

He said while he believes people involved with the Trudeau Foundation at the time looked at the issue with a "pink lens," for the sake of a common recommendation in the committee's report, he's willing to "give them the benefit of the doubt" that "it wouldn't happen this way today."

CONSERVATIVES OPPOSE TECH GIANTS RECOMMENDATION

Conservative committee members also disagreed with recommendation 16 of the report, which states the government should "hold online platforms accountable for publishing false or misleading information," and support "the media ecosystems" of linguistic minority communities and other groups that are not represented by mainstream media.

According to the Conservatives' dissenting report, they believe the recommendation could lead to the censorship of online speech. They also write that it could "stifle the right of the press to freely report."

Fortier said she was "surprised and disappointed" the issue came up Tuesday, and chalked up the dissenting report to "a little bit of politics," because she and other members of the committee were unaware it was coming.

Villemure said the issue is something committee members "obviously disagreed on."

When asked how the committee would classify "online platform," he said that means "anything that's online," which could include Canadian mainstream media websites.

However, he said, the committee did not specify the definition.

Villemure also said the committee has not laid out how exactly the government should hold online platforms accountable, but said he "assume(s) we'll have to have boxing gloves."

"We're not into the how at the committee, we're into the why," he said. "But nonetheless, I think what happens online is basically shaping society, and if we're not acting in a decisive manner, it will shape society to the bottom, and that we have to act."

The federal government has 60 days to respond to the report's recommendations.

With files from CTVNews.ca's Senior Digital Parliamentary Reporter Rachel Aiello