Canada’s democracy is also under attack from within, report says


OTTAWA—Canada’s federal election in 2021 saw a “surge” in disruptive behaviour not just by foreign players, but by domestic actors too, a new report has concluded.

Morris Rosenberg, a former senior civil servant, reviewed the way Canada monitored interference during the last election and he is urging the government to expand when legal authorities track and disclose interference to better cover the months before an election campaign actually begins.

Rosenberg’s report reiterated the conclusion of national security agencies and a separate panel of top public servants who monitored the five-week 2021 campaign. They said although there were foreign and domestic attempts at interference in the 2021 election, as in 2019, nothing rose to the level of having an impact on a free and fair vote that should have led to a public alert midcampaign.

Most of the public and political attention including at parliamentary committee hearings has focused on the extent of foreign interference, particularly by China.

From 2015 to 2021, disruptive “cyber activities were mainly attributed to state actors, especially Russia, China and Iran,” Rosenberg said.

Yet the nature of elections interference has changed. Domestic sources of interference are rising, and since the 2016 and 2020 U.S. elections, Canada recognizes there is fertile ground for “malign domestic actors” to also disrupt the conduct of fair elections, he said.

He pointed to an increasingly fractured media environment, the rise of misinformation and disinformation during the pandemic, and more aggressive tactics by protesters which meant the 2021 Canadian election “saw a surge in violent discourse, online anti-government behaviour, and threatening messages,” as well as actual incidents of violence.

Rosenberg did not identify any domestic groups or individuals responsible, but he said the threat of violence “was driven, in part, by opposition to COVID-19 restrictions. Concerns about violence were also linked to the proliferation of extremist, racist and anti-government views that proliferated online and in some cable television outlets.”

Further, he said, “false information about parties, candidates, or leaders can be spread well in advance of the campaign. Cyber attacks on political parties can occur before the election is called. Covert attempts by foreign actors to secure the nomination of candidates who might be favourable to foreign interests would occur in the months leading up to an election.”

“The parties themselves have a limited ability to identify whether this is occurring” and some want more help from national security agencies,” he said.

Experts told a Commons committee Wednesday security agencies are often unable to determine whether the source of misinformation or disinformation is foreign or domestic.

Government monitoring of active interference is limited to the so-called “writ” period — usually the five weeks after an election is called — and doesn’t cover the whole time a government is in “caretaker” mode, such as after a June dissolution of Parliament ahead of a fall election date that is set out in the law on fixed election dates.

Rosenberg said the protocol requiring active monitoring and disclosure of election interference should cover that period.

Ottawa should assess whether the membership of the Security and Intelligence Threats to Election (SITE) task force needs to be modified “in light of the growing problem of domestic interference,” Rosenberg said.

The task force that advises the election monitoring panel is now made up of top officials from the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), the RCMP, and a “rapid response mechanism” housed in the Foreign Affairs Department that co-ordinates with G7 countries. When the task force was put in place in 2019, it was largely focused on foreign interference.

Rosenberg said the threshold for triggering public notice of alleged interference during an election should be reviewed, suggesting that even “small-scale” activities limited to one riding might warrant a public alert. But he acknowledged that notice could itself erode confidence in an election outcome.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday he would study all of Rosenberg’s recommendations, but is concerned about “consequences” to lowering the threshold for public disclosure of specific instances of interference. It could be “difficult to measure” the impact of an announcement “in the middle of an election campaign,” Trudeau said. “We have to make sure we’re getting it right.”

Overall, Rosenberg said, Canadians need to be better informed. In advance of an election, government should provide better communication of plans to monitor domestic interference and the types of activities that are of concern. Prior to calling the 2021 snap election, and unlike in 2019, the government had no public communications plan about its approach to protecting the integrity of the election, and offered no training or regular press briefings for journalists.

“This could have offered a clear rationale for the increased focus on domestic actors,” he said.

Rosenberg recommended more intelligence and information gathering to identify threats to the physical safety of candidates, election officials and the public — and said there should be better assessment of and co-ordination between political parties, the government, including the RCMP, around how campaign and security operations work.

Both CSIS and CSE have the ability to disrupt threats to the security of Canada, including from foreign influence. Those threat reduction powers were added to the CSIS Act by Bill C-59 and entered into force in 2019, but to date there has been no resort to the use of court-authorized threat reduction measures, he said.

The three main political parties who received briefings from the panel monitoring interference during the election — the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP — “all continue to support” a panel composed of senior public servants doing the work. He said the Bloc Québécois and the Green Party chose not to participate in the briefings offered to political parties.

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