On January 28th, The Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions (Foreign Interference Commission) concluded with the release of their findings (Hogue Report), which comes in seven volumes. Two sentences, one at the start of the Hogue Report and one from the “A Word from the Commissioner” section combine to sum up the seriousness of foreign interference (FI). They are, “In my view it is no exaggeration to say that at this juncture, information manipulation poses the single biggest risk to our democracy,” and “It is an existential threat.” In lay terms, FI activities could lead to the breakup of Canada.
Contrary to most of the coverage on the Hogue Report, which has been critical and criticizes it for understating the threat of FI, we should not forget that the Foreign Interference Commission had a separate set of findings that were classified and only meant for top officials in government and policing and public safety stakeholders (and is sealed for 99 years). The publicly available version of the Hogue Report speaks to threat of FI as it pertains to our elections and how government has responded to those threats. Parts of what was heard during the public hearings were omitted from the public report, with the omissions being attributed to the rigid terms of reference that were set out for this public inquiry and did not allow for an in-depth study of FI.
Much of the testimony offered during the public hearings that was left out of the Hogue Report should be described as takeaways that were more than the Foreign Interference Commission had accounted for. For instance, the critiques offered up by former CSIS Director Richard Fadden and former RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, criticizing the Commission’s understanding of foreign interference, and countering most of the claims that government officials made during Stages 1 and 2, caught everyone by surprise. Yet, those who have not been following the Foreign Interference Commission for the entirety of its proceedings are unlikely to be aware of such instances.
The Lead up to the 51 Recommendations
On the day of the release of the Hogue Report, Commissioner Hogue stated how FI went far beyond the Foreign Interference Commission’s mandate and that it was too comprehensive and robust of an issue for the Commission to explore in the short period of time that it had. Although different segments of the population would have preferred if the Hogue Report would have been more specific in calling out certain countries involved in FI or detailing the full extent of transnational repression, the report highlights different FI tactics and delivers on its terms of reference. Overall, the Hogue Report offers important explanations and key conclusions about our democratic institutions and different aspects of Canadian life before getting into the 51 recommendations.
Some of the more important explanations focus on explaining why information has not always been shared with Parliamentarians, such as “parliamentary privilege” allowing Parliamentarians to speak in the House of Commons and making it impossible to prosecute them for whatever is said within. There was also a breakdown of the different kinds of intelligence that different stakeholders collect (foreign, security, criminal) and the ways they collect it (human sources, signals, open sources), but also why intelligence cannot always be used as evidence in criminal proceedings if a legal threshold is not met.
Other explanations include how collaboration across different levels of government is challenging because other levels of government do not have the infrastructure or capacity to process and store classified information, yet the government is seeking to build information-sharing networks and has offered communications systems for provinces and territories up to the secret level. There was also a focus on the importance of a healthy media ecosystem and its importance in building citizen resilience to FI, how it is necessary for government to assist media organizations as they recalibrate around today’s digital landscape, and on the need for tools that verify whether digital content is fabricated or altered.
Some of key conclusions relate to how government often takes too long to act on key issues, coordination between various stakeholders has not been “optimal”, getting information to certain decision-makers has not been effective as it has needed to be, and government has proven itself to be a poor communicator and insufficiently transparent when it comes to FI. A few of the more surprising conclusions relate to the critique of Canada’s intelligence-sharing system and how it is broken and in need of a complete overhaul, including the RCMP needing to ensure more specialized training for officers on national security investigations, and that it was essential to intensify “inter-cooperation” efforts with every level of government, including Indigenous governments, to successfully counter FI.
Four Criticisms Levied at The Hogue Report
Much of the criticism that has been levied towards the Hogue Report relates to positions taken by the Foreign Interference Commission on possibly compromised Parliamentarians, the absence of linking foreign interference activities to organized criminal groups, and the report’s usage of marginalizing language that diminished the threat of FI.
The biggest criticism related to the Hogue Report has to do with how it states that there is no evidence that there were “traitors” in Parliament, nor was there evidence to suggest that that our institutions have ever been seriously affected by FI. Additionally, Justice Hogue went on record to clarify that the NSICOP report that spoke of compromised Parliamentarians did not identify anyone by name. The problem with those suggestions is that they seem to disregard the fact that federal party leaders who had read the underacted NSICOP report have gone on record to state that the activities of some Parliamentarians did amount to treason. Additionally, it was also suggested during Stage 2 of the public hearings that elected officials who were identified as having engaged in troublesome behaviors were being asked to “step away” or “retire” from political life instead of policing stakeholders getting involved, as it was not in the public interest to stain public office.
A second criticism of the Hogue Report related to transnational repression and how the Foreign Interference Commission set up panels featuring ethnic Canadians who were leaders in their communities and who testified to being victims of such repression but ultimately felt that the information provided was outside the Commission’s terms of reference. Then there was specific testimony related to transnational repression offered up by policing and public safety stakeholders during Stage 1 and Stage 2, including detailed information sought by lawyers when questioning top officials on such repression and links to organized crime. At that point in time, all of it was relevant to the Foreign Interference Commission’s inquiry, but something changed as the Hogue Report states that transnational repression was determined to be outside of the Commission’s terms of reference.
A third criticism of the Hogue Report has to do with how it challenges the Right Honorable Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s assertion that the RCMP had evidence to suggest the killing of an ethnic Canadian was the result of a foreign government coordinating with organized criminal groups. That suggestion was made in the House of Commons, it was echoed to the media, and it was also mentioned during Stage 2. However, the Hogue Report states that “no definitive link to a foreign state could be proven”, nor was there any reference to organized criminal activities.
A fourth criticism of the Hogue Report is because it states that there were “a small number of isolated cases where foreign interference may have had some impact,”, but that the outcome of any of the elections was not swayed due to FI. And while that is entirely true, the Hogue Report seems to overlook testimony offered up by top CSIS officials that the issue of FI in electoral processes has been observed by CSIS for over 25 years, and that Canada has always been ill-equipped to address the issue.
My own criticism for the Foreign Interference Commission, which I feel has otherwise been stellar and delivered beyond what top officials had accounted for, stems from the belief that tech giants like Google, Meta, and X (formerly Twitter) should have been called to provide testimony on what they are doing to combat the misuse of their platforms. Much of the discussions regarding tech giants and their efforts to combat the misuse of their platforms made it seem as if they were either “wittingly or semi-wittingly” implicated in FI. From my interactions with some of those tech giants, every one of them was all-in on combating the misuse of their platforms.
An Op-ed by the Honourable Erin O’Toole
Former Conservative Party of Canada leader, the Honourable Erin O’Toole wrote an op-ed about how the most dangerous misconception about foreign interference in our democracy is the idea that it can be simplified into a discussion on traitors and treason – at least in this modern era. Additionally, Mr. O’Toole wrote how the Foreign Interference Commission was never about finding traitors or uncovering acts of treason, rather it was about examining the conduct of political leaders and their senior advisors over the past few years to determine if we were rising to meet this threat to our democracy. Additionally, Mr. O’Toole suggests that Canada has no meaningful enforcement against FI and no systemic way of tracking the financial ties of politicians to foreign entities, and that FI is only increasing.
What requires reflecting upon is that Mr. O’Toole decided against speaking on the issue of FI in the immediate aftermath of the election as not to undermine the integrity of our institutions. When he did address the matter some nine months after, it resulted in headlines and labels of being an “election denier”, “racist”, and more. The information landscape only changed after Canadians affected by FI began to speak up after the intelligence leaks to the Globe and Mail happened. And this is what resulted in the creation of the Foreign Interference Commission. If it were not for that person(s) breaking the law by sharing confidential information, Mr. O’Toole may have been forced to carry the burden of those derogatory labels like “election denier” and “racist” despite not being either.
Aftermath of the Foreign Interference Commission
Seeing how the Foreign Interference Commission has concluded, there still exists an unexplored RCMP-angle that relates to testimony that was offered up by RCMP Commissioners Michael Duheme, Mark Flynn, and Brigitte Gauvin, about how none of them were personally aware of FI and that they learned about it from external sources. Such acknowledgments require exploring the RCMP’s approach to succession planning and whether the current process results in institutional knowledge erosion and organizational memory loss from those succession gaps.
What matters are things like the extent that new RCMP Commissioners get briefed on files related to the highest levels of national security, if at all. Whether there are limitations on what RCMP Commissioners are entitled to know, based on “need to know” scenarios. For instance, if former RCMP Commissioners William Elliot (2007-2011) or Bob Paulson (2011-2017) had been aware of FI, how does the RCMP account for knowledge attrition with the arrival of new RCMP Commissioners. Additionally, for an officer that moves up the rank and reaches the level of commissioner, what does the RCMP’s existing knowledge transfer mechanism look like if that officer has limited exposure to certain high-level investigations, that is, they are experienced dealing with transnational criminal files but not national security?
Having covered the entirety of the Foreign Interference Commission, my position regarding the FI is that a Canadian high school hacker in Ottawa came across FI activities back in the Fall of 2008. That high school hacker was me and my cyber activities related to FI is something I have been questioned about by persons in the policing and public safety ecosystem. And as it relates to my eight-page submission in response to the Foreign Interference Commission’s call for public feedback, my response focused on hacking policing stakeholders and organized criminal groups, but I did not mention hacking related to uncovering FI as a high schooler.
As such, I have reached out to the RCMP to inquire whether they could connect me with the three Commissioners, explaining how I wanted to explore the possibility that the “recently uncovered” FI was something that the RCMP may have been aware of pre-2010s, in at least Ottawa, and to cross-reference that with how the RCMP does “succession planning”. Depending on what that response looks like, it should make for a one-of-a-kind report. And while we wait to hear back from the RCMP, an earlier freedom-of-information request for access to a report on how the RCMP handles human sources that was submitted by the RCMP to NSIRA is going to take another 150 days before it is made available to us for review. So, until then, we wait.
