Moved second reading of Bill C-70, An Act respecting countering foreign interference.

He said: Honourable senators, today, I am pleased to speak as the sponsor of Bill C-70, An Act respecting countering foreign interference, which has received rare unanimous support of the House of Commons.

We have learned over the past months, and at our National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs Committee last week, that foreign interference poses one of the greatest threats to Canadian society, our economic prosperity and our sovereignty.

Colleagues, this proposed legislation begins the process of providing our law enforcement and intelligence agencies with the enhanced tools and authorities that they need in order to strengthen our ability to detect and disrupt foreign interference threats to our national security while ensuring oversight and transparency.

Colleagues, Canada is not immune to this. Indeed, we are a prime target. We know that a growing number of foreign state actors have built and deployed programs dedicated to deceptive online and offline influence as part of their strategies to harm Canada.

In 2019, before a general election, the government announced the plan to protect Canada’s democracy. Measures introduced as part of the plan included the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol, the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force, the Digital Citizen Initiative, the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism, and the Canada Declaration on Electoral Integrity Online. These measures were in place for the 2019 election with the intention of countering any foreign interference attempts.

Fast-forward to 2022 when the media reported on the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, leaks that alleged that China had engaged in foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections. At this point, it became clear that the measures put in place were not enough to protect us from foreign powers interfering in our elections. This prompted committee studies on foreign interference in the House of Commons.

In March 2023, the Prime Minister announced a number of independent reviews. The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, or NSIRA, was asked to conduct a review of the flow of information from national security agencies to decision makers during the forty-third and forty-fourth general elections. Their review focused on the production and dissemination of intelligence on foreign interference, including how it was communicated across the government.

Key recommendations in this report include the following: to make explicit CSIS’s thresholds and practices for the communication and dissemination of intelligence regarding political interference — this would include the relevant levels of confidence, corroboration, contextualization and characterization necessary for intelligence to be reported; to clearly articulate CSIS’s risk tolerance for taking action against threats of political interference; to make clear any special requirements or procedures that would apply during election and writ periods as necessary, including particular procedures for the timely dissemination of intelligence about political foreign interference; and also to look at best practices from international partners, including the Five Eyes, regarding investigating and reporting on political foreign interference.

The Prime Minister also requested that the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP, “complete a review to assess the state of foreign interference in federal election processes” with respect to:

. . . foreign interference attempts that occurred in the 43rd and 44th federal general elections, including potential effects on Canada’s democracy and institutions . . . .

NSICOP published its report on foreign interference at the beginning of June. Three of our colleagues in this chamber are members of the committee.

Building on its highly informative 2019 report, NSICOP concluded:

Foreign states conduct sophisticated and pervasive foreign interference specifically targeting Canada’s democratic processes and institutions, occurring before, during and after elections and in all orders of government. These activities continue to pose a significant threat to national security, and to the overall integrity of Canada’s democracy. . . .

NSICOP reported that key tactics in foreign interference include the following: covertly influencing the opinions and positions of voters, ethnocultural communities and parliamentarians; leveraging relationships with influential Canadians; exploiting vulnerabilities in political party governance and administration; deploying a variety of cyber tools to attain specific objectives; and using mainstream media, social media and other digital means to conduct interference activities.

These interference activities were conducted by foreign diplomats, intelligence officers, state proxies and co-optees, and directed at all levels of government, civil society groups, ethnocultural communities, business persons and journalists.

In the fall of 2023, the government launched the Foreign Interference Commission to respond to concerns about foreign interference in the last two elections. The commission heard directly from witnesses that foreign state actors are monitoring, intimidating and harassing those in many communities across Canada, particularly in diaspora communities. Members of these communities testified about their experience of that foreign interference, or the experience of others. This includes threats to them or their families back home.

Finally, the government held public consultations to guide the creation of a foreign influence transparency registry in Canada, and separate consultations that focused on potential legislative amendments to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, the Criminal Code, the Security of Information Act, and the Canada Evidence Act.

Colleagues, we have very clear and pressing legal, policy, operational and national security challenges at our doorstep, and this demands action.

This is represented in Bill C-70, which would enhance Canada’s ability to detect and disrupt foreign interference and better protect citizens against threats posed by malign foreign influence.

A centrepiece of this bill is the foreign influence transparency and accountability act, or FITAA, which would mandate the establishment of a new registry. The registry, as outlined in clause 9 of Part 4 of the bill, would be administered and enforced by an independent foreign influence transparency commissioner, who would be appointed by the Governor-in-Council, which, by the way, distinguishes it from its Australian and U.K. counterparts.

Clause 9(2) would require that prior to making the appointment of the commissioner, the government must consult with Senate leaders and facilitators of recognized parties or parliamentary groups, the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, and the leader in the House of Commons of each party having at least 12 members in that house.

These were strengthened during the House of Commons committee study when an NDP amendment was approved unanimously by the committee, which would require that the approval of a commissioner occur by resolution of the Senate and the House of Commons. This amendment strengthens the independence of the commissioner while also ensuring that the commissioner is situated within the machinery of government in the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.

The bill defines foreign influence arrangements in clause 2 of Part 4 of the bill as an activity:

. . . a person undertakes to carry out, under the direction of or in association with a foreign principal, any of the following activities in relation to a political or governmental process in Canada . . . .

(a) communicating with a public office holder;

(b) communicating or disseminating or causing to be communicated or disseminated by any means, including social media, information that is related to the political or governmental process;

(c) distributing money or items of value or providing a service or the use of a facility.

This definition is critical, as certain information related to an “arrangement” would be disclosed on the registry. The classes of information to be disclosed would be set out by way of regulation.

An arrangement would require three elements: for a person to act under the direction of or in association with a foreign principal; the person would have to engage in at least one of the foreign influence activities listed in the definition; and the activity would need to be done in relation to a political or governmental process in Canada.

The bill also defines “foreign principal” as the following:

. . . a foreign economic entity, a foreign entity, a foreign power or a foreign state, as those expressions are defined in subsection 2(1) of the Security of Information Act.

This definition is broad and intended to incorporate the wide and diverse ways in which foreign governments hold power.

As laid out in clause 3 of Part 4, it is designed to bring transparency to efforts by foreign actors to interfere in our political or governmental processes while also increasing public awareness.

Under clause 5(1) of Part 4:

A person who enters into an arrangement with a foreign principal must, within 14 days after the day on which they enter into the arrangement, provide the Commissioner with the information specified in the regulations.

The window to provide information is set at 14 days to allow time for the individual to finalize their arrangement and then undertake to register it in a reasonable period of time.

The proposed act is not intended to prohibit arrangements with foreign principals in Canada; it is only that those activities and certain details surrounding those arrangements should be made transparent.

Amendments were advanced by the government during the House of Commons committee study to introduce additional transition provisions to ensure that pre-existing arrangements are captured by the act and apply between foreign principals and federal, provincial, territorial or Indigenous processes. The information on these arrangements would need to be provided to the commissioner within 60 days after the act comes into force.

The existence of AMPs, or administrative monetary penalties, in the proposed act bolsters the commissioner’s ability to bring individuals into compliance with the law and dissuades actors who may otherwise seek to actively avoid registration obligations.

Clause 23 of Part 4 is concerned with the same violations of clauses 5(1), 5(2) and 7; however, instead of administrative monetary penalties, it provides the commissioner with the ability to pursue these violations as criminal offences, which police of jurisdiction could investigate.

Importantly, Canadians would also be able to examine the registry online to see whether an individual or organization with whom they have come into contact is registered as acting at the direction of or in association with a foreign principal, or if the commissioner has imposed a penalty on any individual or organization for not upholding their registration obligations.

Finally, one further amendment introduced by the Bloc Québécois changed the five-year statutory parliamentary review provision and received unanimous support from the committee. With this new change, the foreign influence transparency and accountability act, or FITAA, will be reviewed during the first year after a federal general election moving forward. This will ensure that the provisions of FITAA stay up to date with emerging threats and the challenges they produce.

Colleagues, we know that there are established legal and legitimate forms of engagement with foreign actors, including lobbying, advocacy efforts and regular diplomatic activity. This bill is not intended to limit these activities. However, we also know that there are activities undertaken by foreign actors in non-transparent ways that seek to influence our political or governmental processes. This bill would bring us into alignment with international best practices and with our Five Eyes allies, most of whom have introduced registries of their own to counter malign foreign influence.

The registry, colleagues, would be an important first step in addressing the threat of foreign interference, but foreign interference is a complex national security threat that requires a multi-faceted approach. As I mentioned, Bill C-70 also contains amendments to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, or CSIS Act, the Criminal Code, the Security of Information Act, or SOIA, and the Canada Evidence Act, or CEA.

Let’s first turn to the Security of Information Act provisions in Part 2 of the act.

Changes to the SOIA would better address foreign interference risks to Canada and ensure that surreptitious or deceptive hostile activities — including those directed at our democratic processes, such as the nomination of political candidates — are addressed by criminal law. They would also better address transnational threats or violence by foreign states and those who work on their behalf to intimidate people living in Canada and their families, wherever those family members might be.

The bill would amend the SOIA by creating three new offences relating to foreign interference and by amending the existing offences for intimidation, threats and violence to make them more responsive to modern-day threats. The three new offences include a general foreign interference offence committed for a foreign entity, an indictable offence committed for a foreign entity and political interference for a foreign entity.

The first new offence is a general foreign interference offence where a person knowingly engages in surreptitious or deceptive conduct, or omits to do anything, at the direction of, for the benefit of or in association with a foreign entity. An example of this offence could be knowingly facilitating the entry into Canada of agents of a foreign entity who are posing as tourists.

Second, the bill would make it a distinct offence to commit an indictable offence at the direction of, for the benefit of or in association with a foreign entity. An example of this offence could be if an individual who commits bribery, which is an existing offence under the Criminal Code, bribes a Canadian official for the benefit of the foreign state that they support.

Third, the bill would make it an offence to engage in surreptitious or deceptive conduct at the direction of or in association with a foreign entity with the intent to influence a Canadian political or governmental process, or to influence the exercise of a democratic right in Canada. An example of this offence would be someone who, acting at the direction of a foreign entity, creates large numbers of counterfeit party memberships in order to influence the result of a party leadership vote.

Finally, as I mentioned, the bill would amend the existing section 20 offence in the SOIA to focus on the intimidation, threat of violence done on behalf of or in association with a foreign state. It removes the need to prove that the act was for the purpose of harming Canadian interests or increasing foreign capacity to do so. An example of a section 20 offence could be an individual in Canada who is working on behalf of a foreign state and threatening to harm relatives of a Canadian citizen who live in that foreign state if the citizen does not stop their criticism of the foreign state.

The bill also creates a new offence in the SOIA that captures threats or violence on behalf of a foreign entity that take place outside of Canada in limited circumstances.

All of these proposed offences would be punishable by a maximum penalty of imprisonment for life.

The bill would also increase the penalty for preparatory acts — actions taken to prepare to commit the most serious SOIA offences — from two years’ imprisonment to five years. Sentencing judges will still be bound by the principle of proportionality, but these changes are reflective of the serious nature of the criminality associated with foreign interference.

I now turn to the Criminal Code amendments. The bill would modernize the existing sabotage offence in the Criminal Code and add two new companion offences concerning essential infrastructure and the making, possession or distribution of devices that are designed to be used for sabotage, such as bots and malware. This modernization will ensure the offence is responsive to today’s threat environment and includes acts that are taken in preparation to commit economic espionage.

Colleagues, this provision was further amended during the House of Commons committee consideration to extend the scope of the provision to essential infrastructure that is in the construction phase and not yet operational.

This extension of the provisions found in clause 61 is important, as interference with the construction or installation of essential infrastructure could be done with the intent of causing harms to Canada. For example, impeding the installation of an emergency water supply might constitute such an act.

The bill would also clarify that activities undertaken in the context of advocacy, protest or dissent would not constitute sabotage where the person did not intend to commit sabotage. To quote from the Charter statement tabled by the government:

Because these proposed offences give rise to the possibility of imprisonment, they engage the section 7 right to liberty and so must respect the principles of fundamental justice. To the extent that these offences have the potential to impact individuals engaged in advocacy or protest, they may also engage the freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly under sections 2(b) and 2(c) of the Charter. The following considerations support the consistency of the proposed sabotage offences with the Charter.

The scope of the proposed sabotage offences is tailored to the legislative objective of protecting important Canadian interests and essential infrastructure against serious harms. The main sabotage offence and the essential infrastructure sabotage offence both incorporate a stringent guilty mind component, requiring an intent to cause specified and serious harms. Legitimate protest, advocacy and dissent, in circumstances where there is no intention to cause the specified harms, is not captured by the offences. The companion offence of making, possessing, selling or distributing a device for the commission of a sabotage offence is limited to devices that have been specifically designed for the harmful purpose of facilitating a sabotage offence. All three offences preserve the discretion of the trial judge to craft a fit and appropriate sentence.

Colleagues, on top of Charter protections that exist for protests and freedom of expression, there is a specific “For greater certainty” clause included in the bill, which states that the sabotage offence does not capture any person who is engaged in advocacy, protest or dissent and did not intend to cause harm to critical infrastructure. Additionally, for this offence to be charged, there must be an Attorney General’s consent provided, adding an additional layer of accountability.

Colleagues, I now move on to amendments to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, or CSIS Act.

Under this legislation, targeted amendments to the CSIS Act would better equip the government to build resilience and counter modern threats that Canada faces today.

While it has been amended before, the CSIS Act was first enacted in 1984, a time when the prolific use and expansion of digital technology was still nascent. Today, as you know, digital technologies are a part of every aspect of our lives.

Technological innovations make it more difficult to detect and identify threat actors, including those engaged in foreign interference activities. These innovations have created new avenues for threat actors to interfere in Canadian society and institutions, especially in the online space.

CSIS must therefore be able to operate in a digital world that is constantly and rapidly changing. To that end, there are a few key changes to the CSIS Act, including giving CSIS the power to collect, from within Canada, foreign intelligence that resides outside Canada. This is an important new addition to CSIS’s powers. Also, new warrant and order provisions will allow CSIS to better carry out investigations. Another change regards the use and sharing of datasets, which are certainly clarified in ways that are responsive to the March 27, 2024, report of the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, or NSIRA. Importantly, new powers would also enable CSIS to share sensitive information with non-federal partners at all levels of government, in academia and in the private sector, something that for a long time people have been calling for.

First, court decisions have made it clear that CSIS can’t collect foreign intelligence from within Canada when the information is outside Canada. But this geographic limitation restricts foreign intelligence collection in ways that could not have been foreseen in 1984, given how information today is largely digital and borderless. Electronic information that was previously collected in support of Canada’s foreign affairs or national defence is now frequently located outside our borders. Amendments seek to clarify CSIS’s authority to collect from within Canada foreign intelligence that is located outside Canada while still maintaining other limitations originally intended by Parliament.

Second, the bill introduces several new powers to assist CSIS in its investigation of foreign interference. Clause 37 introduces preservation and production orders. While they would be new to the CSIS Act, preservation and production orders are not in themselves new tools. The proposed amendments are modelled on orders routinely relied upon by Canadian law enforcement and intelligence agencies and in other democracies.

For a preservation order, CSIS may seek a warrant to order a third party to preserve any information, record, document or thing. The proposed threshold for obtaining a preservation order is reasonable grounds to suspect. Making such an application does not require the prior approval of the minister because CSIS would not be able to collect any information, record, document or thing. However, the minister would have to be notified once a preservation order application has been filed.

In the event that the Federal Court grants the preservation order, CSIS would still be required under the new provisions to return to the court, having obtained the minister’s approval, and demonstrate reasonable grounds to believe that a production order or warrant is required to obtain the preserved information, record, document or thing.

As such, the threshold for CSIS to collect information would remain high, with additional safeguards and oversight from the minister, the court, NSIRA and the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP.

For example, if CSIS were to receive information that a foreign interference threat is linked to an individual’s phone number, it could quickly obtain a preservation order from the Federal Court to ensure that call logs and text messages implicated in the foreign interference activities are not destroyed. They could then seek a production order from the court to obtain the messages along with the identity of the subscriber.

This, colleagues, would help CSIS to more effectively identify and investigate foreign interference threat actors and activities and, if necessary, take action to disrupt those threats.

Second, in clause 39, the bill introduces a new single-use warrant which is much like a search warrant for law enforcement. Unlike a normal warrant, this would be a tool available to CSIS without exhausting other investigative methods, such as recruiting sources or conducting interviews. This would enable the service to obtain important information earlier in an investigation. These amendments would continue to respect Canadian fundamental rights and freedoms, with strong review, oversight and transparency measures still in place and unchanged.

To obtain a single collection activity warrant, CSIS would still be required to satisfy all other core requirements of normal warrant applications, including obtaining ministerial approval, as well as demonstrating to the Federal Court that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the warrant is required and will assist in the investigation. The court must also be informed of all previous warrant applications against the same subject of investigation.

This requirement would ensure that the court would be aware of how many times this new warrant authority had been previously granted against the same subject of investigation.

These proposals reflect the high expectation of privacy that people in Canada have, including the protections provided by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Third is the ability to use and share datasets. A dataset is defined in the act as a collection of information stored as an electronic record and characterized by a common subject matter and that does not directly and immediately relate to a threat to the security of Canada. CSIS may collect the dataset if it can demonstrate that the dataset is, however, relevant to the performance of its functions.

There is a higher threshold for the retention of foreign Canadian datasets, where CSIS must establish a “likely to assist” threshold. Proposed changes to the dataset regime are designed to clarify the application of the dataset and to allow more flexibility in the evaluation and retention of datasets, extending the initial evaluation period from 90 to 100 days, which recognizes, for example, requirements for decryption, translation and evaluation.

Fourth, the new authorized disclosure provisions found in clause 34 of the bill will help build resiliency against threats.

At the time of enacting the CSIS Act, national security was primarily the purview of the federal government, where espionage and foreign interference targeted military technology and federal government institutions. For that reason, CSIS is authorized to collect, retain and provide necessary intelligence to the federal government to make decisions to protect Canada’s national security.

Today, threats to the security of Canada, including foreign interference, impact every order of government and all sectors of society, including Canadian communities, provincial and municipal governments, academia, the media and private enterprises.

CSIS’s expertise and information are increasingly relevant to those outside of the federal government, and these partners are increasingly turning to CSIS for more information that can help them better understand, recognize and build resilience against threats. This is a very important change to the CSIS regime.

This provision was amended during the House of Commons study to add an exception to ensure CSIS could disclose an individual’s personal information to that individual. This amendment, which received all-party support, would allow CSIS to be more candid and transparent with Canadians by disclosing information around specific threats and vulnerabilities affecting them.

For example, colleagues, without this amendment, CSIS would not be able to tell a senator that their personal email address was found in a forum on the dark web known to be used by hostile state actors. That has now been rectified.

A report-stage amendment in the other place has ensured that these new exceptions are also mirrored for corporations and entities.

This new disclosure authority would require that the information CSIS seeks to disclose also be provided to the federal department or agency that performs duties and functions to which the information is relevant where one exists. The information disclosed under this provision cannot include any personal information pertaining to a Canadian citizen, permanent resident or any individual in Canada, or contain the name of a Canadian entity or a corporation incorporated under federal or provincial law.

CSIS can, however, disclose information it holds about foreign states or non-Canadian entities who pose threats to Canada’s national security.

In cases where disclosing personal information or naming the name of a Canadian entity would be essential to the public interest, the minister would decide whether disclosure outweighs the potential privacy intrusion.

Finally, the government has included an ongoing five-year parliamentary review of the CSIS Act. Currently, there is no statutory requirement for Parliament to review the CSIS Act on a regular basis. Clause 44 would set out a mechanism for parliamentary review of the act every five years to ensure that it keeps pace with new technologies and evolving national security threats and to provide additional oversight of the service’s powers.

In conclusion, colleagues, Canadians have been very clear about what they need to feel safe and better protected from foreign interference threats. They have said that our country needs a foreign interference registry. They’ve said that they need information that will help them understand and address this threat. In particular, scientists, universities, enterprises, municipalities and other entities that frequently deal with foreign principals need guidance on how to do this transparently. Importantly, Canadians have said that we need to move quickly on this to have it in place by the next election.

During our Senate pre-study, former director of CSIS Richard Fadden stated:

To delay Bill C-70 to the point that it will not be in place before the next election would be a gift to our adversaries.

Katherine Leung, Policy Advisor at Hong Kong Watch, said:

This bill would give Canada a much stronger framework to combat foreign interference than we currently have in place and should be in place before the next election.

Honourable senators, foreign interference undermines public confidence in governments, public servants and democratic institutions and processes. Canadians need and must be equipped with tools to be able to recognize when foreign powers are attempting to influence them or to intimidate them or their families in their homes.

Colleagues, it’s my recommendation that this chamber deal with this proposed legislation expeditiously, but that, as always, lies in your experienced hands. Thank you.

Senator Dean, will you take a question?

Yes.

Senator Dean, thank you for your speech on Bill C-70. I’ve heard from stakeholders who are concerned that we may be rushing to make changes to our national security legislation which could ultimately impact Canadian civil liberties. I am concerned by the use of the term “intimidation” in clause 53. It lacks a clear definition, and yet it could lead to a person’s life imprisonment. Would you consider either removing the term “intimidation” from clause 53 or, alternatively, amending clause 53 to include a specific definition of “intimidation”?

I can’t at this point indicate my own inclination on this. I don’t know what the government’s is, but there have been concerns raised in this respect. I’m confident, senator, that the checks and balances that we find in this legislation and the oversight that will be attached to these new provisions will find the right balance between protecting Canadians from foreign interference and, at the same time, ensuring that Canadians are not inadvertently negatively affected by it in a way that is not intended.

Senator Dean, will you accept a question? I’m also concerned about the expansion of the inadmissibility provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. This new provision suggests the minister would have an ability to intervene based on international relations. Would this mean Canada’s international relations take precedence over the human rights activists; for example, would Rohingya or Uighur activists find themselves excluded from the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act?

I don’t believe that’s the case, Senator Ataullahjan, no.

We talked about pharmacare the other day. The issue that bothered me was that two thirds of Canadians don’t have a doctor, which sets things back, and I’m thinking of the same thing with this bill. The problem might be that we do not really have the resources in the RCMP, CSIS or any other Canadian organization to be able to implement these procedures effectively. Was that discussed? I know it was discussed because I was there. What is your opinion on that?

Senator Richards, resources are always important in making legislative interventions and changes successful. We know that, and it does come up periodically.

I believe that representatives of the RCMP at the National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs Committee received this question directly, and my recollection is that they told committee members that they felt adequately resourced to police and assist with the provisions in this bill. I have no doubt that if more resources are needed, given the priority that the government places on this legislation, that those resources will be found in order to make the very important provisions of this bill successful.

Thank you very much, Senator Dean, for sponsoring this very important piece of legislation, as well as for hosting the very well-attended and thorough briefing that we received just before coming to the chamber.

As I understand it, this is a modernization of our tool kit. That is how it has been described. I’ve heard that understanding all the parts of this is complicated.

My question is not so much what is in the bill. My question is more to your final point, which is: Canadians are asking us to pass this bill quickly. Let’s assume we do pass the bill. What has to happen between that point and actually implementing the various provisions of the bill that is making us move so very quickly at this time this week?

We want it in place before the next election. Well, hopefully, that’s not until the fall of 2025. So what has to happen between now and then, and is it really going to take all that time? It would be important for us to understand that.

First, I would say that my knowledge of government process is such that I have seen far less complicated, far less consequential and impactful bills that required longer than the time available for this one.

Let me put it this way to you: The government would like to see this in place, and Canadians would like to see this in place before the next election. Our officials in various departments are going to have to work very hard to develop the mechanisms and to build the architecture. There will need to be the appointment of personnel and the commissioner for the foreign interference act, and that search will have to be under way. This will be a priority for the government, I assume.

Furthermore, I’d say that the government has to do its work in developing regulations, and I’m sure there will be consultations on those regulations. I’m not sure about the notion that once, if approved, this bill is passed, everything goes into a closed box that we don’t hear any more until it’s all announced in one go.

I think what we have here, in some cases, are new provisions and, in many cases, existing ones that we’re relying on. It’s not all brand new. There are some new powers in this legislation. They’re important ones, but they rest on the foundation of our current legal system and the foundation of our national Security Intelligence Review Committee that I would suspect would want to have some input into this as well.

This is going to be work that engages many. I believe that consultations will continue as regulations are developed. I assume that we in this chamber will want to keep an eye on that process as well and see how it’s developed and perhaps want to be briefed on where the government is in the stages of putting in place the various elements of this architecture.

It’s a big job, yes, but this is what governments do, and I have every confidence that the mechanisms here, many of which are pre-existing, can be put in place for the next election, but that would require us to act with haste.

There are only 30 seconds left. Senator Quinn, if it’s a short question, you may ask it.

Would the senator take a quick question? Just to build on what Senator Coyle asked, I understand this was introduced in the other place on June 4. There’s a process there. How many days was it in committee being examined?

In the Senate committee?

The briefing made it sound complicated to me. How much examination did the House committee have?

Senator Dean, you will have to ask leave for more time to answer the question. Are you asking for more time?

Yes, Your Honour.

Is leave granted, honourable senators?

I don’t have the House of Commons information in front of me. I can tell you that the Security and Defence Committee heard 36 witnesses from 26 organizations at several hearings and that, generally speaking, many witnesses were supportive of rapid passage of the bill.

Barely two hours ago, 20 of our colleagues were at 1 Wellington to receive a technical briefing on Bill C-70. That’s less than a quarter of our complement of senators. I’m now standing before you, rushed to make a speech after receiving this briefing on short notice, with inadequate preparation, but, nevertheless, I would like to put some things on the record.

The first thing, which should be obvious from my preamble, is that we are rushing this bill. There is no question that we are pushing this through with a kind of haste that is not becoming of the upper chamber. I think it is correct to say that at the technical briefing there were many questions that were not asked because of a lack of time, and there were many answers given that were, to some of us, unsatisfactory.

Colleagues, the purpose of second reading, typically, is to talk about the principle of the bill. Let me say, first off, that I support the principle of the bill, but the idea of discussing the principle is in anticipation of the bill being sent to a committee where the details of the bill can be studied carefully and possible flaws in that bill can be scrutinized and possibly fixed. What we have instead, as you all know, is a pre-study that took place last week, also rushed, and when the National Security and Defence Committee meets tomorrow — starting 8 a.m., by the way, for those of you who are interested — it will go directly into clause‑by-clause consideration. We are essentially skipping — leapfrogging — from second reading to clause by clause, and then, presumably, a third reading vote by Thursday.

Colleagues, we are taking less time to review this consequential bill than we did with anti-terrorism bills in the last three decades — in 2001, 2012, 2015 and 2019 — all of which were passed quickly enough in the heat of the moment and were flawed. Some of them had to be fixed a few years later.

You may remember, for example, the 2019 amendments to what was previously Bill C-51, the anti-terrorism bill.

The likelihood of Bill C-70 is that it will go through to a third reading vote and pass before we rise for the summer — flaws and all. And perhaps we will have a chance down the years to fix some of those flaws, but in the meantime, the price to be paid by the flaws in the bill will be the individuals and organizations who will be trapped or caught by what I think is an overly wide and overly sticky spider’s web that is Bill C-70.

Before I get to just a very small number of the flaws that I see in this bill, allow me to demonstrate my bona fides in this area. Almost from the time that I joined the Senate in late 2016, I have been working on countering foreign interference in Canada and on Parliament Hill.

In 2018, well before the hullabaloo, well before the media leaks, well before the febrile discussion about foreign interference being widespread, I organized in Centre Block a workshop for parliamentarians to talk about Chinese foreign interference in Canada. I did that because I could see — even back then — that this was going to be a very difficult topic, one that was already being weaponized, first of all, in the United States, where we saw a lot of anti-foreign interference activities directed at China and Chinese people in the United States that was stigmatizing, discriminatory and justified by the imperatives of national security.

I hoped at the time that we could have a grown-up conversation about foreign interference so that we can avoid the excesses that I think we’re beginning to enter into. I failed because today we are in a fevered environment where there is, it would seem, overwhelming support — indeed, unanimous approval — for a bill on countering foreign interference that has manifest flaws in it that have been raised to all of us through a variety of sources in civil society, academia and from ordinary Canadians.

I’ve also, as some of you know, participated in the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference. I am a formal intervener, and I had the opportunity to witness and partake of the information that was made available. I also participated in the public consultation that led to Bill C-70 on developing a foreign interference transparency registry, which we have now in this bill, and I’ve made formal submissions to the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference, expressing my concern about the quality of intelligence and about the failure to consider the consequences of foreign interference zealotry, which is causing harm to the freedom of expression of diaspora communities including during an election.

Let me now get to a number of the flaws that I see in the bill that I hope others will pick up and that we can perhaps put some thought into ameliorating. These are only a few examples.

The first has to do with the Security of Information Act where there’s a new offence related to political interference. I agree with the need to stop political interference from foreign principals, but there’s a special provision where there is an offence of preparing the act of political interference. It says that this offence is when someone does anything that is directed towards or done in preparation of the commission of the offence, “the offence” being political interference.

In this provision, we are copying from the Australian example, where they also have a provision against the preparation and planning of an act of foreign interference, and they had their first conviction last year. Let me tell you that story.

A Vietnamese Australian has been sentenced to two years in jail for the act of preparing or planning an act of foreign interference. What was that act? He organized a fundraiser during COVID, raising money from Vietnamese and Indo‑Chinese‑Australian communities to buy personal protective equipment and other medical supplies, and he donated that money to a hospital. At the ceremony where the donation was made, he invited a politician — I think he was a sitting minister at the time — to stand with him on the stage holding one of these fake cheques for $25,000 Australian. That was used as evidence that this Vietnamese Australian person was cultivating the minister for a future act of foreign interference.

Just think about that. The Australian system is the Australian system, and they have the right to conduct themselves in the way that they want to. But are we going down the road where someone who develops a relationship with a politician or a public official who may have the potential to rise up the ladder sometime in the near or distant future, that that act in itself is a crime of planning or preparing an act of foreign interference? It drives shivers down the spine.

Let me move now to Part 4 of the bill, which is the proposed “Foreign Influence Transparency Accountability Act.” Let me start by telling you what I like about the bill. I commented during the consultation phase and participated vigorously in the public debate. There are many things I like about it. In fact, some of the suggestions that I and many others offered were taken up.

The first is that it’s country agnostic — it does not require a gazetting or a focus on one country or another.

Secondly, it doesn’t try to use the registry to deal with the very real problem of transnational repression. In the private member’s versions of the bill of a foreign influence registry that we have seen previously in the House of Commons and in this chamber, the notion is that a registry can somehow stop bad acts of foreign interference — particularly the most vile kinds of acts, which is the repression of Canadians by foreign governments through threats and intimidation.

This bill doesn’t try to do that. Instead, it creates a separate new category of criminal offences that have to do with the actual commission of repression and intimidation. I have concerns about the word “intimidation,” but I think that is the correct way to deal with criminal acts rather than to use the registry as a proxy.

I also like this registry in that it doesn’t use the concept of related entity, which is such a broad and vague term that it can capture just about anyone who is associated with an organization that is in some way connected to a foreign power. Instead, it uses the term “arrangements.” I recommended the idea of using the word “arrangements,” but I would have preferred that it focus on material arrangements because that’s concrete — a contract, a quid pro quo, a trip to Taiwan, for example, to Israel, to China or to Mexico. That’s a material arrangement. Instead, what we have is “. . . arrangements . . .” or “. . . in association with . . .” Here, I have grave concerns. What does “. . . in association with . . .” mean? The best clue is found in the consultation paper that was issued by Public Safety in preparation for this bill, which gave us a case study of what I think they mean. Here is the case study.

An academic has a meeting with a foreign principal. It could be a diplomat; it is somebody who represents another government. They have a conversation or maybe multiple conversations. Shortly after, the academic writes an op-ed that is in favour of that country’s position on a given issue. Maybe the academic also gives some lectures on campus in favour of or aligned — shall we say — with that government’s position. That example is described in the consultation paper as an act of malign foreign interference, and it is my interpretation that the intent of this bill and the use of the term “. . . in association with . . .” would capture the acts of that academic.

But, colleagues, if an academic has a meeting with a foreign official and that academic later expresses a view which is closely aligned with the foreign government, how do we know that the foreign official —

Your Honour, may I have another five minutes?

Is leave granted?

Thank you, colleagues.

How do we know that the academic did not share the view in the first place?

Let me give you an example of why this is so problematic. An issue that will come before us very soon is the question of whether we should impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, or EVs. Some of you know that the Americans have imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. The Europeans have imposed a tariff on them as well, though at a lower level. There is already a debate in this country as to whether we should follow suit. The automotive manufacturers and other lobbying groups are in conversation with American interests, including state interests, to suggest that we should impose a similar tariff for a good reason: to protect our industry.

At the same time, there are voices in this country saying we should not impose a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs because it is against our interests in the fight against climate change. I won’t get into which side is correct here, but do you think that someone arguing in favour of a 100% tariff under the influence of, say, an American state-linked entity would get the same treatment as someone arguing against a 100% tariff who may have had a connection with a Chinese or Asian entity? I’m suspicious. I don’t know. This is the kind of question we should be asking.

Colleagues, there is a lot more to say, but this bill has major blind spots. One other major blind spot is that it does not include non-state actors. You may know that the bill includes interference in governance of educational institutions as one of the no-go areas. However, most foreign interference in educational institutions is not from states, but from religious groups and lobbying groups interested in gender rights, reproductive rights, firearms and so on. Again, you can take whatever position you want on these issues, but these are the groups that will be the most active in trying to affect the governance of our educational institutions, and they are not covered in this bill.

There is so much more to talk about, but let me say that foreign interference is a serious issue. We should not stand for foreign interference. I understand the febrile nature of this debate and that no one wants to be seen as being on the wrong side of it. However, a bad bill will not help us in our fight against foreign interference, especially if it is cast so widely that fundamental rights are threatened and it leads to the stigmatization of individuals and groups who are seen as holding the wrong views.

We have not given this bill the scrutiny it deserves, and I fear we will come to regret rushing it through our chamber. I will have more to say at third reading. I thank you for your attention.

I wonder if Senator Housakos would take a question.

Senator Housakos, I am feeling a little confused at this moment, and I’m hoping you can help me understand this better. We had an impressive analysis of all the things that are wrong with this bill, but, at the end of your speech, you indicated that you support its rapid passage. Would that include clause-by-clause consideration potentially occurring tomorrow and then a return to the chamber for a vote almost instantly? Is that what you’re conveying here?

Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

(Motion agreed to and bill read second time.)