Richard Fadden – a distinguished fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), retired deputy minister of the Government of Canada, former National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, and former Director of CSIS – is one of Canada’s most authoritative voices on the threat of foreign interference to our institutions.
Richard sat down with MLI’s national security project lead, Alex Dalziel, to discuss what Canada must do now. The interview took place on June 29, 2024.
Dalziel: Foreign interference extends beyond just trying to influence voting. Maybe you could tell us how you define foreign interference, and where it fits in the spectrum of national security issues?
Fadden: Mine is a relatively straightforward definition – Foreign interference is the secret, under the radar activity, of a foreign state directed against Canada. And I stress Canada, not necessarily just the Canadian government, but civil society, the private sector and other orders of government, with a view to affecting policies and operations to the detriment of Canadian interests. Given the breadth of that definition, technically speaking, espionage is foreign interference. You’re under the radar, and you’re trying to do something that’s definitely not to our interests.
Where do they fit in the broader spectrum of national security threats?
You have issues relating to nuclear proliferation, espionage, terrorism. The nature of foreign interference is that its effects are not immediate. If you’re dealing with terrorism, a bomb may go off; if you’re dealing with espionage, information can be taken and used virtually immediately. Foreign interference, on the other hand, is a long-term game, where the consequences are greater, but the time frame is much greater as well.
Foreign interference, as I said, can be directed against any number of governments and institutions. To do this, they must deal with human beings. They can threaten human beings. They can encourage them, by people being paid off or being offered advantages. But very importantly, in many cases individuals, often ones from the same ethnic origin as the foreign state, are threatened, sometimes physically, or often, by being denied something… either in Canada or overseas. If a sovereign state has one responsibility, it is to protect its citizens, and one of the things that I found worrisome about foreign interference, is that there were —and are — Canadians being threatened.
Given the extent and seriousness of foreign interference you’ve described, often led by the People’s Republic of China, what are some of the tools available to respond?
Can I back up a step? Foreign interference is serious, and we need to deal with it. But we also need to deal with the reality that China and other interfering states are here, and they are not going to go away. And short of being in a state of war, which we are not, I think maintaining diplomatic and other relations makes sense. You need to have venues to communicate, if only sometimes to tell them what is unacceptable.
I would argue that in the past, our problem has been our reluctance to deal with these issues because we wanted these other — positive — considerations to prevail. I think the responses of interfering countries are very clear, they do not respond particularly well to just being told we are unhappy, we have to take concrete steps. We haven’t really done that to any great extent — certainly not to the same extent as some of our allies.
We should have nothing against Chinese civilization or the Chinese people. In fact, our argument is with the current policy of the Communist Party, which is very assertive in its activities against Canadian and western interests.
What gaps has Bil C-70, the recently enacted Act respecting countering foreign interference, filled? Why has it been important, and what do we need to do in Canada to make sure it’s an effective piece of legislation?
Importantly, C-70 is the first concrete recognition by the current Government that foreign interference is a serious issue. There’s no reason why we waited as long as we did, and I can’t help but wonder if the NSICOP report, when it was given to the Prime Minister in March [prior to public release in June] didn’t suddenly focus the minds of people to [finally] get C-70 before parliament.
C-70 does a number of things. The most important is that it provides the beginnings of a definition of foreign interference, and it makes it a crime. Up until now foreign interference was not a crime. So, when the police were trying to find a way of dealing with it, they had to link it with an existing crime, not with the act of interference itself. Not an easy thing to do when you’re dealing with states that are quite sophisticated and when they are trying to hide their activities. That should help.
I think the idea of having a transparency commissioner and a registry will help but it certainly is not a silver bullet… It’s directed not only at people acting surreptitiously from abroad but also at a former minister or former official and that is all of a sudden being paid a large sum of money to advance the views of China. Nothing wrong with that – we live in a free country – but I think we should know about it, so the transparency registry will help in that respect.
The one other area is that it provides CSIS with the capacity to talk with provinces, civil society and the private sector, not just about foreign interference, but about national security generally. One of the big challenges we’ve had in this country is that while there has been a recognition that some foreign interference has been directed at the provinces and others, the Federal Government has not had the capacity to really have an honest conversation with them. So how can you ask a province to take all this seriously if somebody from the federal government couldn’t go and talk to them openly?
C-70 is not a bad bill, but it needs to be implemented: the commissioner needs to be appointed, information sharing protocols have to be developed by CSIS, the federal police need to be given the resources and the mandate to execute. The government needs to have a communications campaign to start spreading the word. So just old fashioned, effective implementation. Now that C-70 is enacted, rapid implementation is important.
What does implementation mean in the case of something like this legislation?
I think it means for CSIS to have a protocol that will enable them to start sharing confidential information – they just can’t go and willy nilly give out secret information.
In terms of dealing with the criminal aspects, I think that everybody, including now the commissioner of the RCMP, have recognized that federal policing in Canada is significantly under resourced. Whatever model is chosen to deal with increasing the effectiveness of federal policing and increasing its resources, foreign interference is not going to get the attention it deserves if this is not dealt with.
You’ve raised these things publicly almost 15 years ago almost now. These problems weren’t just born in the last few years. What explains this slowness, the reluctance of the current government to deal with it?
I think it was especially evident when they first took office that this government had a genuine belief it would be possible for Canada to significantly improve its relations with the People’s Republic of China, and to shift those relationships to a new era. It was built on the belief that China thought well of Canada, and that all we needed to do was push a little bit. I think that was misplaced. And it took the Government a while to acknowledge that their initial objective was not going to be met.
The mindset that saw Mr. Trudeau’s government try so hard initially to be positive is changing and this has to continue – it’s also got to change amongst the political class, amongst the bureaucracy, and also in civil society and the private sector.
How are the different leaders performing on national security and foreign interference?
As to how they have been dealing with NSICOP, it is pretty distressing. The Prime Minister has had access to this material since March or April. At some point, he should have made it very clear to the other party leaders that there is a problem here and you have to do something about it. From what I’ve been able to gather, the Liberal Party is not acting except the deputy prime minister has said that they’re going to have an internal investigation.
Mr. Jagmeet Singh (Leader of the Federal NDP) and Ms. Elizabeth May (Leader of the federal Green Party of Canada) have made statements that lead me to believe that they should have had an oral briefing and an opportunity to ask questions. I’m not sure they got the essence of it all. Mr. Yves-François Blanchet (Leader of the Bloc Québécois) just wants to make sure nobody in his party is implicated. I think that as a leader in the House, he has a broader responsibility than his own party… I would give them all failing grades.
I think (Leader of the federal Conservative Party of Canada) Mr. Pierre Poilievre’s desire not to read the report, in some ways, is the most worrisome of all. He’s the leader of the Opposition. National security is more important than his ability to develop a slogan against what the government is doing in national security. The governments of the United Kingdom and Australia have on a regular basis found a way to ensure that non-government parliamentarians are briefed on national security. It doesn’t appear to have broken down their oppositions’ ability to deal with the governments of the day. Mr. Poilievre in particular has a special responsibility and his failure to adopt a non-partisan approach to this does not bode well.
Foreign interference has to be brought back in September, when the House returns. Somebody somewhere, somehow, has to find a way to deal with the serious suggestions by NSICOP that there are parliamentarians in the thrall – to one extent or another – of another country. This cannot be allowed to just drift away into the mists of time.
