Protecting Democratic Institutions from Foreign Interference

eAwazLocal News

Foreign interference poses a growing threat to Canada’s democratic institutions. The Government of Canada is working to ensure that Canadians can continue to trust in our capacity to protect Canadian democratic institutions. This includes a series of measures already in place, as well as ongoing work to further strengthen our electoral system against foreign interference. We are also continually reviewing measures in the context of new and evolving threats to ensure that we can detect, deter, and confront foreign interference in our democratic institutions.

Current measures

The Government of Canada’s current measures to protect our democracy from foreign interference include:

  • The Plan to Protect Democracy: In anticipation of the 2019 election, Canada took concrete action to defend Canadian democracy through the Plan to Protect Democracy. This included measures to strengthen our electoral system against cyber and other threats. Following the 2019 election, elements of the Plan underwent internal and/or independent assessments, which confirmed the Plan’s effectiveness. In order to safeguard future Canadian elections, key measures are being improved and renewed. This will help protect our electoral system against cyber and other threats.
  • The Critical Election Incident Public Protocol (CEIPP): The Critical Election Incident Public Protocol (CEIPP) is a mechanism to communicate clearly, transparently, and impartially with Canadians during an election in the event of an incident or a series of incidents that threatened the election’s integrity. The CEIPP is administered by a group of experienced senior Canadian public servants (the Panel) who, working with the national security agencies, are responsible for jointly determining whether the threshold for informing Canadians of an incident has been met, either through a single incident or an accumulation of incidents.
  • The Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force: The SITE Task Force comprised of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Global Affairs Canada (GAC), and the Royal Canadian Mounted Policy (RCMP) provides enhanced monitoring and assessment of foreign interference threats during the election period. These assessments are provided to the Deputy Minister Committee on Intelligence Response, which stands ready to brief and advise ministers with mandates to combat foreign interference and protect Canada’s democratic institutions.
  • Digital Citizen Initiative: The Digital Citizen Initiative is a multi-component strategy that aims to support democracy and social inclusion in Canada by building citizen resilience against online disinformation and building partnerships to support a healthy information ecosystem. It also supports a community of Canadian researchers that promote a healthy information ecosystem, to help Canadians and the Government understand online disinformation and its impact on Canadian society, and in turn build an evidence-base to identify potential action and develop future policy-making.
  • G7 Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM): The G7 Rapid Response Mechanism (G7 RRM) strengthens G7 coordination to identify and respond to foreign threats to democracies. Canada and other G7 democracies can better safeguard our democratic values and institutions by sharing information and analysis, and identifying opportunities for a coordinated response. Rapid Response Mechanism Canada (RRM Canada) is the permanent secretariat to the G7 RRM. It convenes G7 RRM members and observers to drive the annual G7 RRM Action Plan and coordinate G7 efforts. RRM Canada also monitors the digital information environment for foreign state-sponsored disinformation, including during general elections. It also supports Canada’s international engagement on foreign state sponsored disinformation.
  • PCO Protecting Democracy Unit: The protecting democracy unit was established at the Privy Council Office to coordinate, develop, and implement government-wide measures to combat disinformation and protect Canada’s democratic institutions.
  • Canada’s National Foreign Interference Coordinator: Housed within Public Safety, the Coordinator and their office plays a leading role to ensure collaboration and effectiveness in combatting foreign interference. This includes ensuring a common understanding of political foreign interference, and coordination between intelligence producers and consumers to ensure both timely assessments of foreign interference threats, and advice on how to respond to these threats.

Further measures

In addition, Canada has a number of measures underway to further strengthen our democratic institutions. These include:

  • The introduction of Bill C-70, An Act respecting countering foreign interference: Bill C-70 aims to protect people in Canada and further strengthen Canada’s counter-foreign interference toolkit, by:
    • introducing the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act (FITAA), which would enable the creation of a Foreign Influence Transparency Registry overseen by a Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner to independently administer and promote compliance with the FITAA; and,
    • seeking legislative amendments to enhance the government’s ability to detect, disrupt and protect people in Canada against the threats posed by foreign interference. This includes changes to the Security of Information Act, the modernization of the 40-year-old Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and the modernization of certain Criminal Code offences. It also amends the Canada Evidence Act to introduce a standardized regime to protect and use sensitive information in administrative proceedings in the Federal Court of Canada.
  • The introduction of Bill C-65, An Act to Amend the Canada Elections : Bill C-65 builds on the Government of Canada’s work to further strengthen the electoral process, including protecting against foreign interference. This includes:
    • prohibiting a nomination contestant or a leadership contestant – or a candidate, registered party, registered association – from accepting a contribution that is a money order, pre-paid gift card, or crypto-assets, as their source can be unknown or difficult to trace;
    • Extending the offence in section 481 prohibiting the distribution, transmission, or publication of any material that falsely purports to be from certain electoral participants (e.g. a candidate) to include nomination contestants and leadership contestants;
    • ensuring that key protections against undue foreign influence are not limited to the election period; and,
    • helping to counter disinformation, the misuse of technologies, and foreign interference.

Evolving to meet future threats

Canada is also continually striving to evolve and adapt our foreign interference measures as new information and research becomes available, and as the threat continues to evolve. As part of these efforts, we have valued the assessments of numerous third-party reviews in informing our efforts, including:

The Government of Canada will be considering these reports, along with the Final Report of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institution, expected in December 2024, to inform the continual development of new strategies and tools that will further support the resilience of our election processes and democratic institutions from potential foreign interference.

The Government of Canada is committed to ensuring that Canadians can continue to have confidence in the strength and the resilience of Canada’s democracy.