Juno News - Foreign election interference “clearly undermined our democracy”

00:00:00.000 Dr. Luprecht, are you aware of what happened to my colleague Kenny Chu in the last election,

00:00:05.140 primarily because he introduced a bill to propose making this foreign influence registry?

00:00:11.460 I'm aware of some of the online activity that was directed at your colleague,

00:00:16.980 and I also believe that that activity had a material influence on the outcome in that particular writing.

00:00:25.740 So there was a McGill study, I'm sure you might be aware of it, that said the overall election,

00:00:32.140 they said it didn't have a material impact, but at certain writing levels,

00:00:36.120 they can't discount that it had a material impact on the election.

00:00:38.980 Would you say that he was one of the ridings, primarily because he brought forward this bill

00:00:43.620 that was targeted by foreign disinformation campaigns to defeat an incumbent candidate in a Canadian election?

00:00:52.180 Yeah, I think it clearly undermined our democracy, and it was quite nefarious

00:00:57.560 because the activity, as you well know, was conducted in language, in neither English nor French,

00:01:02.840 it was primarily conducted in a third language, a language in which our security, intelligence,

00:01:08.180 and law enforcement agencies have rather limited capabilities,

00:01:13.240 nor did we have a plan of how we would actively identify such influence activity and be able to counter it.

00:01:20.920 And so, yes, it was, I think it is a canary in the coal mine of what any member of Parliament faces

00:01:26.880 when they actively engage in activity that displeases some of our adversaries.

00:01:31.820 That's great. You know, I can understand, you know, I'm reading the 2021 Elections Canada report,

00:01:36.580 and, you know, they sort of talk about misinformation and disinformation,

00:01:39.800 but it seems like they're really downplaying the impact of disinformation and information,

00:01:44.500 saying, you know, that Canadians can trust the election,

00:01:46.740 and I think overall, the vast majority, we can trust the election,

00:01:50.500 but we know how sometimes elections in Canada can literally be decided by a single riding

00:01:55.220 or a single handful of ridings.

00:01:57.600 Do you think that Elections Canada needs to take this more seriously,

00:02:01.460 and even, not only in their reports after the fact, but even during an election,

00:02:05.860 to alert Canadians that there is a disinformation campaign being conducted during the election?

00:02:10.960 It's not an online problem. This is a longstanding problem in Canada,

00:02:16.140 where riding associations are captured by certain entities that are either close to certain countries,

00:02:22.460 to certain ethnic groups, to certain religious groups.

00:02:24.820 So what I would say is that the online attempts at clear interference in our democratic processes

00:02:32.620 is simply a continuation of a longstanding problem that is related to riding its constituency association levels

00:02:41.740 and not sufficient attention, but also not efficient constraints.

00:02:47.320 Do you think Elections Canada should have done more?

00:02:50.200 I'm sorry, we're out of time.

00:02:51.020 Absolutely.

00:02:51.700 Thank you.

00:02:52.040 Thank you very much.

00:02:53.380 I would now like...

00:02:54.620 Thank you.

Juno News - May 18, 2022