Public inquiry grapples with definition of foreign interference

OTTAWA — A federal public inquiry is grappling with the thorny distinction between legitimate foreign diplomacy and nefarious attempts to meddle in Canada’s affairs.

The inquiry entered its final scheduled week of public hearings and consultations Monday with the first of four days of roundtable discussions featuring experts who are seeking to solve that problem.

Quassim Cassam, a professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, told the roundtable Monday morning that the U.K. defined it when it passed legislation making foreign interference an offence.

That includes activities carried out at the direction of a foreign power for its benefit. The law, which was passed in 2022, suggests legitimate diplomacy and attempts at influence are carried out in an open and transparent manner, while interference activities are usually done clandestinely, such as disinformation campaigns.

Cassam, whose research expertise includes extremism, said a definition is definitely needed.

“In the absence of that, it’s going to be very, very hard to draw a line in between (diplomatic) influence and interference,” he said.

Henri-Paul Normandin, Canada’s former ambassador to Haiti, told the inquiry it can be difficult to determine what are legitimate and illegitimate practices of diplomats.

He said one way to decide is whether the foreign state officials attempt to hide their true intentions when holding a meeting or making a statement.

“If we want to make an analysis to distinguish between interference and influence we need to look at action and intention,” Normandin said in French.

“If there is a legitimate action with a legitimate intention it’s OK. Otherwise, if there’s a malicious action … this is interference.”

Former privy council clerk and Canadian ambassador to Italy Alex Himelfarb suggested it is impossible to “define away” this grey zone and greater attention needs to be paid to the use of non-state actors in spreading disinformation.

Himelfarb said that became apparent with disinformation around vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There is an awful lot of deliberate disinformation, much of it foreign-driven, that on the face of it has nothing to do with elections or politics, but in the end has everything to do with elections and politics,” Himelfarb told the commission.

“That information got intertwined with issues of identity and ideology. It became exploitable for political purposes. This was happening quite independent of the writ period, long before elections, but is an indirect way of influencing elections.”

In an effort to combat disinformation, the inquiry’s commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue asked panellists if they believed it would be worth having an independent third party act as a fact-checker of sorts in elections to try to combat disinformation.

She acknowledged that it wouldn’t be an easy task.

“The risk is to become the truth-teller, and in my mind probably a risk that we have to keep in mind all the time,” Hogue said.

Tanja Börzel, a political science professor at Freie Universität Berlin, told the inquiry that the European Union has a fact checking body that could be worth looking at in the Canadian context.

Cassam said it could be difficult to convince people to trust such a body, especially those who are already distrustful of government and its institutions.

Hogue is tasked with examining efforts of foreign states like China, India and Russia to interfere in the last two federal elections and in Canada’s democracy.

The inquiry looked both at what kind of interference already took place, as well as what Canada can do to prevent it in the future.

A final report is due by the end of the year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024

David Baxter, The Canadian Press