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A new Commons committee report on foreign interference recommends that Canada establish a foreign influence registry “as soon as possible” and create new criminal offences to cover all interference operations.
The report, released Tuesday by the House of Commons privacy committee, makes 22 recommendations meant to improve Canada’s response to foreign interference activities and enhance national security transparency.
Recommendation 18 calls on the federal government to quickly create a registry of foreign agents in Canada. The committee cautions that a registry can’t be established “with the view that it will solve all interference problems.”
“It does believe, however, that a registry is a sound protective measure that would ensure greater transparency with regard to foreign actors operating in Canada,” says the report.
CBC News has reported the federal government plans to create a registry and table a bill this year.
Under a foreign agent registry, people who act on behalf of a foreign state to advance its goals would have to disclose their ties to the government employing them.
The idea of such a registry, versions of which exist in Australia and the United States, is to make those dealings more transparent, with the possibility of fines or even prison time for failing to comply.
The report also calls on the federal government to establish new offences under the Criminal Code that cover “all foreign interference operations, including harassment and intimidation by a foreign state, and that it provide appropriate sanctions.”
The report says there are no punitive sanctions for the general act of foreign interference in the Criminal Code or any other federal statute. Because of this, the report says, the RCMP uses other sanctions and legislative tools in the Criminal Code or the Security of Information Act.
The report says experts told the committee there are “major gaps” in Canadian law when it comes to punishing foreign influence agents, including Canadians who are recruited by foreign states.
The report also cited testimony from Dan Stanton, a former CSIS intelligence officer, who told the committee the Security of Information Act has some mechanisms to prosecute foreign interference.
Stanton said that under section 20 of the Act, it is an offence for someone to attempt to commit an act that increases the capacity of a foreign entity or is reasonably likely to harm Canadian interests.
The law also says anyone who commits an offence under section 20 “is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for life.”
Stanton told the committee that, because of this, he feels it’s already possible to bring forward prosecutions for foreign interference operations that are subject to the Security of Information Act.
More to come …
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