Its out

The Rosenberg report, that is

In a recent column on the controversy surrounding Chinese election interference, I argued against holding a judicial inquiry (bad idea) and suggested that it would be wise to wait until a report on the 2021 federal election and the response to intelligence on any election meddling was published.

I was scooped by the end of the day. I had called for the report prepared by Morris Rosenberg to be released as soon as possible. I am not claiming that PMO heard me, but the report is out and has been made public with lightning speed, perhaps because the government knew that publication would (or should) drive a stake through demands for a judicial inquiry.

See: Morris Rosenberg, “Report on the Assessment of the 2021 Critical election Incident Public Protocol,” published February 28, 2023,

https://www.canada.ca/en/democratic-institutions/services/reports/report-assessment-2021-critical-election-incident-public-protocol.html

The Rosenberg report is a must read for everyone who has followed the controversy over alleged Chinese election meddling. It is especially a must read for the media who have amplified the concerns of unknown actors providing leaks of highly classified government intelligence reports. It has not stopped one Globe opinion writer, Andrew Coyne, from banging on about Canada having a “full-blown, five alarm national security crisis on our hands.”

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-csis-is-worried-about-china-interfering-in-our-elections-even-if-the/

His claim: the government has evidence that “there are people in Parliament who were effectively put there by a foreign dictatorship, part of a broader network of Beijing-sponsored candidates and staffers to various MPs.” Sounds like Joe McCarthy’s famous list of Soviet penetration agents. Calm down Andrew.

What such commentators don’t seem to get is that there is a difference between understanding the bad intentions of a foreign actor to interfere in our democratic processes and appreciating whether those intentions were actually carried out in any meaningful, impactful way. Not all boasts intercepted by CSIS from Chinese consular officials should be taken as gospel truth. Another thing. It is important for a security service like CSIS to protect highly classified information and prevent leaks. That’s a national security crisis in the making if it can’t (but not a “five alarm” one). Media like leakers, that’s not the same thing as saying they are always good for the country. Mr. Coyne also doesn’t spare a word for the real harm that foreign interference can do—the impacts that it has on diaspora communities targeted with disinformation and threats.

Back to the Rosenberg report.

Just to set the stage we need to go back to 2019 and the creation of a mechanism to allow for the issuance of public warnings in the event serious election interference was detected. The mechanism that was put in place involved two key components, a task force of representatives from several national security agencies with access to sensitive intelligence reporting, called the “Security and Intelligence Threats to Election Task Force,” or SITE. SITE members included CSIS, CSE, RCMP and a democratic threat detection unit at Global Affairs, established to serve the G7, called the Rapid Response Mechanism (or RRM). The SITE task force would feed its threat reporting on indications of election interference to a panel of five senior public servants (all deputy ministers). These five officials constituted the Panel that would be responsible for acting on a Cabinet Directive (the Protocol) that set out the parameters for what was meant to be an independent, non-partisan and objective method for issuing public warnings during the writ period of serious election interference that could jeopardize a free and fair election. The intent behind this mechanism was to avoid the politicisation of any threat warnings, while still enabling the Canadian government to respond in the event it experienced anything like the Russian sponsored election meddling that occurred during the US presidential election in 2016. The Panel found no such interference during the 2019 federal election. That finding was supported by an independent review conducted by Jim Judd, a former CSIS Director and Deputy Minister of Defence.

https://www.canada.ca/en/democratic-institutions/services/reports/report-assessment-critical-election-incident-public-protocol.html

As Morris Rosenberg relates, concerns about possible election interference broadened by the time the 2021 federal election rolled around. Initially the concern, based on the US experience, was foreign state actor interference. But the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of misinformation and disinformation about public health measures, along with growing concerns about extremism and violence during an election campaign, broadened the scope of the Protocol to include domestic election interference.

OK, so how well did the mechanism work during the 2021 election? We start with Rosenberg’s observation that the briefings provided by SITE to the Panel of Five did not hold anything back and provided the Panel “with anything they felt could be relevant to the election.” (p. 29). In other words the flow of intelligence to the senior civil servant decision-makers was unhindered.

It’s the Panel of Five that retains the power to decide (through unanimous consent) on the need to issue a public warning about serious election interference. Here we enter a potentially murky issue around thresholds for warnings. According to the Cabinet directive (the Protocol) the key issue is “the impact of the incident on Canada’s ability to have a free and fair election.” (p. 32) In other words it would not be enough for there to be intelligence on the intentions of an election interference actor, there would have to be some demonstrable action to effect an election that produced a serious outcome. But as Rosenberg writes, measuring such “impact”—the Protocol’s current and deliberate “high threshold”—during an election campaign might be difficult. He proposes a change to the language of the Protocol to include actual, or potential impact. He also muses about whether some methods might be found to provide for warnings of election interference that don’t meet the high threshold of “impact” currently in place. That’s a worthy question.

The Panel did not find that interference consisted a threat that impacted on a free and fair election in 2021. That’s the headline. It is also one that we have previously heard from senior government officials in testimony before Parliament, but Rosenberg’’s imprimatur is important as an independent reviewer. Rosenberg notes that the national security agencies identified threats of foreign interference as well as threats of domestic interference, including pandemic disinformation campaigns and threats of violence, during the 2021 election.

No doubt the Rosenberg report will be parsed and attention will be paid, appropriately, to his concerns about manifestations of election interference that don’t hit the high note of damaging the overall legitimacy of an election. Eye-brows may be raised by the fact that information on some of the intelligence provided by the SITE task force is redacted, though this material was clearly taken into consideration by the Panel.

But what the Rosenberg report should do is steer the debate away from an over-heated notion that we need a judicial inquiry to uncover the alleged facts of Chinese election interference and towards a broader examination of the resilience of all the parts of what he calls the “electoral ecosystem.” (p. 17). He makes it clear that election interference will be an on-going concern and that there is much work to be done.

The tasks that confront an effort to strengthen the electoral ecosystem include cyber defences to protect data integrity, the study and application of best practices by democratic allies, methods to combat disinformation and misinformation, more fulsome briefings of parliamentarians, enhanced public communication to enable a better understanding of evolving election interference threats, the appropriate methods to be used to understand domestic sources of election interference, including through Charter-compliant open source intelligence gathering, and engagement with stakeholders and experts outside government. Altogether Morris Rosenberg makes 16 recommendations to strengthen the performance of the Protocol and through it the electoral ecosystem. Four of the sixteen recommendations focus on the need for better government communication of election threats and enhanced public understanding.

One of the things that the Rosenberg report notes is that prior to the 2019 election , the government had provided journalists with training on foreign interference and convened regular press briefings. He notes that this did not occur in advance of the 2021 election. That seems a shame.