OTTAWA -- The federal government is set to unveil new measures on Wednesday aimed at further shoring up Canada鈥檚 electoral system and combatting expected foreign interference.
Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould will be joined by Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan in unveiling these next steps, with the next federal election just nine months away.
The announcement comes after work across government departments and federal intelligence agencies to enhance Canada鈥檚 readiness to defend the democratic process from cyber threats.
鈥淲e are preparing for all foreign interference and we take all these threats very seriously. We鈥檝e seen a number of countries around the world and as a government we鈥檙e going to take a whole of government approach,鈥� Gould told reporters on Parliament Hill on Tuesday.
This includes passing new legislation to keep out foreign spending; working with Elections Canada to prevent voting infrastructure from being hacked; and, collaborating with social media companies on plans to combat fake news and disinformation from interfering with public opinion during the campaign.
As well, at the G7 in Charlevoix, Canada signed onto a multi-pronged commitment on . Among the pledges in the agreement: establishing a 鈥渞apid response mechanism鈥� with the aim of better co-ordinating, identifying, and responding to threats to the respective G7 countries鈥� democracies; and to 鈥渟upport public learning and civic awareness aimed at promoting critical thinking skills and media literacy on intentionally misleading information.鈥�
Scott Jones, who is the head of the government鈥檚 new Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, told CTVNews.ca in the fall that one aspect that was still being worked out was when -- and how -- to approach informing the public about concerning online behaviour or content that comes to federal authorities鈥� attention, without being seen as a branch of the public service interfering in the campaign.
鈥淲e want to make sure that we鈥檙e helping to enable others to have that conversation, probably we鈥檙e not the best place to be the ones to call it out during the election itself,鈥� Jones said at the time.
Citing examples including foreign interference in the U.S. 2016 presidential election and disinformation that flooded the Brexit referendum, as well as the Cambridge Analytica Facebook data scandal, both Canadian and international intelligence services have warned we鈥檙e not immune to some form of cyber interference happening here, and that the 2019 federal campaign will be playing out in a new threat environment.
