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Dark Money & Bureaucratic Blindfolds: The Reality of Foreign Interference in Canada · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Right now, though, on this Friday morning, it is time
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: for another edition of Lidkey's Gotta Take. Good morning, John.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Good morning, Gene.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about the reality of foreign interference in Canada.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: You know, the big referendum vote is happening in Alberta
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: on Monday, and we will be watching that very closely. Now, John,
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  Speaker 1: every time we hear about foreign money or bots in
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Canadian politics, people panic about Moscow trying to destroy our democracy.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: You look at it differently, though, and I was a
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: little bit curious. How should Canadians actually view what's going
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: on here?
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  Speaker 2: Well, we know that the Walrus just put out a
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: piece by a former FinTrack, that's our financial tracking agency,
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  Speaker 2: and she was a CSIS analyst as well, about the
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Russian money that is behind Alberta's separatist movement. But, yeah,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, look, we need to stop this wide-eyed, fainting
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  Speaker 2: couch routine every time that a foreign power is getting
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: involved in our political ecosystem. Oh, goodness, a Russian bot,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: they're on Twitter and our pristine democracy, but we're so
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: polite here. I mean, I'll be blunt, Gene. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: foreign interference is not a surprise. This is an inevitable reality.
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  Speaker 2: Hostile actors don't meddle because they sit in supervillain layers
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  Speaker 2: cackling about a weaker Canada. They do it for their
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  Speaker 2: own objectives. Russia wants to erode Western institutional trust. India
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: and China run their own influence games. And Trump goes
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: to rallies and tells crowds that Canada will end up
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: as a 51st state. I mean, but we treat foreign
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: interference like it's a surprise. I mean, we act like
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: leaving a box of Timbits on our front porch. And
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: then when they get eaten by a raccoon, it requires
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: a national day of mourning. But I mean, we can't
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: get mad at the raccoon and foreign powers are going
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: to interfere as well. And the scandal isn't that they try.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: It's that our federal government acts like installing a basic
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: screen door is a complex engineering mystery that requires a
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: three to 10 year study.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, I read in a recent DisinfoWatch report that
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Russian-backed networks are flooding the web with Alberta separatist content.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: So when hostile state actors latch on to real domestic grievances,
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  Speaker 1: how do we separate genuine Canadian political frustration from foreign propaganda?
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  Speaker 2: Well, you know, that's the beauty of the foreign interference playbook.
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  Speaker 2: You don't need to invent anything out of thin air.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Why craft original Canadian fan fiction when you can just
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: find an existing domestic fire like Western alienation and poor
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: state-sponsored gas all over it? A McGill study uncovered 20
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: fake YouTube channels with like 40 million views pumping out
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  Speaker 2: AI propaganda to normalize Alberta secession. They had AI avatars,
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  Speaker 2: excuse me, voice actors pretending to be authentic Albertans while
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: they mispronounced local towns. It's like someone saying, ah, yes,
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: I love living here in the beautiful town of Niagara Falls. Yeah.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, I was looking at albertaseparatist.com on the Wayback
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  Speaker 2: Machine because the website's down now. I mean, they have
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: energy complaints, an article titled, No Foreign Wars, No Conscription,
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  Speaker 2: Only Alberta. I mean, since when is military conscription a
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: debate in prairie politics? I don't think there's anyone in
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Red Deer sitting at the kitchen table saying, well, the
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: crops are in. I just hope Ottawa doesn't draft me
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: into the Ukraine war. I mean, this is a Kremlin
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: template that's been lazily copy-pasted by an overseas operator who
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: doesn't even know where Alberta is on a map. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: on the exact same site, they post, how would Alberta
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  Speaker 2: rank as the 51st state? I mean, the goal, though,
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  Speaker 2: isn't to force secession tomorrow. It's a demoralization op. They
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: just want Albertans and Eastern Canadians screaming at each other
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  Speaker 2: on social media until we all just decide, hey, democracy's
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: a failure.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: You know, we all know that great expression, just follow
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  Speaker 1: the money. So in Alberta... Strict rules govern campaign donations,
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  Speaker 1: but groups can operate unregistered as educational initiatives. They can
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  Speaker 1: take in millions without disclosing a single donor's name. So
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  Speaker 1: how massive of a loophole is this really?
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is not a blind spot, Gene. This
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  Speaker 2: is a Grand Canyon-sized loophole. Under provincial rules, official political
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: advertisers face strict donor caps and mandatory audits. But if
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  Speaker 2: you do register as an educational initiative, suddenly you're not
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  Speaker 2: a lobby group. You're an enthusiastic little schoolhouse on the prairie,
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  Speaker 2: and you can accept millions in secret dark money and
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  Speaker 2: face zero compliance. It's an obscene loophole, and it can
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: lead to obscene outcomes.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so former CSIS and FinTrack analyst who you talked about,
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  Speaker 1: Jessica Davis, wrote in The Walrus that federal agencies track
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  Speaker 1: suspicious foreign transfers, but legal silos prevent them from tipping
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  Speaker 1: off provincial election officials and bodies. So how does a
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  Speaker 1: system this broken even exist?
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  Speaker 2: Federal agencies that track suspicious foreign transfers can't inform provincial
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  Speaker 2: election bodies because Ottawa specializes in building multi-million dollar silos
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  Speaker 2: specifically designed to ensure nobody can legally speak with anyone else.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: We know from Jessica Davis' reporting that FinTrack monitoring only
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  Speaker 2: looks at politicians after they get elected, and our financial
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  Speaker 2: intelligence unit is legally barred from handling suspicious wire disclosures
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  Speaker 2: directly to election bodies. So it's like your local fire
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: department pulling up to a house engulfed in flames, seeing
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: the arson squad standing on the sidewalk with a bucket
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  Speaker 2: of water, and the squad going, well, sorry, privacy regulations
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: and interagency boundaries mean we can't give you the water.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: But we will write a classified report about it to
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: be declassified maybe in a few years, and it'll explain
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: why fire is dangerous.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's a great analogy, by the way. Hey, listen,
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  Speaker 1: even if a CSIS or the RCMP flag these threats,
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  Speaker 1: I've seen in the past that law enforcement often hesitates
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  Speaker 1: during an election or in this case, a referendum out
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  Speaker 1: of fear of looking politically motivated. So is our legal
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  Speaker 1: system fundamentally paralyzed when it comes to stopping dark money
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  Speaker 1: in real time?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, our legal system is fundamentally paralyzed when it comes
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  Speaker 2: to stopping dark money in real time. Our national security
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: apparatus operates under institutional terror, terrified of taking action during
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: active campaigns because they don't want to be accused of
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: putting their fingers on the scale. Meanwhile, the RCMP's federal
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: policing division is notoriously under-resourced. They're trying to stop increasingly
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: sophisticated international dark money syndicates without an enforcement budget to match,
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: and the net result is zero real-time enforcement. Intelligence agencies
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: collect the data. Electoral agencies audit financial forms 18 months
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: after the election wraps up, though. It's like, great news, everyone.
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  Speaker 2: We finished the audit, and it turns out the country
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  Speaker 2: was compromised back in 2018. Good effort, team.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Wow, wow, wow. Well, listen, if foreign interference is... inevitable,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: and Ottawa's security enforcement is stuck in a bureaucratic web.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: What's the bottom line here? Where does this leave Canadian democracy?
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: You know, looking at it from the lens of Canadian democracy,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: with foreign interference as an inevitable reality and Ottawa's security
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: enforcement stuck in that bureaucratic web, the bottom line is
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: that Canada's current approach to foreign interference seems to be
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: pure rhetorical and security theater. It's administrative performance art. We
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: pass minor legislative tweaks. We hold multi-million dollar public inquiries.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: And ministers will, of course, issue sternly worded press releases.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: But we consistently refuse to fix the basic statutory infrastructure
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: of it all. I mean, if we actually cared about
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: our democratic integrity, we would implement what Jessica Davis, former
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: FinTrack and CSIS analyst's recommendations were, and we do them today. One,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: tear down the legal walls between our financial tracking agency
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  Speaker 2: and our provincial election authorities. Two, create a separate dedicated
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: federal police force trained specifically for financial intelligence. And three,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: force every third-party political advocacy group operating in the country
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: from coast to coast to coast to disclose every single
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: nickel in real time. Until we do that, we're not
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: defending our democracy. We're sitting back and acting shocked when
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: the timbits go missing from the front porch, but we're
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: letting the foreign actors buy off our political discourse for
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: pennies on the dollar.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Fascinating stuff. Hey, listen, I lived in Western Canada for
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: about seven years, and there's an incredible rivalry between Calgary
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  Speaker 1: and Red Deer, to the point where the people in
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Calgary call the people who live in Red Deer dead rearians.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the dead rears.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: I had not heard that one before. That's very interesting, Gene.
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  Speaker 2: But I guess, you know, there... You know, there's alienation
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  Speaker 2: not only from east to west, but also from city
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  Speaker 2: to city, I suppose.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you got it. Hey, listen, great takes all this week.
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  Speaker 1: Have a fantastic weekend. We'll be talking to you on Monday.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Gene. Looking forward to it. Have a great weekend, too.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: There he goes, John Litke with Litke's Got a Take.