Law should require governments and parties to disclose of use of AI, says former minister

Governments and political parties should be required by law to disclose when they use artificial intelligence, former Public Safety minister Marco Mendicino told the inquiry into foreign interference Thursday.

Mendicino said that while he and his successor Dominic LeBlanc have taken steps to help Canada counter foreign interference, such as the adoption of Bill C-70, more could be done.

“I would suggest that artificial intelligence and the deployment of deep fakes is extremely concerning to me,” he told the inquiry Thursday.

“And I believe that there is policy and legislative work to be done there to ensure that sitting governments, as well as political parties, are required to disclose when they use artificial intelligence as part of their products of communications or engaging with the public …”

Mendicino also called on the federal government to engage in more “digital diplomacy” with online platforms and said it has to ensure that Elections Canada has the tools it needs to go after people who want to undermine elections. 

Mendicino said the federal government also should cooperate more with provincial and municipal governments that can also be targets of foreign interference.

While Conservative MP Michael Chong told the inquiry last month that Canada has become a playground for foreign interference, Mendicino said the steps he and LeBlanc have taken are making it harder for foreign governments to meddle in Canadian politics.

“In my opinion, Canada is an obstacle course for foreign interference and we’ve got to make sure that we make it even harder going forward,” he said.

Mendicino also criticized the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) report made public in June, which concluded that some MPs had wittingly or unwittingly participated in foreign interference. He said its conclusions went beyond the intelligence it received.

“I do believe that they were doing their level best to get to the core of the issue,” he said. “It seems as though they were interpreting intelligence without having actually named any parliamentarians in the report itself.”

Under questioning by Sujit Choudhry, lawyer for NDP MP Jenny Kwan, Mendicino agreed that officials need to clear the air on foreign interference and parliamentarians.

“I am very worried that the entire conversation around foreign interference and parliamentarians is being transformed into a kangaroo court, with very little regard for the process of understanding how we assess intelligence, especially given its rapidly evolving nature,” he said.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national security adviser Nathalie Drouin told the inquiry that while some MPs may have made errors in judgment or associated with the wrong people, none had committed espionage or sabotage, or betrayed Canada.

If a parliamentarian is participating in foreign interference, it is a matter for professionals, Mendicino said.

He said that “if a parliamentarian is compromised, if they are becoming a witting participant in aiding our adversaries,” the government should “take that advice first from our non-partisan officials with the expertise to evaluate the rapidly evolving nature of intelligence.” Where appropriate, he said, the matter should be “handed over to law enforcement to adjudicate their culpability as a means of holding them accountable.”

The inquiry, chaired by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, was set up following media reports which accused China of interfering in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

In her initial report, made public in May, Hogue found that while it was possible that foreign interference occurred in a small number of ridings, it did not affect the overall election results.

More later …