Fighting election cyber attacks

With all of the effort that the Prime Minister and his Liberal government are expending explaining the SNC Lavalin fiasco it’s a wonder that they have time for anything else. So I was surprised recently when the Minister of Democratic Institutions, Karina Gould, announced that the government has a plan to ensure that our next election won’t fall victim to cyber attacks, fake news, hacking or foreign interference.

Presumably this all arises from the problems our neighbours to the south had that resulted in the Trump victory, at least according to the Democrats. Apparently, and we have this on good authority including the CIA, the NSA, the FBI and a couple of other acronyms I’m not familiar with, there was tampering from outside the country. According to Washington insiders, Vladimir Putin’s minions stuck their cyber fingers into the American apple pie and did what they could to make sure Hillary Clinton didn’t become Madame President.

You can sort of understand. The last thing the Russians wanted to face across the chilly political divide was a reasonably intelligent woman who was as tough as the present Tsar and had a wealth of experience from her time in the White House during her husband Bubba’s term in office. She was also familiar with the inside workings of government from a stint in the senate and well versed on international affairs as a former Secretary of State. From the Russian point of view it was best to do all they could to make sure the next president was an ill-educated sexist lout who was a self-admitted admirerer of most of the world’s major despots.

But why should Canada be so worried? Sure, there is bound to be a whole lot of phony tweets, anonymous bloggers and trolls who will do and say anything for their fifteen minutes of fame but there’s not a lot anyone seems to be able to do about that. As for foreign interference, I don’t think so.

Put it this way: if the Russians want to get rid of Trudeau, what are the alternatives? Let’s face it, this country has stumbled along for one hundred and fifty-two years alternating between the Liberals and the Conservatives with a supporting cast of NDPS, Socreds, Blocs, Greens and Reformers and not done too badly. It would probably take the Russians or Chinese about five years of intensive study just to figure out what if any difference there is between the Tories and the Grits in the first place. Governments have come and gone and little ever changes.

I suppose the Commie trolls could throw a wrench into things by downloading all of Andrew Scheer’s private emails but that would probably put half the electorate to sleep rather than rouse anyone to arms. Maybe they could publish a six-volume set of Justin Trudeau’s selfies but the Prime Minister has such a low threshold for embarrassment would it really change anything?

The closest to a ‘populist’ we have is likely Maxime Bernier whose People’s Party of Canada will be contesting this fall’s election. But it’s doubtful that either the Russians or the Chinese would go out of their way to sway the electorate in Bernier’s favour since he’s a hard-line free enterpriser who has no time for socialists, trade barriers, agricultural quotas or red tape. He’s also a veritable Rhodes Scholar compared to Donald Trump who would be just as difficult to deal with on the international level as he was within the Conservative Party.

That leaves Elizabeth May of the Green Party and Jagmeet Singh of the NDP. I don’t care how good the Russian or Chinese cyber teams are it wouldn’t matter. Even if the other five male party leaders were collective exposed by Stormy Daniels as former sex partners, May still couldn’t win. As for Singh, it would be an up-hill battle for foreign agents to make him popular within his own party let alone across Canada.

Nope, fake news will be part of the next election as will lies and slurs. It’s part of our modern world. Just don’t believe everything you read . . . or hear, or see.