Foreign Agent Registry Expected by June 2025, Public Safety Official Says

The Senate of Canada building and Senate chamber are pictured in Ottawa on Feb. 18, 2019. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

A registry aimed at countering foreign interference is expected to be in place by next June, a senior official from Public Safety Canada told senators on Dec. 10.

“We are working towards a June time frame. That’s our internal plan,” Sébastien Aubertin-Giguère, an associate assistant deputy public safety minister, told the Senate national finance committee. The announcement was first covered by Blacklock’s Reporter.

A bill to establish the Foreign Influence Transparency Registry passed in Parliament before the summer break. It requires an individual who “undertakes to carry out, under the direction of or in association with a foreign principal,” certain activities to notify the transparency commissioner. Noncompliance can result in fines of up to $5 million or imprisonment for up to five years.

Public Safety Department officials previously testified that it would take up to one year after the legislation’s passage for the registry to become operational.

Aubertin-Giguère said that despite the set timeline, “there could be a lot of contingencies along the way.”

“The Houses and the Governor in Council will need to name a commissioner, and then we need to have the IT infrastructure ... and have the individuals for the office before we can go and essentially put the [Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act] into force. So that’s a [cabinet] decision,” he said.

“So that’s the goal. The goal is to build the office, name the commissioner, build the IT infrastructure, summon the core advice, and go for coming into force.”

The passage of Bill C-70 followed extensive media reports on foreign interference, primarily linked to the communist regime in Beijing. These operations include the establishment of unauthorized police stations on Canadian soil, with similar outposts abroad reportedly involved in harassing and intimidating dissidents and diaspora groups, and even forcibly repatriating Chinese nationals.

China-backed hackers are also known to have launched cyberattacks targeting the emails of over a dozen MPs, as reported by the FBI and disclosed in a U.S. Justice Department indictment earlier this year.

Intelligence leaked to the media starting in late 2022 further indicated that Beijing interfered in federal elections in 2019 and 2022—a matter acknowledged in the interim report of the Foreign Interference Inquiry that was launched to examine the problem of foreign meddling in Canadian affairs.

“I nevertheless believe that foreign interference is a real phenomenon that we must reckon with. Interference occurred in the last two general elections, and indeed continues to occur frequently,” Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue stated in the report.

“It is likely to increase and have negative consequences for our democracy unless vigorous measures are taken to detect and better counter it.”

Some of Canada’s allies have long established foreign agent registries. The United States has operated a searchable public registry since 1938 under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, while Australia implemented its Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme in December 2018.