Michelle Tessier
Michelle Tessier spoke 117 times across 1 day of testimony.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
It’s Michelle Tessier; M- i-c-h-e-l-l-e, T-e-s-s-i-e-r.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That’s correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Certainly. I’m responsible for the overall management of service operational activities and the governance of those activities.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That’s correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Certainly. Thank you for the question. It is really what defines what our mandate is, as you mention, in terms of opening investigation, collecting information and reporting to the Government of Canada. The intelligence cycle is such that the Government of Canada issues intelligence requirements to the Security and Intelligence community, of which CSIS, of course, is a part, and we then issue direction to our regional offices to collect the information that can fulfil that intelligence requirement, we analyse it in our headquarters, and we subsequently disseminate our assessments to the Government of Canada.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Absolutely, and, of course, it's related to section 2 of the Act, which ---
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
--- describes the threats ---
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That's correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes, it is the threshold that we must meet before initiating and investigation.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That's correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Certainly. That type of targeting level is normally used when there is what we call a "special event", where you can have high-profile individuals attend, such as politicians or the like, who could be victims of a variety of threats. So it allows us, when we don't have a specific, I'll call it an "aligned threat", to be able to investigate leads that may come out as a result of that being held and any potential threat to that event, spectators, to the individuals attending, high profile personalities, that type of issue.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
It's not -- to be clear, it's not the actual event or issue that is the threat, it's the ability to investigate activities that because that threat is -- that, sorry, that event is being held there could be a threat that comes as a result of that. So it's not the issue or event itself.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That's correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
As I mentioned, several high profile issues where there's a gathering of personalities, such as a G7, G20 event, the Olympic Games, significant events that could attract threat actors to target that event.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That would be -- if that falls within the activities of a threat to terrorism does, of course, under 2(c) ---
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
--- then that would be its own. It wouldn't necessarily be a more general issue-based event. That would fall squarely under 2(c) of the CSIS Act.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That's correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That's correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That's correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That's right.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
We often refer to it as "terrorism", but yeah, threat-related activities ---
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
--- related to terrorism.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I would be careful on that because there could be criminal activity that is serious violence, a murder, a homicide that is not related to the security of Canada. So I would just want to be clear that it has to relate to, as you pointed out, the various components of 2(c).
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I think if you refer to the CSIS Act and 2(c) I think we'll fine.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That's correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
If it's only reasonable grounds to suspect, that's correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That's -- yes. Once we go through the past the threshold of reasonable grounds to believe, at that point, yes, we can apply for a federal court warrant.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That’s correct. Yeah.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes, that’s correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes. And of course, it’s often -- well, it’s always dictated by the nature of the threat, the gravity, because we can go very quickly into reasonable grounds to believe, of course, depending on the nature of the information we receive at that time.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Approximately 50 percent.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
It’s a significant increase. Maybe not from 10 years ago, but from, certainly -- yes. I think when we look at events that have occurred in Canada with -- as an example, Alexandre Bissonnette, Quebec City mosque shooting, Alek Minassian and the unfortunate event of -- in Toronto where he ran over a number of individuals, when we see an increase in those types of activities, we obviously proportionality place our resources, investigate what we see as a very significant and growing threat.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That’s correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Thank you. The -- I will say at the outset that ideologically motivated violence and extremism is very difficult to define when it meets a CSIS threshold, when it meets the threshold of terrorism. And that is something that we share internationally with -- when we’re talking with our partners, because it is a complex threat. We adopted that term because of the complexity and the number of ideologies that can fit into it. We didn’t want to get into right wing, left wing. That can mean different things to different people, could be just a legitimate view point. And so we wanted to highlight the various, I’ll call them steps, or criteria is a better word, that would bring CSIS’ investigations into the fore. So we wanted to be ideologically motivated. So it’s not just a personal grievance. It is something somebody fundamentally believes in and they want a societal change. So they want to change the world. They really believe in this extreme vision of changing society. And then, of course, serious violence, death. They are looking to kill.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That’s right. It’s not an exact science. And I think it’s important to realize that given the nature of this type of threat, we do try to develop this criteria. And as a matter of fact, many of our international allies have adopted the same vocabulary, because we know it’s challenging, so we try to narrow it to those criteria in order for CSIS to begin its investigations.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Sorry, I don’t think I understand your question.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Right.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes. That’s correct. Yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Well, normally it could be a group, it could be an organization.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I’m not sure I -- cells, of course, are composed of individuals. I mean, ultimately you’re dealing with individuals, even if it’s a group or organization, they’re composed of individuals.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Our information indicating that somebody is seriously -- has communicated that they want to commit murder, that they’re acquiring arms, but it could also mean damaging property in such a way that could lead to somebody being killed, even if that wasn’t the initial intent. It could also be inciting individuals to violence, because oftentimes it is the consumers of that type of propaganda who could be the ones that can radicalize and commit the act.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes, that’s correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That’s correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yeah, not necessarily, but yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That’s a fair statement, yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
It could include posting things online. Sometimes it’s more covert than that but it could, yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by passive engagement.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Right.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
No, not at all.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Absolutely. When we look at the IMV movement, because that’s what it is; it’s a composition of movements, many members believe in what they call accelerationism, which is a belief that society needs to change -- we’ll take White supremists as an example, or anti- immigration individuals, who believe that their society is at risk, either of immigration, of government intervention, of anything they see, they feel that society is at risk and that there’s going to be a civil war. So they believe they must take violent action to speed up that societal change and to put society back as to, in their vision, is the way it should be. So that’s an example of societal change, where they really adhere to this accelerationist mindset, if you will.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Not necessarily. I would just want to highlight that CSIS cannot, by its law, investigate lawful protest and dissent, unless -- unless it’s related to one of the threats to security of Canada.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
No, it would not.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Certainly. There’s xenophobic violence, as I mentioned earlier; anti-authority violence, so anti-government; gender driven violence; and what we call other grievance, that could be, like, extreme environmental groups or animal rights types, anti-abortion; I mean, the extreme violent movements. It’s meant to capture that type of ideology.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
If we look at terrorism as we’re traditionally used to looking at it, we -- very much we focused on groups. And those groups -- I’ll use Al Qaeda as an example, very much a command and control structure where you had to be vetted and you had to really be accepted as a member of the group; and very tightly held, and you had to go to training camps and the like to be considered a member of Al Qaeda. While there are groups in the IMV space they’re not as defined in the same way, they don’t necessarily have command and control, and it’s really a movement of individuals of sometimes various elements of these ideologies, and networks of individuals is a better way of describing it than actual strict groups, as what we’ve seen in the past.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes, that’s right. And we’ve seen -- I’ve given a couple of examples, but we’ve seen cases where individuals, they don’t belong to any group, but they adhere or they’re influenced by these movements, and they decide to act and commit terrorist attacks.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Anti-public health came out, of course, as a result of the pandemic, and individuals who felt that government was overreaching by their health regulations, in terms of wearing a mask, or vaccinations or what have you.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Well, it’s not an issue or a movement that the Service investigate. However, we have seen some of our subjects of investigation in the IMVE space exploit that type of a movement. If they’re anti-authority, if that’s the ideology that they subscribe to, and they see government intervention, then they can exploit that to justify their ideology and say, you know, “Yet again, government is overreaching”; that type of an example. In and of itself, anti- public health is not a concern to CSIS.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Again, it would be more the individuals who exploit that type of a movement to recruit individuals, to bring them more towards the extreme view of anti-authority ideology, wanting to use violence, serious violence, to kill to bring changes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
As I mentioned -- and I’m not the security expert on this, but as I mentioned it is a view that they have to accelerate the change of society because they’re not satisfied with how society is right now. As I mentioned, they could be xenophobic, they could be anti- authority, and they feel the only way to make a change is not using the democratic process and voting, but rather through serious violence to kill to bring about that change, because it’s not happening in the current state of affairs.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I’d say what we’ve seen a rise of is anti-authority rhetoric, violent rhetoric, and threats against public officials. With -- certainly there was a rise when the public health measures were put into place, but when those were loosened, then of course the rhetoric towards that particular issue went down. But what has increased is threats against public officials, politicians.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
It’s certainly of concern to the Service.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
We take various measures. First of all, the Service doesn’t monitor all social media. I don’t think we want our intelligence services to be monitoring everybody’s social media. So it’s very focused where we believe there are threats being communicated, if you will, or that are related to our mandate. And -- but we take -- we use all our methodologies -- again, if we feel that we have sufficient information to begin an investigation, then we’ll use the techniques and our methodologies, such as surveillance or what have you, that enable us to investigate that threat further. But it is always a challenge to know when somebody’s going to move from the online space to the physical space; that’s obviously of great concern. And as I mentioned earlier, it’s often not necessarily the person posting the rhetoric but the person consuming it who can decide to become radicalised and then act.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Certainly, I can answer that. My colleagues can certainly add any comments they like. Mis-information tends to be erroneous information that is -- that continues to be sent online, communicated online, not necessarily knowing that the information is erroneous. Dis-information is purposely spreading false information. If that helps at all.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Sorry, we became aware of the convoy, yes, of course.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes, we had pre-existing targets in the IMVE space to be clear.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
And was the Service at any point, sorry, was the Service at any point investigating the protest itself?
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
But can I add something? And it’s the last line on page 2 here, if I can read it: “Further, CSIS will also continue to follow the evolving and dynamic situation surrounding the [convoy] to identify any […] national security concerns.” That is really important to underline, was that this was a very fluid, volatile environment, and we were constantly doing our assessments. So every day we were relooking at our information, our investigations, to ensure that we were up to date on our assessments. So I just want to underline that it’s sometimes a snapshot in time, that date when that particular brief was written, but that we were also very aware that this was very much a fluid situation.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes, that's correct. We have, as was mentioned earlier, we have offices throughout Canada, and we deal with police of jurisdiction at all levels.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes, that's accurate.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That's correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Well what we do with all information we receive is always assess it in terms of the relevance to our mandate.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I can’t speak to what other agencies would have done with the report, no.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Absolutely.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes, it does.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Absolutely.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I would imagine so. I’ve not seen the reports directly myself.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
If I could address third party rule.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
The Service respects third party rule, and the procedure is to request of that third party any sharing that we think would be useful. So we don't just share third party information, we always ask for permission to do so.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I'm not sure which document you're referring to in the first statement that CSIS said at no time that the protest -- is there a document I could look at?
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That's correct, yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That's correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I don't recall who exactly, but I do know overall there were threats and there continue to be increasing threats as I mentioned earlier today against elected officials.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
As I mentioned earlier, we maintained -- our focus was on our subjects of investigation, of course, but naturally we worked very closely with our law enforcement partners, shared information, and continued to assess the situation as it related to our mandate, and as I described earlier, in terms of how we assess the situation in open an investigation.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
As I mentioned earlier today, we develop criteria in order to invoke 2(c) under the IMVE threat because there are criminal investigations that take place, there are public order incidents that take place that are not not CSIS's mandate to investigate.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
And what I would add to that is, as I testified earlier today, part of the ideology in IMV is anti authority. So they exploit that type of feeling amongst people for their own -- to try to recruit people to more extremist ideology, their own more extreme ideology.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I think the CSIS Act is pretty clear. If we look at the document, the paragraph under d, under 2(d), "...does not include lawful advocacy, protest or dissent unless, carried on in conjunction with any of the activities [cited above]."
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I would say, generally speaking, the Service stays away from investigating protest. We recognize it's a democratic right in Canada, so we don't investigate protests. What this means is if -- an example perhaps I can give. If we had information that a terrorist group was going to pretend to use an event in order to conduct a terrorist activity, well, of course, that would be of interest to CSIS. But we are very, very conscious and aware of balancing the rights of individuals in a democracy like Canada with our own mandate and our more intrusive techniques.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I’ll answer that question. That’s exactly why we developed the criteria as to what should be looked at in this space, in this IMVE space, was to ensure that those criteria were met before we opened an investigation.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I believe so. I believe that’s accurate.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I wasn’t involved in that, so I don’t want to lead you in error, so I’m not certain.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I don’t recall saying that. You’d have to show me the document.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
No, I think that’s a very accurate response.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes, that’s correct.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I'm going to have to refer -- because a national threat assessment level is assessed by ITAC, so I would refer that question to my ITAC colleague.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That’s my understanding.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I would have to assume so.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yeah, certainly. As I mentioned earlier today in my testimony, in the past -- and I use Al-Qaeda as an example, there was very much an organized structure. Not anybody could adhere to Al-Qaeda. Whereas, today, especially given the internet and the ability to network together on social media, there is difficulty in just having -- comparing it to what would have been the case in the past, where you had a physical presence, you had to be vetted to be part of this group. Not to say that there are some IMVE groups that don't do that, most certainly there are, but given the vastness of communications today, especially on the internet and various social media sites, the ability to get to know individuals who share your extreme ideology is a lot easier than it would have been in the past. And so it's these -- that's why we prefer to call them networks. And we referred to lone wolves earlier, how one person can commit an act. They don't necessarily have to be directed to do so. They weren't necessarily vetted by anybody, but they adhere to this network, and that's just, like, one example in terms of what we see today.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
That's correct. That's our assessment, yes.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I would say that's very specific to the Emergencies Act itself, but we have most certainly seen, as I testified to earlier, an increase in anti- authority rhetoric.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
I would say it is increase, and I'll pass to my colleague as well, but I would -- from the CSIS perspective, part of the concern is you're seeing a lot of this type of discussion more mainstream media. And we know through some of the individuals that we would be concerned with, and as I mentioned a number of times today, they tried to use that to recruit individuals towards a more extreme ideology. So because we see a lot more of this, globally frankly, adherence to this type of a movement, it is of increasing concern in terms of the ability for people to access that type of violent propaganda. I don’t know if my colleague ---
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
And if I can be permitted to add concrete examples, we saw that the attacker in Christchurch, Brenton Tarrant, had written the name of, amongst others, Alexandre Bissonnette, on his -- one of his arms -- weapons. And many others, who obviously influenced by that activity. More recently we saw Buffalo shooter do the same thing, and put the name of individuals who have committed these typical -- or sorry, the previous acts as well, writing that on their weapons. So you see the influence of these individuals who livestream these attacks and how other individuals go towards that type of content and then give them credit when they actually conduct the attack.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Absolutely. It’s very difficult.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes, I believe I mentioned that earlier. We have to, and we did, continuously assess the situation, look if anybody was radicalizing because of the environment and because we knew that there were individuals trying to recruit, and recruit people towards their more extreme violent movement.
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Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director (GC-CSIS)
Yes, they are accurate.