OTTAWA–It will be “virtually impossible” to completely prevent foreign meddling in the 2019 federal election, according to Canada’s minister of democratic institutions.

Karina Gould told senators Wednesday that the Liberals’ reforms to Canada’s election rules won’t be enough to prevent hostile foreign actors from trying to interfere in next year’s election.

“It would be virtually impossible to prevent foreign interference during elections. This has always been a problem in democracies,” Gould told the Senate’s committee on legal affairs.

Gould pointed out Bill C-76, the Liberals’ electoral reform bill, would require social media companies to reveal the sources and amounts of money spent on political advertising on their platforms. It also tightens rules around third-party pressure groups attempting to influence voters.

The Liberals have also tasked the Communications Security Establishment, Canada’s high-tech cyber espionage agency, to monitor potential online disinformation campaigns or hacking attempts aimed at compromising the election.

But despite those measures — and the increased awareness of the vulnerability of democratic elections in the information age — Gould said it’s still possible foreign actors could use platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube to spread misinformation.

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“Based on our research … on global elections, foreign players could use social media platforms to influence the voting of (Canadians),” she said.

In some respects, Gould was simply stating a fact: if the combined resources of the U.S. intelligence community couldn’t thwart Russian interference in the 2016 American presidential election, Canada tweaking election rules is unlikely to be enough to stop a concerted foreign meddling campaign.

But for critics of the government’s approach, the comments were evidence that after years of talking about the dangers of foreign interference, the Liberals haven’t gone far enough to protect Canada’s elections.

“We heard from the (Elections Commissioner Yves Côté) today and clearly they don’t have the tools to protect completely (against) foreign interference,” said Conservative Senator Claude Carignan, who sits on the legal affairs committee.

Carignan said while the government is working with companies like Facebook and Twitter to ensure the integrity of next year’s vote, the tech giants’ co-operation is largely voluntary. The Liberals, despite making periodic noises about regulation, have largely left the platforms to their own devices.

“They talk with Facebook and Google and the big digital platforms, but there’s nothing in the bill to force them to act,” Carignan said. “It’s all voluntary behaviour and that’s not necessarily what we need to (prevent) foreign interference.”

The good news is Canada’s actual voting system is decidedly low-tech. The pen and paper-based system is unlikely to run into the kinds of problems seen in the recent U.S. midterm elections, with widespread problems reported in states’ electronic voting systems.

The bad news is the voting system isn’t the only possible target.

While CSE reported that the 2015 election that brought the Liberals to power featured “low-sophistication” attempts to influence voters, the 2019 election will likely see “well-planned” campaigns that will “target more than one aspect of the democratic process.”

One possible vulnerability is political parties themselves. At an event in Ottawa earlier this week, Conservative Party campaign director Hamish Marshall said political parties may not put enough importance on cybersecurity due to limited resources and competing priorities.

“I can say as someone who runs a national campaign, cybersecurity is something we think about, but I’m thinking about a lot of other things higher up on my list,” Marshall told a crowd at the Chateau Laurier on Monday.

“Everybody should take this seriously. Since I’ve taken the job, the number of Instagram requests that I get from attractive 23-year-old girls has gone way up. I have not suddenly become more interesting to … women in their 20s than I was before.”

Speaking to reporters in Halifax earlier this week, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan singled out Russia as a country that has an interest in attempting to undermine Canadian democracy. NATO deputy-secretary general Rose Gottemoeller added China, North Korea and Iran to the list of countries attempting to influence Western democracies.

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“When we stand up for human rights, and when we stand up … to nations like Russia who are going against the rules-based order … you become a target,” Sajjan told the Canadian Press.

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With a file from the Canadian Press.