Spy agency knew China meddled in elections
Canada’s spy agency knew China “clandestinely and deceptively interfered” in the past two federal votes, says a briefing document that emerged Monday at the public inquiry into foreign interference.
The heavily redacted, six-page document is dated February 2023 and carries the title, “Briefing to the Prime Minister’s Office on foreign interference threats to Canada’s democratic institutions.”
It was prepared for his office by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service following anonymous media leaks in the fall of 2022 about foreign interference allegations, the inquiry heard. The document says CSIS provided 34 briefings on foreign interference - including during the last two federal elections - to numerous cabinet ministers from June 2018 to December 2022. It says Trudeau was briefed in February 2021 and October 2022.
Earlier Monday, senior government officials who monitored threats during the 2021 and 2019 elections said the information they received about foreign interference activities did not meet the high threshold for warning Canadians, either at a riding or national level.
“We have seen some foreign interference activities, but we have seen nothing that (impacts) the rights of Canadians to have a free and fair election,” said Nathalie Drouin, a member of both monitoring panels who now serves as the prime minister’s national security and intelligence adviser.
CSIS took the leaks to media “extremely seriously” because they posed a “direct threat” to the integrity of operations, the document notes.
In 2021, Chinese foreign interference activities were “almost certainly motivated by a perception” by the Conservative Party of Canada’s campaign platform that was perceived as anti-China, it says.
It goes on to acknowledge “observed online and media activities” aimed at dissuading Canadians, “particularly of Chinese heritage,” from supporting former leader Erin O’Toole and his party.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and staff members are set to testify later this week and look forward to answering the commission’s questions, a spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office said Monday.
Panel members were pressed about why they opted against public warnings during those campaigns, despite evidence of a misinformation campaign directed at former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu and the party more broadly during the 2021 vote.
Panel member Marta Morgan said the group tried during the campaign to establish if the information was being circulated organically or through a statesponsored actor. While Chinese news outlets picked up stories against Chiu, those died down before the vote, the inquiry heard.
Francois Daigle, who sat on the 2021 panel as the deputy minister of justice, said that for the panel to intervene it would need “reliable information” of something nefarious taking place, such as a proxy acting on a state’s behalf to spread falsehoods during an election.
That’s because freedom of expression is a protected Charter right and elections are a time of vigorous debate meant to sway voters.
“To say a mere possibility of a proxy acting isn’t enough,” Daigle said.
The February 2023 briefing document from CSIS notes it was difficult to assess the impact of foreign interference activities on the past two elections
It pointed to how the panel of government officials for both the 2019 and 2021 votes assessed those activities did not impact the election overall and were not deemed serious enough to warrant a public notification.
“We know that the (People’s Republic of China) clandestinely and deceptively interfered in both the 2019 and 2021 general elections,” the CSIS document read.