Allegations not enough to raise alarm: Trudeau
CLAIMS OF ELECTION INTERFERENCE NOT ‘SUFFICIENTLY CREDIBLE’ TO REMOVE HAN DONG FROM BALLOT
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he did not receive “sufficiently credible information” to remove Liberal candidate Han Dong from the 2019 election ballot despite a warning from security intelligence officials that they suspected irregularities and potential interference by China in Dong’s nomination.
“In this case, I didn’t feel that there was sufficient are sufficiently credible information that would justify this very significant step as to remove a candidate,” Trudeau testified before a packed room on the final full day of hearings of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference on Wednesday.
The prime minister said he first found out about CSIS’S concerns about the 2019 Liberal nomination race in the Toronto riding of Don Valley North from a senior adviser in Ottawa during the election in September 2019.
He recounted how he met with Liberal campaign director Jeremy Broadhurst in a holding room at the Ottawa airport as he prepared to continue campaigning to discuss “concerns” from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Security and Intelligence Threats to
Elections (SITE) Task Force.
“Intelligence services had shared with him concerns that Chinese officials in Canada had been developing plans to possibly engage in interference in the nomination contest. Specifically, by mobilizing buses filled with students or buses filled with Chinese speakers or Chinese diaspora members who ... would have been mobilized to support Han Dong,” the prime minister told the inquiry.
But after a discussion with Broadhurst about the credibility of the intelligence, Trudeau said he determined it did not meet the bar of reversing a “democratic” nomination process.
In his pre-hearing interview with inquiry counsel, provided to the inquiry in summary form, Trudeau said that CSIS agents also don’t always understand political processes.
“PM Trudeau noted that CSIS agents, with all their expertise, might not know how nomination processes typically unfold. He said that he and Mr. Broadhurst had perhaps a greater understanding of nomination realities than the agents involved.
The buses seemed like a ‘smoking gun’ for some analysts; they were not for someone who works in a political party,” reads the summary.
Dong eventually resigned from the Liberal party after Global News reported on allegations that the then Liberal MP had told a Chinese government official in Toronto that keeping Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig imprisoned in China, where they were being held, would be good for the Liberals in the 2021 election. Former special rapporteur on foreign interference David Johnston and senior PMO staffer Brian Clow have said that claim is false.
Public Safety Minister Bill Blair also testified earlier Wednesday that he had seen no “substantial evidence” of a Russian effort to interfere in the 2019 and 2021 federal election outcomes, though the country has tried to influence Canadians’ opinions, he said.
“We have observed a fairly concerted effort among a number of hostile actors, including Russia, to engage in disinformation within our society, but not specifically directed at our electoral processes” in 2019 and 2021, Blair told the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference Wednesday.
“In either election, I’m not aware of any activity by Russia through their disinformation campaigns to influence the outcome of that election. They were influencing other types of public opinion, but I did not see evidence of it directed towards the outcome of our 2019 or 2021 elections.”
Wednesday was the final full day of public hearings on what the government knew and didn’t know about foreign interference during the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. Testimonies included former and current cabinet ministers and the prime minister.
During his testimony, Blair said he was made aware by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) about alleged “irregularities” in the Liberal nomination race for the Don Valley North riding leading up to the 2019 election after candidate Han Dong was chosen by Liberal members.
CSIS suspected Chinese government officials may have been behind a group of Chinese students being bused in on nomination vote day to support Dong.
But Blair said he remained unconvinced by the service’s intelligence after the briefing.
“Minister Blair was not concerned about the intelligence at the time because (1) it was not firmly substantiated; (2) it did not suggest MP Dong was aware of the irregularities; and (3) it did not suggest that the Don Valley North election results had been compromised,” reads a summary of a Feb. 21 interview between commission counsel and Blair.
Testifying Wednesday morning, Liberal MP Karina Gould — formerly the minister responsible for protecting Canada’s democratic institutions — said she was never briefed during or after the 2019 federal election on allegations of foreign interference in a Liberal nomination race that year.
She told the inquiry that when she was appointed minister of democratic institutions in January 2017, she faced what she called the “Obama dilemma” in a reference to debates within the former U.S. president’s administration on if they should make a public statement on Russian attempts to influence American elections.
“The very fact of making a public comment can be seen as interference,” Gould said.
Already in 2017, Gould recalled that Russia, China as well as India, Pakistan and Iran, were named as “threat actors, with an emphasis being put on Russia’s activities,” she said in her pre-interview witness statement presented to the inquiry.
After the 2019 election, Gould was informed that CSIS had observed “lowlevel foreign interference activities by China, similar to what had been seen in the past.” She said she was not briefed on the alleged irregularities about the Don Valley North nomination process before the election.
But a security brief prepared for Gould dated Oct. 29, 2019, showed that “China remained interested in supporting candidates and individuals who it perceived would benefit China’s overall strategic interests” and that there were “limited specific incidents” that suggested foreign interference.
One of them was specific to Don Valley North, although Gould told the inquiry she was never told of specific foreign interference concerns including in the Toronto riding.
Over two weeks, the inquiry heard from political actors, senior public servants and members of the intelligence community about the alleged foreign interference that happened in the 2019 and 2021 elections, and how the internal mechanisms put in place by the government responded to them.
A recurring event detailed during the inquiry were warnings by CSIS that China may have been behind an initiative to bus Chinese students to vote for Han Dong in the Liberal nomination race in the Toronto riding of Don Valley North in the lead up to the 2019 election.
Witnesses described a bureaucratic and complex process for the flow of information emerging from Canada’s spy agency on possible threats to elections to the task force meant to monitor the elections, but also between the task force and the campaign directors of political parties.
While senior public servants were quick to suppress a false report about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the 2019 election, Conservative officials testified they were left to themselves to monitor and combat the misinformation targeting their own party during the 2021 election.
And finally, testimony from Trudeau’s inner circle showed the existing tensions between the government and the intelligence community, with many questions left unanswered on what the prime minister knew about instances of foreign interference in past elections before media leaks.