Trudeau says China tried to meddle in two elections

China tried to meddle in the last two Canadian elections but the results were not impacted and it was “improbable” Beijing preferred any one party over another, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told an official probe.

In sworn testimony before a commission conducting a public inquiry into alleged foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections, Trudeau answered questions about intelligence briefings he had received and asserted the elections were “free and fair”.

He set up the commission last year under pressure from opposition legislators unhappy about media reports on China’s possible role in the elections.

Erin O’Toole, who led the main opposition Conservative Party during the 2021 campaign, has estimated Chinese interference cost his party up to nine seats but added it had not changed the course of the election. Trudeau’s Liberal Party won both elections.

“Nothing we have seen and heard despite, yes, attempts by foreign states to interfere, those elections held in their integrity. They were decided by Canadians,” he said.

Asked of an intelligence report about Chinese officials in Canada expressing a preference in 2021 for a Liberal minority government due to the perception minority governments would be more limited in enacting anti-China policies, Trudeau said the report had not reached him.

“While individual [Chinese] officials may well have expressed a preference or another, the impression we got and consistently would get is that … it just would seem very improbable that the Chinese government itself would have a preference in the election,” Trudeau said.

Canada’s domestic spy agency told the commission earlier that China “clandestinely and deceptively interfered” in both the elections.

A representative for the Chinese embassy in Canada said Trudeau “slandered” China during the inquiry hearing, and that “China strongly deplores and resolutely opposes this”.