The good news is foreign interference didn’t overturn the results of federal elections in 2019 and 2021. The bad news is there were many attempts to interfere, candidates and Canadians were affected, and it might well have influenced who was elected to Parliament from a couple of ridings. And the danger will probably become more pervasive.
Underneath the top line, there were many things to worry about in Justice Marie-Josée Hogue’s first, tight-deadline report on foreign interference.
The People’s Republic of China was by far the biggest threat, but there were efforts by India and others. And while it was not enough to taint whole elections, she flagged many concerns about the parts.
She suggested the rules for Liberal Party nominations might be open to interference, that the process for alerting the public about foreign misinformation might be too slow to act and not concerned enough about the impact. And that CSIS might be so secretive it doesn’t share what others need to know.
There were two conflicting things at play: a wake-up call on the dangers of foreign interference, and a concern that fears might be taken too far, and that the public might think, wrongly, that their democratic system is rigged.
Instead, Justice Hogue’s report describes foreign actors – China, mainly – chipping away at pieces of Canada’s democracy. But those pieces matter. And they add up.
“It is likely to increase and have negative consequences for our democracy unless vigorous measures are taken to detect it and better counter it,” Justice Hogue wrote.
That’s the conclusion worth following here. Canadians – voters, candidates, constituents – feel real effects. Diaspora communities feel intimidated. There is a risk politicians alter their messages out of fear of foreign governments. And this is a growing danger.
All that is so, even though the Commissioner said she couldn’t conclude whether the result of any individual riding race was altered by foreign interference. What Justice Hogue did provide was a tale of two ridings where that might have already happened.
One was the 2021 case of Kenny Chiu, then the MP for the B.C. riding of Steveston-Richmond East, who faced a whirlwind of stories circulating online stating that he and the Conservative Party were anti-China, and that his proposal for a foreign-agents registry would require Chinese-Canadians to register.
A guide to foreign interference and China’s suspected influence in Canada
The panel of five senior bureaucrats charged with deciding whether to alert the public about foreign interference decided not to say anything because it wasn’t clear if Beijing was behind it, and Mr. Chiu publicly denied the claims – but Justice Hogue suggested that’s not good enough.
The other was the 2019 Liberal nomination of Han Dong – now sitting as an independent – in the riding of Don Valley North. There were intelligence reports that suggested that Chinese officials might have arranged for a busload of foreign students to vote for Mr. Dong. Justice Hogue noted that it might have determined the nomination race, and who won the seat.
“Given that Don Valley North was considered a ‘safe’ Liberal seat, if foreign interference did impact the nomination race, this would likely not have affected which party held the riding,” she wrote. “It would, however, have affected who was elected to Parliament. This is significant.”
Mr. Trudeau, as Liberal Leader, chose not to remove Mr. Dong as the party’s candidate, and the Prime Minister testified at the inquiry that he did not feel the inconclusive intelligence reports were enough to overturn a nomination election.
Yet Ms. Hogue noted, pointedly, that Mr. Trudeau testified he realized in 2019 he would have to follow up on the allegations after the election, but it’s not clear where that went. “The specifics of any follow-up are at this point unclear, and I am not certain what steps were taken,” she wrote.
But that’s a rare assessment of the Prime Minister’s actions. What’s missing from this report is a detailed judgment on the actions of the political leadership – on who knew what, when, whether warnings were ignored, or who dropped the ball. Maybe there will be more of that in Justice Hogue’s final report, on broader issues of foreign interference, due in December.
In the meantime, she has set the onus on the government to act, to take steps to counter foreign interference that has already chipped at pieces of Canada’s democracy, before it grows.
Campbell Clark