Question Period Note: Election Interference Threats

The Globe and Mail reported on CSIS documents assessing the threat of a PRC strategy to influence the 2021 election.

•I can assure you, the Government of Canada takes any accusation of foreign interference very seriously.
•Our Government has identified foreign interference as a strategic threat to our communities, economy, open media, and the integrity of our democracy.
•That is why we created the SITE Task Force and the Critical Incident Election Public Protocol to lay out an impartial process by which Canadians would be alerted of a threat to the integrity of a federal election.
•CSIS routinely engages with all levels of government and communities to ensure they are aware of foreign interference threats facing our country and know how to reach out if they themselves are targeted by foreign interference activities.
•While I cannot discuss specifics of national security investigations, as I recently told the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations, we know the PRC’s foreign interference activities are of increasing concern.
•That is why the Government is taking a realistic and clear-eyed approach to China, as recently articulated in our Indo-Pacific Strategy, and in alignment with our global security partners.

If pressed:
•The Government also takes the integrity of our classified information very seriously, and will ensure all relevant and necessary procedures are followed.

The Globe and Mail reported on February 17, 2023, that it had viewed several secret and top-secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents that cover the period before and after the September, 2021, election. The CSIS reports were shared among senior government officials and Canada's Five Eyes intelligence allies of the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Some of this intelligence was also shared with French and German spy services.

Drawn from a series of CSIS intelligence-gathering operations, the documents illustrate how an orchestrated machine was operating in Canada with two primary aims: to ensure that a minority Liberal government was returned in 2021, and that certain Conservative candidates identified by China were defeated.

The article reports that the documents say the Chinese Communist Party leadership in Beijing was "pressuring its consulates to create strategies to leverage politically [active] Chinese community members and associations within Canadian society." And that Beijing uses Canadian organizations to advocate on their behalf "while obfuscating links to the People's Republic of China."

The classified reports viewed by The Globe reveal that China's former consul-general in Vancouver, Tong Xiaoling, boasted in 2021 about how she helped defeat two Conservative MPs.

But despite being seen by China as the best leader for Canada, Beijing also wanted to keep Mr. Trudeau's power in check - with a second Liberal minority in Parliament as the ideal outcome. In early July, 2021, one consular official at an unnamed Chinese diplomatic mission in Canada said Beijing "likes it when the parties in Parliament are fighting with each other." But if there's a majority, that official said, "the party in power can easily implement policies that do not favour the PRC."

The CSIS documents reveal that Chinese diplomats and their proxies, including some members of the Chinese-language media, were instructed to press home that the Conservative Party was too critical of China and that, if elected, it would follow the lead of former U.S. president Donald Trump and ban Chinese students from certain universities or education programs.

"This will threaten the future of the voters' children, as it will limit their education opportunities," the CSIS report quoted the Chinese consulate official as saying. The official added: "The Liberal Party of Canada is becoming the only party that the PRC can support.

CSIS also explained how Chinese diplomats conduct foreign interference operations in support of political candidates and elected officials. Tactics include undeclared cash donations to political campaigns or having business owners hire international Chinese students and "assign them to volunteer in electoral campaigns on a full-time basis."

The Globe has previously reported that the Prime Minister received a national-security briefing last fall in which he was told China's consulate in Toronto had targeted 11 candidates in the 2019 federal election. Reportedly, CSIS Director David Vigneault told Mr. Trudeau that there was no indication that China's interference efforts had helped elect any of them, despite the consulate's attempts to promote the campaigns on social media and in Chinese-language media outlets.

The article cites a national-security source, that nine Liberal and two Conservative candidates were favoured by Beijing, and the two Conservative candidates were viewed as friends of China."

None