TORONTO — The conclusions in the top-secret intelligence briefing were stark: China “clandestinely and deceptively” interfered in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 federal elections, seeking to support candidates favorable to Beijing’s strategic interests.
The activity was aimed at discouraging Canadians, particularly Chinese Canadians, from voting for the Conservative Party, which it viewed as having an anti-Beijing platform, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service reported in the February 2023 briefing.
China got the outcome it wanted in 2021 — the reelection of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with a minority government — but intelligence and national security officials have said there is no eence that Beijing’s efforts had an impact on the result of either of the last two federal elections.
CSIS prepared the document for the prime minister’s office after Canadian news outlets reported last year on allegations China sought to interfere in the elections. Now those claims are at the center of a public inquiry in Ottawa.
Trudeau, who long resisted pressure from opposition parties to launch a public inquiry, defended his government’s response to the threat of foreign interference before Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Marie-Josée Hogue on Wednesday.
“When we took office in 2015, there [were] very little, if any, mechanisms to counter foreign interference,” he said, and then listed the steps his government has taken to address the threat. “There is always more to do.”
Intelligence officials have cautioned that reports that have been introduced in the inquiry might contain information that is uncorroborated, that is based on single sources or that has since been invalidated by subsequent information.
Hogue is expected to release a final report in December. Here’s what to know.
What was China allegedly up to?
In a secret 2021 intelligence report, a task force with members from CSIS and other agencies identified China as “the most significant” source of foreign interference, acting in a “sophisticated, pervasive and persistent” manner to target politicians at all levels of government.
China, CSIS reported, uses proxies, state entities, Chinese officials in Canada, its diaspora, Chinese-language news outlets and “inducements or coercive means” to achieve its aim: ensuring the election of candidates “perceived to further or at least not actively oppose” Beijing’s interests.
Some targets are unaware of China’s interest in them, CSIS said. Others “willingly cooperate.”
In a separate top-secret intelligence report in 2021, agencies said several articles in Chinese-language news outlets and on WeChat contained false claims about Conservative Party candidates ahead of that year’s election to dissuade Chinese Canadians from voting for them.
While there wasn’t “clear eence” that the Chinese government directed the campaign, CSIS said, there were “indicators of potential coordination” between Chinese-language news outlets in Canada and those of the Chinese Communist Party.
Erin O’Toole, leader of the Conservative Party during the 2021 election, has testified that he believes the campaign cost the party as many as nine seats. It was “nowhere enough to change the results of the election,” he said, but meant “democratic rights were being trampled upon.”
The inquiry has also focused on a Liberal Party nomination race in 2019 for a Toronto-area electoral district. CSIS reported in 2020 that Chinese government officials “likely manipulated” that contest, which was won by Han Dong. He was later elected to Parliament in that year’s general election.
Dong has testified that he sought the support of international students from China studying at a private high school. They were bused in to vote for him in the nomination race, but he said he did not know who chartered the bus.
In fact, he said, he remembered having sought their support only after his wife reminded him of it shortly before his testimony. International students may vote in a Liberal Party nomination race if they live in that electoral district.
But in an unclassified intelligence summary, agencies said there were indications that a known proxy agent of the Chinese government proed students who didn’t live in the district with falsified documents and that the Chinese Consulate threatened to revoke their student visas or punish their family members in China if they didn’t vote for Dong.
They said some of the information was reported to intelligence officials before the election but was “not firmly substantiated.”
Dong quit the Liberal caucus last year and sits as an independent.
China has long denied interfering in Canada’s elections.
Who else was interfering?
Intelligence reports introduced in the inquiry named India as a country that “actively” engages in foreign interference here, working through Indian officials in Canada and seeking to leverage its large diaspora community here “to shape political outcomes in its favor.”
Agencies said in an unclassified intelligence summary that India focused on a small number of districts in the 2021 election and that a proxy agent might have clandestinely proed illicit funding to pro-India candidates — possibly without their knowledge.
India, agencies reported, is focused on suppressing support for a Sikh separatist movement that seeks to carve an independent state and opposes Canadian candidates perceived to support it.
The Indian high commission in Canada, the equivalent of an embassy among fellow commonwealth members, did not respond to a request for comment. The country’s External Affairs Ministry has called claims it has sought to interfere in Canada’s internal affairs “baseless.”
Trudeau told the House of Commons in September of “credible allegations” that agents of the Indian government were behind the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia last year. India has denied the allegations.
Pakistan is also named in the documents as a “limited” actor. Its aims are similar to those of India and China: to clandestinely support candidates with positions favorable to its interests.
A top-secret report from 2020 said a CSIS “threat reduction measure” to reduce Pakistan’s attempts to interfere in Canada’s democratic processes had a “tangible effect.”
The Pakistani high commission in Canada did not respond to a request for comment.
Russia possesses “robust” foreign interference capacity, according to a July 2021 intelligence report, but lacked the intent to interfere because Canada’s main political parties are largely united in their stance toward Moscow. The Kremlin saw no benefit in supporting one party over the others.
Was the public alerted to alleged election meddling?
In 2019, the federal government tasked a panel of senior civil servants with notifying candidates if they have been the target of interference and alerting the public about threats to election integrity.
Members of the panel told the commission that they made no such announcements because none of the intelligence they reviewed met the threshold for notification. They maintained that the overall results of the votes weren’t compromised.
Sometimes the intelligence they were proed was based on a single source, uncorroborated or of limited reliability. It was also not clear, they said, whether misinformation or disinformation online was the work of a foreign actor.
Nathalie Drouin, a former deputy minister of justice who served on the panel, said intervention could do “more harm than good.”
“It had the potential to create confusion and also to be seen as interfering in a democratic exercise,” testified Drouin, now Trudeau’s national security and intelligence adviser. “We want also to make sure that we were not being seen as taking a position — a partisan position — in any debate.”
What else did Trudeau say?
Echoing the testimony of several of his top advisers this week, the prime minister asserted that some of the intelligence that he receives might need further corroboration or might not be accurate.
Some of the information contained in written intelligence reports, he said, is not delivered to him orally in briefings. An example: a finding in the 2023 CSIS briefing that foreign interference is prevalent here because it is a “low-risk, high-reward” activity.
He said he learned from Jeremy Broadhurst, the Liberal Party campaign director, in September 2019 that CSIS had briefed Broadhurst on concerns that Chinese officials here “had been developing plans to possibly engage in interference” in Dong’s nomination race by busing in students or Chinese speakers.
Trudeau said he asked for more detail, “but the answers weren’t clear” and he “didn’t feel there was sufficient or sufficiently credible information that would justify this very significant step to remove a candidate” weeks before an election.
Despite “attempts by foreign states to interfere,” Trudeau said, the 2019 and 2021 elections “were decided by Canadians.”
