Foreign interference in the 2021 Canadian election
The real threat to Canadian democracy occurs when foreign actors are voted in to places of power to influence our democracy
The Chinese interference on Canadian elections saga continues. Discussed in an earlier post, the Globe and Mail released a shocking article detailing how a CSIS informant shared a report which indicated that China had manipulated Canada’s 2021 election to ensure Trudeau was given a minority government. Both Trudeau and the Liberal MP Han Dong have come out vehemently denying the allegations against Chinese interference in the election outcome. Justin Trudeau has come out numerous times reassuring Canadians that the outcome of the 2021 election was “determined by Canadians and Canadians alone”.
However, new revelations have come to light as the days pass. On February 24, 2023, Sam Cooper, the investigative journalist for The Globe and Mail came out with a damning twitter thread disclosing some disturbing information about the CSIS report and their on-going probe into the CCP election interference.
Throughout this thread, Sam Cooper states that CSIS began tracking Han Dong in the summer of 2019 and that his emergence as a Liberal candidate was sudden and suspicious. It is alleged that Michael Chan, a former Ontario Liberal Trade Minister promoted Dan Hong to take the riding nomination. Michael Chan has been watched by CSIS for over a decade, and CSIS believes Michael Chan is allegedly an agent for the CCP who has secretly released political information to the Toronto Consulate. Michael Chan has denied all allegations against him and states that he is a true Canadian.
Mr. Cooper shares in his twitter thread that:
“CSIS was concerned that Han Dong was connected to People’s Republic of China foreign interference in Canada,” an official with knowledge of the brief told Global News. “And that Han Dong also was a close contact of Michael Chan, who was a target of CSIS.”
But rather than heeding the alleged CSIS concerns about Dong, the party allowed him to proceed in 2019, and he won the seat.
Furthermore, two sources alleged, 2 weeks after the briefing, a Liberal Party staffer responsible for overseeing 25 GTA ridings, allegedly informed Dong’s team that the candidate was a CSIS target.
“This was a classified briefing of serious and extremely sensitive nature to Liberal Party of Canada senior staff who hold security clearances,” an intelligence official told me, in my investigation for Global News.
The interference scheme is believed to be done through a loop hole where individuals who are not Canadian citizens can still vote in a political party’s nomination vote, even though they cannot vote in a federal or provincial election. This loophole is important to understand in terms of how the interference affects our election outcomes. If a foreign government can manipulate a nomination vote for a particular riding that historically elects the same party, then their influence is guaranteed to be felt in the election and our democracy. This leads to dangers where foreign actors are voted into parliament which can affect our policies, influence other party members and potentially influence the direction of the country. The more candidates who are voted in through this loophole, the more impact this has on Canadians.
It is alleged through CSIS’ investigation that this loophole scheme was used to help particular candidates, although not named, be nominated as the Liberal MPs who would run for the federal election. This scheme was allegedly accomplished by Chinese international students along with Chinese Canadian seniors being bussed into particular ridings and told who to vote for. The students were threatened with their student visa’s being revoked if they did not vote for the specified candidate. The report also indicates that the students were given letters for proof of address in the specific riding, which therefore allowed them to vote in the nomination vote.
After all of this information came to light, Justin Trudeau made a statement about the interference in a February 24, announcement on Canada adding more support for Ukraine. In his announcement he was questioned by a reporter asking about the inaccuracies of the accusations in regards to the Chinese interference into Canadian elections. Trudeau stated that in both the 2019 and 2021 elections, the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol (CEIPP) was implemented. In particular, Trudeau stated that the 2021 report done by Morris Rosenberg showed no interference that affected the election outcome.
We must begin by asking ourselves who is Morris Rosenberg and what was said in his Report on the assessment of the 2021 CEIPP. Appendix B of the Report shares Mr. Rosenberg’s biography as:
Rosenberg had a long and distinguished career in the federal public service. He worked in the Department of Justice from 1979 to 1989 and was then appointed Assistant Deputy Minister in the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. From 1993 to 1997, he was Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Economic and Regional Development Policy, at the Privy Council Office. He was appointed Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet (Operations)in 1996. Two years later, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada, a post he held for six years. He was then appointed Deputy Minister of Health Canada from 2004 to 2010 when he became Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 2013 Morris retired from the federal public service. He served as President and CEO of the Trudeau Foundation from 2014 to 2018. Morris was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015 for his “sustained commitment to our country and for his effective and ethical leadership as a senior public servant.”
However, it has left out some important information about his ties to Justin Trudeau. In particular, and maybe conveniently the biography has left out the fact that Morris Rosenberg is the former CEO of the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation. Could his ties with Trudeau be the reason he was chosen to write the CEIPP report? A serious conflict of interest that should have been noted and Mr. Rosenberg denying the invitation to be the one to write a report on whether there was foreign interference within the Canadian election of 2021.
Nevertheless, Mr. Rosenberg report gave some recommendations that had been brought up through the investigation by MP’s, as well as the fact that although there had been “efforts” at foreign interference, they were not sufficient enough to meet the threshold that is set out in Section 6 of the Cabinet Directive on the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol. Section 6 of the CEIPP states:
Determining whether the threshold has been met will require considerable judgement. There are different considerations that could be included in making this judgement:
•the degree to which the incident(s) undermine(s) Canadians’ ability to have a free and fair election;
•the potential of the incident(s) to undermine the credibility of the election; and
•the degree of confidence officials have in the intelligence or information
Mr. Rosenberg talks about the medium to long term goals of foreign interference efforts to include things such as, but not limited to, promoting the strategic interests of a foreign state.
“Activities like the targeting of elected officials to promote foreign state interests, encouraging individuals to act as proxies for foreign states and threatening members of diaspora communities”.
He also states
“If there was a clear case of interference that affected a single riding or targeted an ethnic group, it is unlikely to be considered significant enough to threaten the credibility of the entire election.”
How the report came to the conclusion that there was no significant interference to meet the threshold set out in Section 6 of the CEIPP is astounding. If the allegations made by the CSIS informant to Sam Cooper are true, and the Chinese government was capable of getting candidates nominated at the party level into ridings that have historically always voted one way, is a real threat to the Canadian democracy at large. This goes beyond the impact on an election outcome as the Liberal party would most likely have won that seat anyways, which of course doesn’t change the outcome that Trudeau would have won. Although, the number of Liberal seats would not have been affected, the particular candidates who occupy those seats were influenced by foreign interference. This does affect our election in terms of having foreign actors in places of power who can act on the behalf of foreign state interests, affecting policies, legislation and law within Canada. That is the real threat to Canadians, our elections and our democracy!
So we must ask ourselves, is this something that we as Canadians want in our elections? Are we okay with ignoring such blatant disregard for foreign actors being voted in to places of power? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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