(OTTAWA) Allegations of Chinese interference in the 2021 federal election will be scrutinized by a parliamentary committee.
Members of the House of Commons Procedure and Affairs Committee voted unanimously for a motion to expand the ongoing investigation into foreign interference during the 2019 federal election.
This motion was adopted after a meeting marked by a showdown between the Conservative MPs, on the one hand, and the Liberal MPs and an NDP MP, on the other.
The motion aims to shed light on information reported last week by the daily The Globe and Mail that China used a sophisticated strategy during the 2021 election campaign to secure the re-election of a minority Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau and defeat conservative candidates deemed hostile to the Chinese communist regime.
The daily claims to have noted the extent of the interference operation led by Beijing by consulting secret documents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) relating to the period before and after the September 2021 elections. Among other things, the Chinese Communist Party leadership in Beijing “pressured its consulates to create strategies to leverage Chinese community members and associations for political purposes within Canadian society”.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau argued last week that Canadian voters were the only ones to determine the outcome of the last ballot, downplaying the suggestion that China tried to improperly influence the outcome of the election.
According to Globe and Mail, CSIS documents indicate that Chinese diplomats and some representatives of the Chinese-language media had been given the mandate to convince the Chinese diaspora that the Conservative Party was too critical of China. If the Conservative Party were to win, it could follow in the footsteps of former US President Donald Trump, who notably banned Chinese students from attending certain universities or educational programs in the United States.
“Foreign interference has been on the rise in the last two elections,” Tory MP Blaine Calkins said during the extraordinary committee meeting, convened urgently by opposition MPs at the time where the work of the Commons takes a break for two weeks.
The Conservative Party estimates that at least eight of its candidates have bitten the dust in the 2021 federal election because of Chinese interference during the election campaign. Senior Conservative Party leaders presented concrete examples of Chinese interference to CSIS investigators during three meetings that took place after Election Day, September 20, 2021, according to information obtained by The Press.
From the start of the meeting, the Conservative MPs presented a long motion that would have made it possible to summon the chief of staff of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Katie Telford, to come and testify. The Prime Minister would also have been invited to appear, as well as the former Minister of Foreign Affairs. The elected Conservatives, who obtained the support of Bloc Québécois MP Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, also wanted to obtain documents from various departments concerning foreign interference.
But the invitations which would have been sent to Mme Telford and the Prime Minister were withdrawn following the passage of an amendment proposed by Liberal MP Greg Fergus. The latter also struck from the Conservative motion the obligation to produce documents related to foreign interference.
However, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, the Minister of Public Security, Marco Mendicino, and the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Dominic LeBlanc, who is also responsible for democratic institutions, will be called to testify, as will the Prime Minister’s adviser Minister for National Security and Intelligence, Jody Thomas, and the heads of CSIS and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), among other agencies.
Committee members debated for nearly two hours whether to broaden the scope of the parliamentary inquiry.
“By these hiding places or by his willful blindness, the prime minister lends credence to the allegations that he turned a blind eye because the Liberals were the flavor du jour of the Beijing regime. It’s just deplorable, ”said Conservative MP Luc Berthold.
Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell countered that the Trudeau government has long been aware that authoritarian regimes seek to influence the conduct of elections in Canada. “Conservatives seem to be very selective about their concerns about political interference,” she said, accusing the latter of taking inspiration from Donald Trump’s tactics to cast doubt on the results of the 2021 election.
The House of Commons Procedure and Affairs Committee has already been looking into foreign interference in the 2019 election since last November. Committee members have already interviewed witnesses from the RCMP, CSIS and Elections Canada as well as certain ministers of the Trudeau government.