OTTAWA – Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs David Morrison has discredited allegations of Chinese interference in our elections saying they are based on “rumors”.
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Mr. Morrisson sits on the panel of senior officials charged with monitoring threats to the integrity of our elections. He has received daily reports from the Canadian Intelligence and Security Service (CSIS) on foreign interference for the past five years.
Before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which is studying the file on an urgent basis, although he admitted the existence of attempts to interfere, he declared that the information provided by CSIS is only a source of information among others that the government consults to make decisions.
“Intelligence is not the truth,” he said, adding that the information provided by the secret services is often “imprecise, partial, incomplete.”
The assertion startled Bloc Québécois MP Christine Normandin.
“It almost gives me the impression that you are replacing the expertise of CSIS,” she reacted, taken aback.
But Mr. Morrisson did not bat an eyelid, even drawing parallels several times with the war in Iraq, which was launched on the basis of inaccurate information that led people to believe that the country had weapons of mass destruction.
It was by clinging to this type of analysis that the panel monitoring threats to the integrity of our elections concluded that “national security agencies noted attempts at foreign interference in 2019 and 2021. , but not enough to meet the criteria that the integrity of the election was compromised”.
The government, however, maintains that it takes the issue seriously and the Minister of Public Security, Marco Mendicino, reiterated that he was considering the creation of a register of foreign agents, similar to that of Australia, an idea evaluated since 2021. .
“We are looking at improving our toolkit, and that includes a registry of foreign agents,” Mendicino said on the sidelines of a press briefing in Halifax.
In 2018, Australia passed the Foreign influence and transparency scheme act which includes a publicly accessible register. People working for foreign governments must register there or they can be held criminally responsible.
Before the Procedure and House Affairs Committee, CSIS Director David Vigneault said that such a registry would be an “important” tool, an “additional tool for transparency”, but that it would not “would not solve all the problems”.
Mr. Vigneault specified that we are facing a machine of influence, propaganda, and gigantic interference with a budget greater than the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs: the Chinese United Front Labor Department (DTFU).
This international network of influence of the Chinese Communist Party was set up to advance the interests of the regime in the world.
“Beijing uses the DTFU to stifle criticism and infiltrate foreign political parties, diasporas, universities and multinationals, explains the Ministry of Public Security. Various techniques are used, including political donations, paid trips to China, flattery, as well as co-optation of politicians around the world.