(Ottawa) What exactly did Prime Minister Justin Trudeau know about the extent of foreign interference activities allegedly carried out by China during the 2019 and 2021 federal elections?
Not much, if we rely on the testimonies of Mr. Trudeau’s close collaborators who appeared Tuesday before the Commission on Foreign Interference, even if China’s clandestine maneuvers were the subject of several reports from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) over the years.
The most senior officials of the government apparatus during this period, notably the former clerk of the Privy Council Office Janice Charette and Mr. Trudeau’s current national security advisor, Nathalie Drouin, also affirmed that the Prime Minister did not receive an exhaustive information session on this delicate issue during the last two elections.
Justin Trudeau must testify on Wednesday before Judge Marie-Josée Hogue who chairs the Commission. Three ministers – Dominic LeBlanc, Bill Blair and Karina Gould – will also be questioned on this last day of the Commission hearings.
PHOTO SEAN KILPATRICK, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
“I did not hold a briefing session for the Prime Minister on this issue during the election or after the election. I believe that the first briefing to the Prime Minister did not take place before 2023 by the Privy Council Office,” said Mr.me Charette, who retired from public service last year.
Mr. Trudeau received an important briefing session on February 21, 2023 after publication in the daily The Globe and Mail of a series of articles detailing interference activities carried out by China to influence the results of federal elections in certain ridings across the country. The daily’s reporting was based on secret CSIS reports on the growing phenomenon of foreign interference by certain states, particularly China.
Among other things, China would have used a refined strategy to ensure the re-election of a minority Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau in the last election and to defeat conservative candidates deemed hostile to the Chinese communist regime, according to the daily.
A CSIS document prepared in anticipation of this February 21, 2023 briefing was made public on Monday by the Commission. In this six-page document, CSIS maintains that China “intervened in a clandestine and deceptive manner” during the 2019 and 2021 elections.
In this document, CSIS highlights having provided 34 briefings on foreign interference – including during the last two federal elections – to numerous ministers from June 2018 to December 2022. It indicates that Mr. Trudeau was briefed in February 2021 and October 2022.
The CSIS document argues that state actors are able to intervene successfully in Canada because there are “few legal or political consequences.”
” As long as [l’ingérence étrangère] will not be considered an existential threat to Canadian democracy and governments will not respond forcefully and actively, these threats will persist. »
But according to Brian Clow, who is deputy chief of staff to the Prime Minister, several elements found in this document reporting China’s interference activities were not relayed orally to the Prime Minister by the head of CSIS David Vigneault during the meeting.
“Most of the information in this document was not relayed to us during the meeting,” argued Mr. Clow, who was invited to the witness stand along with Katie Telford, Mr. Trudeau’s chief of staff. Two other close aides to the Prime Minister – Jeremy Broadhurst and Patrick Travers – appeared at the same time.
PHOTO ADRIAN WYLD, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Katie Telford, Mr. Trudeau’s chief of staff
“What we see in this document are notes from the person giving us a briefing. But that doesn’t mean that this same person chooses to give us all this information,” he argued.
During her testimony, Katie Telford said that one should not have “blind faith” in the information that CSIS collects and transmits to the Prime Minister’s Office. This information is often fragmentary and paints an incomplete portrait of a file. This also explains why information is screened before it is given to the Prime Minister.
For her part, Mr. Trudeau’s current national security and intelligence advisor, Nathalie Drouin, argued in the morning that even if there have been foreign interference activities in Canada in recent years, This does not mean that these maneuvers were successful.
She reiterated that officials had monitored interference attempts during the last two Canadian elections, but did not see any noticeable effects on the polls.
Senior officials tasked with assessing possible cases of a “major electoral incident” did not consider the activities during the two elections serious enough to warrant informing the public, under a special protocol.
With The Canadian Press