A senior federal official says the government is considering new ways to inform the public of possible developments in foreign interference during an election campaign.
Under the current system, a group of five senior officials would issue a public warning if they believed an incident, or series of incidents, threatened Canada’s ability to hold “free and fair elections.”
There have been no such announcements regarding the 2019 or 2021 general elections.
Allen Sutherland, federal deputy cabinet secretary, told the commission of inquiry into foreign interference on Thursday that officials in Ottawa were studying how Canadians could be informed of developments even if incidents of interference did not reach quite the current threshold for “warning the population”.
The senior Privy Council Office official said this would inform citizens of facts they should know, even if these incidents did not rise to the level of threat to the overall integrity of an election.
Allegations of foreign interference during the last two general elections gave rise to the ongoing public inquiry, chaired by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue of the Quebec Court of Appeal.
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