Election Monitors Tasked With Detecting Chinese Interference Could Not Read Chinese

A person works at a computer during the 10th International Cybersecurity Forum in Lille on Jan. 23, 2018. Getty Images

The five cabinet appointees assigned to monitor federal elections for foreign interference could not read Chinese and largely dismissed Chinese Communist Party election interference that had been written in the language.

Allen Sutherland, assistant secretary to the cabinet, testified before the foreign interference inquiry that monitors did not spend a significant amount of time looking at Chinese-language media because none of the appointees could read or speak the language and they felt it was only targeting the Chinese diaspora, reported Blacklock’s Reporter.

A Chinese translator was later hired. A report said experts identified the lack of a Mandarin speaker as a “gap.”

“It was simply that in the case of WeChat, the ability of that to go viral in a national scale is different,” Mr. Sutherland told the foreign interference inquiry.

WeChat, a Chinese social media and messaging app, has been banned on Canadian government mobile devices since October of last year as Treasury Board President Anita Anand claimed that it presented a security risk.

In January, it was revealed that the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs highlighted WeChat as one of the primary social media platforms used to conduct Chinese election interference campaigns in a memo from 2021.

Rob Stewart, a former deputy minister of public safety and one of the federal monitors for the 2021 election, told a House of Commons committee last October that he had been alerted twice by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service of Chinese agents using WeChat to target Tory MP Michael Cong, though Mr. Chong was never told.

Mr. Chong also testified before the foreign interference inquiry and was told by the RCMP that despite his suspicions a man who heckled him at a 2021 federal election event may have been a Chinese agent, the police told him that while “compelling” they would not pursue the matter.

Mr. Sutherland told the inquiry that authorities did not want to “overreact” and security warnings regarding any election interference campaigns using WeChat were never issued as a result.

“Panel members are our most accomplished, non-partisan, professional public servants,” Mr. Sutherland said. “They are experienced in nuanced judgment, judgment under uncertainty and judgment under pressure. It was a difficult task that was given to them. It would require nuanced judgment and it was thought this panel of five was appropriate for that task.”

Government officials have been deeply criticised by former and current MPs for not informing them of targetted influence campaigns by Chinese agents.

Former Tory MP Kenny Chiu told the inquiry that he was “troubled and disappointed,” saying: “I thought I would be protected by my country. And I was deeply troubled and disappointed that I was exposed, and the government didn’t seem to care.”

Mr. Chiu was subjected to an intense campaign that accused him of being anti-China as well as harbouring a hatred for the Chinese people in his former riding of Steveston-Richmond East in British Columbia. Much of the campaign is said to have been spread on Chinese-language media platforms.