Elections Panel Defends Not Warning Public About Interference in Han Dong’s Riding, Saying Briefing to Liberals Would Mitigate Risk

Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council Nathalie Drouin appears as a witness at the Public Order Emergency Commission in Ottawa on Nov. 18, 2022. The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

The panel of bureaucrats in charge of notifying the public of election threats said the provision of a briefing to the Liberal Party about the 2019 Don Valley North nomination race would be enough to mitigate the risk and thus did not alert the public, the foreign interference inquiry heard April 8.

Allegations of irregularities and interference by the Chinese regime in the race won by MP Han Dong have been a focus of the hearings of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was briefed about the issue in 2019 but chose to keep Mr. Dong in place.

The 2019 members of the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol, composed of five senior bureaucrats, testified before the public inquiry on April 8.

Nathalie Drouin, who was deputy justice minister at the time, explained why the panel had not made any public announcements despite receiving information about foreign interference, including regarding the Don Valley North riding.

She said the nomination race fell outside the mandate of the panel but it was examined nonetheless since it could involve the “credibility of a process.”

“At the end, we concluded that the information we have, because of the potential impact it had, because of the reliability of some information, that our threshold was not met to do any announcement,” she said, adding it had not compromised a free and fair election.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had provided a briefing to the Liberal Party about its intelligence on Don Valley North, and Ms. Drouin said this played a role in the panel’s decision to not raise the matter publicly.

“The fact that we can have some mitigation operations or action—that contributes to reduce the risk and reduce the impact,” she said. “Being able to brief a party, here it was the Liberal Party, was contributing in terms of reducing the risk and the potential impacts.”

Ms. Drouin, currently the deputy clerk of the Privy Council and the prime minister’s national security and intelligence adviser, also testified that the panel’s threshold to raise issues publicly was “very high” due to “important reasons.”

“There was some risk that any intervention by the panel can create more harm than good,” she said, adding it could “create confusion” or be depicted as interfering in the democratic process.

“And we want also to make sure that we were not being seen as taking a partisan position in any debate.”

‘Irregularities’

A CSIS intelligence summary released to the commission said there were “irregularities” in the Don Valley North nomination race that “may have included activities undertaken by individuals close to PRC [People’s Republic of China] Officials.”

The intelligence says international Chinese students were bused in to vote for Han Dong, something the now-Independent MP told the inquiry he was aware of at the time.

Liberal Party rules allow for non-citizens and non-permanent residents 14 and older to vote in nomination races.

Other CSIS reporting said the students had been provided with fake documents to vote, since they were not residents of the riding. “The documents were provided by individuals associated with a known proxy agent,” or someone working covertly on behalf of Beijing, CSIS said.

The intelligence agency also said the Chinese consulate issued “veiled threats” to the international students that they could lose their visas if they didn’t support Han Dong.

Mr. Dong left the Liberal Party in March 2023 after Global News published allegations drawn from national security leaks suggesting he had provided advice to the Chinese consul general in Toronto about the detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

Mr. Dong denies the allegations and has sued Global for defamation. He has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

The inquiry released an intelligence summary of Mr. Dong’s conversation with the Chinese consul general. It shows Mr. Dong considered the case of Mr. Kovrig and Mr. Spavor to have political ramifications for the Liberal Party.

“MP Dong expressed the view that even if the PRC released the ‘Two Michaels’ at that moment, opposition parties would view the PRC’s action as an affirmation of the effectiveness of a hardline Canadian approach to the PRC,” says the summary.

‘Had an Impact’

CSIS had sent a limited distribution intelligence assessment about foreign interference in the federal campaign of Mr. Dong after the 2019 elections.

It says a “politically-connected” Canadian “has already had an impact on the 2019 federal election, and will remain a foreign interference threat after the election,” according to evidence submitted at the inquiry.

CSIS Director David Vigneault pulled the report after meeting with the prime minister’s national security intelligence adviser and receiving complaints from the chair of Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force, Lyall King. SITE had said foreign interference played no major role in the 2019 context, whereas the CSIS report pointed to a threat having an actual impact.

“Given the nature of it, just after the election, and the bottom line statement seemed to have some disagreements with what we were saying, from a SITE perspective regarding the nature of the foreign interference, I was concerned about the messaging being conflicting, and going up to seniors,” Mr. King told the inquiry April 4.

This week, the public inquiry will complete its phase of hearings on foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 general elections.

Mr. Trudeau, his ministers, and his political staff will testify in the coming days.