Foreign Agents Can Easily Impact PM Selection via Unvetted Canadian Party Memberships: Study

Liberal delegates vote for the new party constitution at the 2016 Liberal Biennial Convention Winnipeg on May 28, 2016. The Canadian Press/John Woods

Lax membership criteria in major political parties, such as allowing international students and foreign nationals to join, leave Canada vulnerable to foreign interference and could impact the selection of prime ministers, a recent study says.

“Foreign actors could also influence the selection process of party leadership, and hence the prime ministership, simply by purchasing party memberships that hand out ballots in leadership races without verifying the identities of new members,” said the study “Beyond General Elections“ published by Sage Journals on March 18.

In Canada’s parliamentary system, unlike the American presidential system, general voters do not directly choose the head of government, the study notes. Instead, the prime minister position is assumed by the internally elected leader of the party holding the most seats or confidence in the House of Commons.

“Given this indirect selection process of the head of government, it is as important to safeguard leadership races as it is to protect the integrity of general elections,” the study said.

Both the Liberal Party and the NDP have an “open door” policy for individuals residing in Canada interested in joining. To become a registered Liberal, a person must be aged 14 or older and must either “ordinarily live in Canada” or, for Canadians living abroad, must be qualified to vote in accordance with the Canada Elections Act. The NDP constitution says membership is open to “every resident of Canada.”

Although, the Conservative Party enforces stricter criteria, permitting only citizens and permanent residents of Canada to join as long as they are 14 or older, the membership processes of all three major federal parties are susceptible to foreign influence because they all lack identity verification measures, the study’s two co-authors said.

To support their argument, the co-authors said they provided random identity information in the membership application process for each of the three major parties and were accepted as members by all three. This was despite each party requiring members not to belong to another political party at the same time.

The study was co-authored by Ronaldo Au-Yeung, an adjunct lecturer of political science at Simon Fraser University (SFU), and Alsu Tagirova, a research fellow at the Academy of History and Documentation of Socialism at East China Normal University, Shanghai, who is currently a visiting scholar in SFU’s History Department.

Additionally, the authors noted the relatively low cost for foreign actors to join parties and exert influence from within compared to traditional foreign interference tactics like disinformation campaigns and diaspora control.

Membership is free for the Liberal Party and $15 a year for the Conservative Party, as compiled by advocacy group Right Now. NDP membership rates differ depending on province of residence. For example, it costs $25 to join the Ontario NDP, “or only $5 if you are unwaged, a student, a senior, or underemployed,” and the fee is $10 in both B.C. and Alberta to join the NDP.

“Assuming one hundred thousand memberships would be needed to achieve a real impact on a leadership race, it would cost foreign actors at most C$1.5 million,” the study stated.

To put this into perspective, China spent US$280 million (about C$380 million) to influence American politics between 2016 and 2022, according to reports filed with the U.S. Justice Department under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, said the study, citing an October 2022 article published by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

Chinese Interference

The study highlighted Beijing’s alleged interference in Canadian party candidacy, citing the case of MP Han Dong.

Information from intelligence sources, including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, presented at the Foreign Interference Commission in Ottawa on April 2 said that there were a number of irregularities during the Liberal Party nomination race that Mr. Dong won in September 2019.

These included activities undertaken by “individuals close to PRC Officials,” a document summarizing the intelligence information said.

The document says that the irregularities, which have not been “firmly substantiated,” include, buses being “used to bring international students to the nomination process, in support of Han Dong.”

The document also said that some of the students who were bused to the contest were provided “with falsified documents to allow them to vote, despite not being residents of [Don Valley North],” Mr. Dong’s riding. As well, the document said, students voted under “veiled threats’ by the Chinese consulate.

Mr. Dong, who resigned from the Liberal caucus last year amid media reports about his conversations with the Chinese consulate and now sits as an Independent, has denied any allegations of wrongdoing. He has not returned repeated requests from The Epoch Times for comment.

“If foreign actors could manipulate the role of their overseas students, who are by legal definition residents of Canada, in the Canadian political process, as China allegedly did in Dong’s nomination process, then they could also instruct the same overseas students to purchase party memberships and vote for a candidate who is likely to align with their country’s interests,” the study said.

The Liberal Party changed its constitution in 2016 to replace the concept of “membership” with “registration,” and made it free to register as a Liberal, entitled to vote in one’s electoral district association and leadership contests. In contrast, other parties require a membership fee to become a member in order to vote in nomination contests.

Moreover, while the Conservative Party only allows Canadian citizens and permanent residents to become members and vote, and the NDP only allows residents of Canada, anyone claiming to “ordinarily live in Canada” can vote in Liberal nomination races.

Policy Recommendation

The authors propose several recommendations to address the “perilous loophole” in party membership.

One suggestion is to implement an in-person, on-site identity verification process, using technology like Interac, which is based on a bank login, to verify IDs and prevent foreign actors from purchasing a large number of memberships using random or fake IDs.

They also recommend that parties flag any irregularities—such as multiple registrations from a single IP address or identical banking and physical address information—to prevent foreign actors from buying online memberships to influence leadership elections.

The government should invest more in media content in languages other than French and English speakers, to serve other ethnic communities widely represented in Canadian society, the authors said. They said many newcomers rely on media from their home countries and cautioned that outlets controlled or sponsored by countries like China or Russia often promote the authoritarian regimes’ international policies through their content.

Editor’s note: This article was updated on April 3 to add information from testimony at the Foreign Interference Commission.