Foreign Interference in Ridings: Former Tory Campaign Manager Provides Party’s List

Former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole, then-Chief of Staff Tausha Michaud and then-Campaign Manager Fred DeLorey wait to cross a road as they walk to National Caucus Wednesday September 9, 2020 in Ottawa. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

The former national campaign manager for the Conservative Party during the 2021 election has named every riding where the party believes there was outside interference.

Fred DeLorey provided the information during his testimony before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (PROC) on April 25.

DeLorey said there were “rumblings” about foreign interference during the contest, but they were “anecdotal at best.”

“However, after the campaign was concluded, we noticed some results that felt off, and that’s when internal rumblings of foreign interference became much louder,” he said.

DeLorey said based on that information he tasked field operations teams to report to him on the matter. This resulted in a memo, which he read during his introductory remarks before the committee.

“There was a strong case to be made that there was a degree of influence exerted by an outside actor in the Chinese community during the 44th general election,” says the memo.

The memo adds that there is a belief that this influence negatively impacted Conservatives in a number of ridings.

In B.C., those ridings are Metro Vancouver, Richmond Centre, Steveston-Richmond East, Coquitlam–Port Coquitlam, and Fleetwood–Port Kells.

In the Greater Toronto Area, the ridings are Markham-Stouffville, Markham–Unionville, Richmond Hill, Willowdale, Don Valley North, Scarborough–Agincourt, Aurora–Oak Ridges–Richmond Hill, Newmarket–Aurora, and “to a certain extent” Mississauga Centre.

The memo read by DeLorey spoke of Conservative Party content on the Chinese app WeChat being targeted or suppressed.

He says party representatives provided the information to the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force. The representatives “were informed that there were legislative gaps, and there was nothing that could be done,” said DeLorey.

Former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu says he lost his riding of Steveston-Richmond East in the 2021 election due to disinformation spread about him in Chinese-language media.

“It’s not just WeChat, it’s not just social media, it’s multi-dimensional. It’s on the airwaves that the [Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission] is supposed to be regulating, it’s on printed media, it’s also on websites,” he told the Commons ethics committee on March 31.

Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has previously said that some ridings were lost in 2021 due to Chinese interference. While a guest on the podcast of Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith in June 2022, he talked of losing eight or nine seats.

The information provided by DeLorey to the committee speaks of 13 to 14 ridings.

Despite bringing this information to the committee, DeLorey said in a column published in the Toronto Star on March 5 that he doesn’t believe this impacted the outcome of the election.

“I can confirm, without a shadow of a doubt, that the outcome of the election, which resulted in the Liberals forming government, was not influenced by any external meddling,” he wrote.

DeLorey said he still stands by that claim when asked about it by Liberal MP Ryan Turnbull at the PROC committee meeting.

“There does seem to be a concern that there may have been possible foreign interference, but if you looked at the seat difference between us and the Liberals, if you change every seat that could be up in the air, Liberals are still the government,” he said.