A Canadian intelligence official says while Beijing’s attempts at foreign interference may not have had a decisive impact on Canada’s 2021 election outcome in a specific riding, such covert activities can still leave the elected candidate feeling indebted to the communist regime.
At a closed-door hearing, the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference received a summary of interviews with intelligence officials that said, “even if FI [foreign interference] did not directly lead to the election of a given candidate, that interference could nonetheless have an impact on the relationship with that candidate, and by extension the communities they represent.”
For example, it noted, “foreign interference by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] could affect a candidate’s actions while in office if they felt indebted to the PRC for assisting in their election.”
The remarks were part of the testimony provided by an unnamed senior intelligence analyst from a Canadian Security Intelligence Service branch tasked with collecting, assessing, and reporting information relevant to China, including instances of political foreign interference. The official is the director general of the CSIS Toronto Regional Office.
The witness said an individual believed to be a foreign state proxy had supported campaigns in multiple ridings during the 2021 election. Although the malign actor’s activities might appear legitimate, the official said, “the relationships and activities more clearly became a national security concern based on context.”
The CSIS official’s testimony also described China’s evolving political preferences and its “party-agnostic” stance, indicating that Beijing seeks to influence candidates’ elections based on their alignment with the regime’s strategic interests, rather than on their party affiliations.
“The sense that the PRC’s preferred outcome was a minority government formed by the LPC [Liberal Party of Canada] may mean that the LPC was perceived in that election as being more PRC-friendly than the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC),” the summary stated.
“Those reports do not mean that the PRC’s efforts were focused only on promoting LPC candidates. Efforts were also being made to build relationships with the CPC to soften the party’s stance towards the PRC.”
The inquiry into foreign interference was launched last year in response to media reports of Beijing’s meddling in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. The CSIS official testified during the initial phase of the inquiry in February and March. The inquiry is currently focusing on testimony regarding allegations of interference.
‘More Tools’ Needed
The CSIS official said that the “ambiguous nature” of China’s activities and the background knowledge required to understand the “subversive nature” of those acts make combatting Beijing’s foreign interference threat a challenge.The official said that CSIS needs more tools to combat the threat.
United Front
The document quotes another CSIS official as saying that the PRC’s United Front organization’s tactics include “grooming and subtly incentivizing agents and proxies” to perform acts to benefit Beijing without them “being directly asked.”“This can make it difficult to attribute foreign interference to the PRC,” the summary says.
The official, who is the director general of the CSIS Prairie Office, also said that the intelligence agency is limited in actions it can take due to “operational risks.”
The official “described instances where CSIS knew that an activity was conducted on behalf of a foreign state but could not act on that information,” the summary says.
