A former chief electoral officer is calling for an independent inquiry into China’s interference in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 federal elections.
Jean-Pierre Kingsley, who served the role from 1990 to 2017, said the
recently leaked Canadian Security Intelligence Services (CSIS) documents that detail Beijing’s interference objectives in the 2021 federal election, and how the regime helped its favoured candidates in the two most recent campaigns, is disturbing.
“We must do everything we can to protect the integrity of our electoral system,” Kingsley told
The Globe and Mail on Feb. 23. “We need to find out what has transpired. I favour an independent inquiry because this is what will satisfy Canadians. It is not a minor issue.”
According to the Globe, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has declined to comment on whether Justin Trudeau would support the launching of an independent inquiry into election interference.
The Epoch Times reached out to the PMO but didn’t hear back by publication time.
The Globe’s Feb. 17
report on the leaked documents said Beijing had
mobilized its consulates to leverage politically active Chinese community members and organizations to execute an elaborate strategy that had two goals: the re-election of a minority Liberal government and the defeat of Conservative candidates who have been vocal against the Chinese communist regime.
The documents
said people sympathetic to Beijing’s cause were encouraged to give campaign donations to candidates favoured by China. Political campaigns would then quietly return a portion of the contribution—“the difference between the original donation and the government’s refund”—to the donors, which is illegal, the media outlet said.
Tactics such as hiring Chinese students studying in Canada and “assign[ing] them to volunteer in electoral campaigns on a full-time basis” were also deployed as part of Beijing’s foreign interference operations on Canadian soil.
Issue of Independence
In addition, the CSIS documents detail how the Chinese consulate in Toronto had helped the campaign of 11 candidates in the 2019 federal elections—nine Liberals and two Conservatives favoured by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), reported the Globe.The documents further detail that former Chinese Consul-General in Vancouver Tong Xiaoling had bragged in 2021 about how she helped defeat two Conservative MPs—one of whom was Kenny Chiu, an outspoken critic of the CCP.
Trudeau was asked about Kingsley’s comment at a press conference on Feb. 24 and if he would establish a public inquiry into Chinese interference in the past two elections.
The prime minister didn’t comment directly, but said that the issue of influence operations by “China and other countries” is serious.
“I think it is a very good thing that Canadians are understanding how serious it is that China and other countries are continuing to try to destabilize and influence our democracies and our institutions,” he said.
At a
press conference in Halifax on Feb. 23, Trudeau said his government is “very concerned with the leaks,” particularly about the “inaccuracies,” though he did not elaborate on what was inaccurately reported in the CSIS documents.
The prime minister
defended the integrity of the 2019 and 2021 elections, stressing that his government had set up a
Critical Election Incident Public Protocol (CEIPP), a non-partisan panel created to monitor and report potential threats of interference in the 2019 election. The panel was also given the mandate to continue its work during future elections.
In November 2020, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc
announced that the CEIPP found no threats that met the “high threshold” for public announcement during the 2019 federal election.
The Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force, also set up by the Liberal government,
never raised the issue of foreign interference during the 2019 or 2021 campaigns either, according to the Globe’s Feb. 17 report.
Kingsley argued that the CEIPP is not independent because it is made up of senior civil servants who report to Trudeau.
“Things would have been different if there had been an independent person sitting there,” he said, adding that SITE should have alerted Canadians and political parties about what Beijing was up to in both elections.
Andrew Chen and Peter Wilson contributed to this report.
