Former Tory leader Erin O'Toole says his party lost up to nine ridings in the 2021 elections because of interference from the Chinese regime.
While testifying before the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference on April 3, Mr. O'Toole said six to nine seats “were possibly changed as a result of foreign interference.”
The inquiry is currently in its second phase of hearings to explore foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections.
Mr. O'Toole said the allegedly affected ridings had narrower margins in the vote count, with “large numbers of people not voting and suspicions about voter suppression.”
The former Tory leader said he didn’t raise the issue to challenge the elections results and remarked his party did not publicly discuss the matter following the 2021 electoral defeat. He added that if the candidates in the ridings were “undergoing intimidation or suppression measures, their democratic rights were being trampled on by foreign actors.”
The Conservatives under Erin O'Toole had run a campaign with a strong platform against the Chinese regime. “We must stand up to the communist government of China,” the party’s platform said, while specifying “our quarrel is not with the people of China.”
Mr. O'Toole said this made his party a target for Beijing, a view that is shared by the security establishment.
The former Tory leader said his China policies were “much stronger” than the Liberal Party’s under Justin Trudeau.
“The Trudeau government was viewed by our allies—and I would hear this regularly from diplomats—we were seen as being offside with respect to a very ambitious agenda with China at a time that particularly the Five Eyes allies were being far more cautious with respect to China,” he said. The Five Eyes refers to the intelligence partnership with Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., and the UK.
Mr. O'Toole argued Beijing “certainly” preferred the status quo with the Liberal government.
“The Liberal Party of Canada is becoming the only party that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] can support,” a Chinese consulate official said, according to the report.
Election Integrity Task Force Criticized
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dismissed Mr. O'Toole’s concerns about the impact of interference when speaking with reporters on April 3.“I can understand where someone who lost an election is trying to look for reasons other than themselves why they might have lost an election,” he said, adding that his government put in place mechanisms such as the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force to protect the integrity of elections.
The Conservative Party told SITE after the 2021 elections it suspected Chinese meddling in 13 ridings. The task force convenes during elections and draws its members from departments and agencies that have security mandates. Conservatives have criticized SITE as ineffective and non-responsive.
Walied Soliman, who co-managed the Tories’ national campaign in 2021, told the public inquiry on April 2 of his frustration with the government mechanisms meant to counter foreign interference. He mentioned receiving no relevant feedback after submitting information to SITE.
Mr. Soliman and other party representatives from the Liberals and NDP who obtained security clearances to receive classified SITE briefings, told the inquiry they were never warned Beijing may target specific ridings in 2021. This was despite SITE having prepared a briefing destined for party reps which contained the following warning:
“Due to tensions in the bi-lateral relationship and PRC activity directed against Canada’s Parliament and certain MPs, the PRC may interfere in specific ridings to either support those viewed to be ‘Pro-PRC’, or oppose those viewed to be ‘anti-PRC’,” says the briefing.
Another SITE report produced after the elections and presented at the inquiry says that Beijing sought to “clandestinely and deceptively influence” the 2021 election.
“SITE TF also observed online/media activities aimed at discouraging Canadians, particularly of Chinese heritage, from supporting” Mr. O'Toole and “particularly” then-Tory MP Kenny Chiu. SITE added it had no “clear evidence” this was directed by Beijing, but said there were “indicators of potential coordination” between Chinese language news outlets and regime outlets.
‘Regret’
Mr. O'Toole also said he had been personally impacted by the 2021 election results given his party had lost two seats compared to the 2019 elections.He says this was stated as an argument against his leadership when a movement initiated by party members emerged, asking him to step down. Mr. O'Toole was ousted in early February 2022 and he resigned his House of Commons seat in the spring of 2023.
The former leader expressed regrets to the commission about not having spoken publicly at the time about the impacted candidates.
“I regret that I didn’t make a statement because I do feel Mr. Chiu, Mr. [Bob] Soraya, and a few other candidates were exposed to a level of misinformation that I think was profoundly unfair,” he said.
Mr. O'Toole said the reason he didn’t speak up was because the Liberal government would qualify concerns raised about Chinese espionage as anti-Asian hate.
“It was that inadvertent chill around any conversation of this that led me not to say anything publicly,” he said.
The public inquiry heard from Mr. Chiu after Mr. O'Toole. Tory MP Michael Chong and NDP MP Jenny Kwan are set to testify on April 3 as well. The prime minister and other officials will testify in the coming days.
The public inquiry will hold a future round of hearings around government mechanisms to counter foreign interference at a later date and has to file an initial report by May 3.
