Conservative MP and foreign affairs critic Michael Chong says the non-partisan panel created by the Liberal government in 2019 to assess and maintain election integrity was “not successful” in its work during the 2021 federal election, alleging that it did not alert Canadians of foreign interference despite being aware of it.
“I hope the PCO [Privy Council Office] assesses that the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol was NOT successful,” Chong
wrote on Twitter on Feb. 26, claiming that the panel knew about alleged Beijing’s election interference but didn’t raise alarm.
Chong wrote that the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) of Global Affairs Canada (GAC) “was following Chinese Communist Party interference targeting Conservative candidates like Kenny Chiu” during the 2021 federal election.
Chiu, a former Conservative MP
who lost his bid for re-election in the B.C. riding of Steveston-Richmond in 2021,
has previously said he was targeted by pre-election misinformation campaigns on Chinese-language social media platforms like WeChat.
A House of Commons committee also heard from an expert witness on Feb. 7 that the misinformation campaigns cost Chiu his seat.
“My personal view is that if it had not been for the disinformation, Mr. Chiu would still be in Parliament today,” said Charles Burton, a senior fellow at the Ottawa-based think tank Macdonald-Laurier Institute, while testifying before the Commons Standing Committee on House Affairs.
In his recent Twitter post, Chong cited RRM documents from the time of the 2021 election addressing possible misinformation campaigns carried out by the Chinese regime against Chiu and the federal Conservative Party as a whole during the lead-up to the federal election.
Interference Allegations
The documents stated that RRM had “observed what may be a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) information operation that aims to discourage Canadians of Chinese heritage from voting for the Conservative Party of Canada.”“Despite GAC & others like CSIS tracking Beijing’s interference in real-time, nothing was done,” Chong wrote, adding, “There’s a real question whether PM Trudeau can be trusted to make the necessary changes to protect Canadians from Beijing’s interference.”
Calls for a non-partisan public inquiry into allegations of Chinese election interference have grown
following recent reports by Global News and the Globe and Mail citing secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) documents and sources that show widespread election interference by Beijing in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 federal elections.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
has maintained that Canada’s “electoral and democratic processes have not been compromised” and
previously said the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol, which was a non-partisan panel created by his government in 2019, determined that the integrity held for both elections.
The
panel has not yet released its post-election assessment report for the 2021 election despite publically issuing its 2019 assessment just seven months after the election took place.
The Privy Council Office
said in a recent statement that the panel’s 2021 election assessment will soon be made public, but did not provide a specific timeline.
The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
