China interfered in 2019 and 2021 but didn’t overturn Canada’s election results: Hogue Commission
Senior Liberal official didn't share CSIS threat brief with Prime Minister before election of September 2021, report says
Ottawa’s Foreign Interference Commission has found China clandestinely interfered in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 federal elections, and while the overall integrity of both contests held, foreign interference from China and states including India is undermining the rights of Canadian voters “to have an electoral ecosystem free from coercion or covert influence.”
“The evidence allows me to conclude foreign interference likely impacted some votes in the 2019 and 2021 General Elections,” Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue found, adding “the acts of interference that occurred are a stain on our electoral process and impacted the process leading up to the actual vote.”
More broadly, Hogue’s report emphasized the risk that politicians could censor themselves in ways that impact Canada’s democracy and elections, due to hostile state interference.
“There is a real risk of politicians modifying their positions or their messages as a result of foreign interference, and this risk will increase if we do not take sufficient protective measures to guard against it,” Hogue wrote.
The second phase of the Commission will look at what these measures could be.
In a press conference Friday after the report’s release, Hogue said the Commission’s investigation continues and must probe more deeply into two mechanisms of election interference already confirmed: financial support for some candidates, and disinformation attacks against others.
In one example, Hogue cited intelligence from the 2019 election of “at least two transfers of funds approximating $250,000 from PRC officials in Canada, possibly for foreign interference-related purposes,” into a clandestine network that included 11 candidates, including seven from the Liberal Party and four from the Conservative Party.
“Some of these individuals appeared willing to cooperate in foreign interference-related activity while others appeared to be unaware of such activity due to its clandestine nature,” Hogue wrote.
In perhaps the most prominent alleged case of Chinese interference detailed in her first report, Hogue found that Liberal MP Han Dong’s nomination in 2019 could well have been secured by covert support from Chinese international students who faced threats from Chinese officials.
She noted that Dong denied any involvement in the alleged Chinese interference.
“Before the election intelligence reporting indicated that Chinese international students would have been bused in to support Han Dong, and that individuals associated with a known PRC proxy agent provided students with falsified documents to allow them to vote, despite not being residents of Don Valley North,” Hogue’s report says.
“After the election, some intelligence indicated that veiled threats were issued by the PRC Consulate to the students, implying that their student visas would be in jeopardy and that there could be consequences for their families living in the PRC if they did not support Mr. Dong.”
“Given that Don Valley North was considered a ‘safe’ Liberal seat,” Hogue wrote, potential Chinese interference “would likely not have affected which party held the riding. It would, however, have affected who was elected to Parliament. This is significant.”
“This incident makes clear the extent to which nomination contests can be gateways for foreign states who wish to interfere in our democratic process,” Hogue added, noting “this is undoubtedly an issue that will have to be carefully examined in the second phase.”
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was warned of potential irregularities involving the students and Chinese officials in Han Dong’s nomination and decided not to intervene before the October 2019 election, Hogue said there also is no indication that Trudeau and the Liberals examined the case any further after the October 2019 election.
“I asked Mr. Trudeau whether the issue was revisited after the election,” Hogue wrote. “The specifics of any follow-up are at this point unclear, and I am not certain what steps were taken.”
Hogue also found that British Columbia MP Kenny Chiu and former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole were attacked with Chinese disinformation in 2021 and Chiu may have lost his Vancouver-area riding due to attacks on WeChat.
“There is one riding where disinformation may have led to the election of one candidate over another,” Hogue said, “but I cannot say for sure.”
It’s not clear from Hogue’s report, but possible, that Jeremy Broadhurst, the Liberal Party official that passed along CSIS’s alert to Prime Minister Trudeau on Han Dong’s riding in 2019, was also briefed on a potential threat related to Kenny Chiu’s Liberal opponent in 2021, according toThe Bureau’s analysis of Commission records and testimony.
“Around 12 September 2021, representatives of CSIS, with the support of Privy Council Office, briefed the cleared LPC representatives about an issue relating to foreign interference,” Hogue’s report says.
“The representatives passed the information to Jeremy Broadhurst, who was then a senior official with the LPC campaign. Mr. Broadhurst testified that the information he received required no immediate action [and] Mr. Broadhurst was unable to share the information from the briefing with the Prime Minister before election day, but did so shortly thereafter.”
Regarding China’s attacks on the Conservative Party in 2021, Hogue pointed to an after-the-fact, February 2023 briefing from CSIS to the Prime Minister’s Office that “opined that PRC foreign interference activities in 2021 were ‘almost certainly’ motivated by a perception that the CPC was promoting an anti-PRC platform.”
Hogue said she found “no bad faith” on the part of Ottawa’s so-called SITE election monitoring task force, which did not make a public announcement on Chinese disinformation in 2021 or warn Chiu and O’Toole that they were under attack, but there were serious problems with communication.
“While it is not obvious what government could or should have done during the election, it raises an important question about responses to online misinformation and disinformation (including during an election),” Hogue wrote.
The report also noted that in Vancouver, “intelligence holdings indicate that the PRC worked to exclude particular political candidates from public events in 2019, and that their strategy continued in 2020 and 2021.”
One of the candidates targeted by China was NDP MP Jenny Kwan, who “also raised concern about a prominent member of the Chinese community in Vancouver hosting a free lunch for her Liberal Party opponent,” Hogue wrote.
Canadian intelligence reports linked the incident to China’s United Front Work Department, the Commission heard.
Sensitive CSIS intelligence on Liberal riding changed three times
Hogue’s report also dealt with a number of changes to CSIS reports regarding the Don Valley North riding in 2019.
CSIS first filed a National Security Brief dated 1 October 2019, and titled “Foreign Interference in the 2019 Federal Campaign of Dong Han,” Hogue wrote.
But the report was recalled shortly after CSIS director David Vigneault spoke with Trudeau’s top national security advisor.
The former official “Greta Bossenmaier said she likely read the report and may have asked questions about it, but did not remember asking for it to be recalled,” Hogue wrote. “Mr. Vigneault insisted he had never recalled a report because it was too sensitive or for political reasons.”
But “in the absence of any explanation for the recall, I cannot draw any conclusion from this incident,” Hogue wrote.
Next, there was another “intelligence report relating to potential PRC foreign interference,” that included funding allegations, and was circulated to Bossenmaier and other senior officials on October 18, three days before the 2019 election.
However, this report apparently wasn’t distributed to several members of Ottawa’s SITE election threat task-force — who were empowered to intervene — until the election day, Hogue wrote.
“The Panel of Five was aware of allegations that there was some financial support for candidates in Toronto in 2019 but did not attribute the activities to a ‘network,’” Hogue wrote. “I note that intelligence products from early 2020 describe the 11 candidates as being implicated in a ‘network.’”
The Commission also heard that intelligence on Han Dong’s riding was recalled a second time in 2019, before it was redrafted a third time in 2023 by David Vigneault at the direction of Trudeau’s national security advisor Jody Thomas.
Regarding the second time, eight days after the 2019 election, a CSIS National Security Brief “dated 29 October 2019 that identified potential foreign interference by a politically-connected Canadian,” was called “massively problematic” by a Canadian signals intelligence official, Hogue wrote.
The CSIS report assessed that it was likely that this politically-connected Canadian “has already had an impact on the 2019 federal election, and will remain a foreign interference threat after the election,” Hogue wrote.
Documents tabled during the Commission said “that person had not previously been identified as acting on behalf of a foreign state, but appeared to have been doing so in the period leading up to the 2019 election.”
Hogue’s report found that officials sitting on Ottawa’s SITE election threat task-force “were taken by surprise” by CSIS’s assessment, which didn’t align with their own opinions on the integrity of the 2019 election.
“An updated [National Security Brief] dated 3 December 2019, removed the assessment and said instead that the [politically-connected Canadian’s] relationships and activities were consistent with known PRC tradecraft, ‘which could be expected to be applied to future elections at all levels.’”
In previous hearings, Commission lawyers pointed to “an internal CSIS email exchange following a meeting between the CSIS director [Vigneault] and staff from the Prime Minister's Office, sometime after 2022.”
“In this exchange, CSIS employees discussed changes to an assessment concerning possible PRC interference in the nomination race for the LPC candidate in the Don Valley North riding,” a Commission document said.
Pointing to unidentified CSIS witnesses, the document said “the purpose of the meeting was to discuss, after media leaks, all intelligence regarding Han Dong,” and a CSIS witness “stated that the corrections in the assessment identified in the email exchange were based on that meeting.”
And a second CSIS witness told Commission lawyers “that they believed a report concerning the Don Valley North nomination contest was recalled at the request of the National Security and Intelligence Advisor [in 2023]," and “that it was not common for the NSIA to request the recall of a report."
In remarks to media Friday Hogue said the Commission’s investigation continues and she could still change conclusions from her first report, but she doesn’t foresee any major changes.
Editor’s note: This breaking story was updated throughout the day of May 3, 2024.
sam@thebureau.news
As I said said weeks ago - "the fix is already in." Trudeau hand picked the judge that would absolve him of any culpability in this scandal. Watch his prepaid media lackeys now wax poetic on how this was all "much ado about nothing."
Like I said more theatre by Trudeau’s hand picked judge. Seriously, this goes beyond the pale. I hope that there is mention of the Liberals nomination process by allowing non Canadian’s to vote in members to run as a Liberal candidate in any riding , in itself, is interference in our elections. Please correct me if I am wrong.