House committee discussing expanding foreign election interference study

A parliamentary committee is meeting to discuss expanding its study into foreign election interference.

The House of Commons Procedure and House Affairs Committee, which has been studying foreign election interference since November, has already heard from Elections Canada officials, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc, former Canadian Ambassador to China David Mulroney, and officials from the RCMP and CSIS, among others.

While the committee is already in the midst of its study, six members are now requesting the probe be expanded in scope.

The committee study was prompted by a Global News report that China allegedly interfered in Canada’s 2019 federal election, partly by funding the campaigns of at least 11 candidates, and that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was briefed about the allegations last January.

Concerns around foreign interference have been brought back to the forefront by The Globe and Mail reporting last week that China used a “sophisticated strategy” to sway Canada’s 2021 general election results. The newspaper referenced CSIS documents it had viewed, and reported China worked to defeat Conservative politicians considered unfriendly to Beijing while attempting to get the Liberals re-elected specifically to a minority government.

“All Canadians can have total confidence that the outcomes of the 2019 and the 2021 elections were determined by Canadians, and Canadians alone, at the voting booth,” Trudeau said Friday in response to The Globe and Mail reporting, which CTV News has not independently verified.

Trudeau added that China trying to interfere in democracies is not new, but that intelligence services are working to counter it.

In November, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki — who announced last week that she plans to resign in March — confirmed an investigation into “broader foreign actor interference activities,” but didn’t specify whether the investigation is targeting China specifically.

A letter from the top Mountie to the House of Commons Procedure and House Affairs Committee stated the RCMP was “aware of foreign actor interference in relation to a broad range of activities, including interference in democratic processes,” but wouldn’t elaborate given the “ongoing” investigation.

Elections Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault told MPs in November that he has not received any reports about China interfering in the 2019 federal election.

“In my opinion, there’s no reason to believe that it was not a free and fair election,” Perrault told the committee several times during an hour-long appearance in the fall.

With files from CTVNews.ca’s Senior Digital Parliamentary Reporter Rachel Aiello