Canada to investigate whether China interfered in federal elections

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his country will investigate whether there was interference from China in the 2019 and 2021 national elections. Trudeau will appoint an independent special investigator whose recommendations will be abided by the Canadian government. The Intelligence Committee of the national Parliament and the National Intelligence and Security Review Agency will also be involved in the inquiries. Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre demanded "a full public investigation" and disagreed with the parliamentary inquiry.

On February 17, Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail, published a report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) accusing China of developing a "sophisticated strategy" to influence the results of the federal elections. According to the document, diplomats from the Asian country worked to get Trudeau re-elected, but in a minority, and to ensure that the Conservatives, considered hostile to the Chinese Communist Regime, did not gain power.

Defeat of conservatives, a Chinese objective

Reports compiled by CSIS indicate that Communist leaders in Beijing were "pressuring their consulates to create strategies to politically leverage members of the Chinese community and associations within Canadian society." China used Canadian organizations to advocate on its behalf "while obfuscating ties with the People's Republic of China." In fact, former Chinese ambassador to the country, Tong Xiaoling, bragged in 2021 that she helped defeat two Conservative MPs, according to the papers.

The Canadian Executive waited to receive the findings of an independent report before launching the investigation. According to Trudeau, the results were provided to him last week, and they point out that China was not the only foreign power that tried to interfere in the federal election:

Results "were not affected"

The president stressed that the results of the 2019 and 2021 elections, "were not affected by foreign interference." Something on which, he assures, the leaders of all the country's political parties agree. Nevertheless, Trudeau justified the need to investigate the facts: "even if it didn’t change the results of our elections, any interference attempt, by any foreign actor, is both troubling and serious."

In contrast to these transparency measures by the government, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced almost simultaneously that it is investigating possible violations of the Security of Information Act in connection with recent media reports of alleged foreign interference in the last two federal elections.

Criticism from the opposition

For his part, Poilievre again showed his refusal to have the facts investigated by Parliament, because the conservative legislators would only receive "some information and then swear them to secrecy so they could never speak about it again. So effectively, that would be a trick to try and prevent anyone debating the subject." In a post on Twitter, the politician insisted that the investigation through the parliamentary committee allows the Executive to control everything.

Xi berated Trudeau at the G20

Relations between China and Canada are not at their best. In November 2022, during the G20 meeting in Indonesia, Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly berated Trudeau for leaks to the press.