Warnings of election meddling by China never reached the Prime Minister

It can be a little difficult to keep track of the various questions and examinations about foreign interference in Canadian elections, particularly by China.

Ottawa's latest growth industry was largely created by a series of highly classified intelligence leaks that first appeared in The Globe and Mail and then Global News, detailing the Chinese government's attempts to meddle in the last two elections with the aim of returning power. The Liberals in power, albeit with a minority government.

The first was a report from a group of senior civilian officials that found that while China, Russia and Iran had tried to subvert the 2019 and 2021 federal votes, their efforts had failed.

Subsequently, David Johnston, the former governor general, examined the body of evidence that produced the leak. Mr Johnston resigned before finishing his inquiry after the Opposition argued that his close ties to the Trudeau family meant the assessment of him would not be independent. But, in a preliminary report, he concluded that foreign powers were “no doubt trying to influence the candidates and voters in Canada.” But Mr Johnston added that, after examining everything, he found that “several leaked materials which raised legitimate questions appear to have been misconstrued in some media reports, presumably due to a lack of this context”.

At the end of March, a committee of parliamentarians authorized to examine confidential information handed over its report on election interference to the government. The public, censored version of his findings has yet to be released.

And a month ago, the public inquiry into interference reluctantly launched by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after repeated calls from the opposition he said in his initial report that there was no evidence that the last two elections had been subverted. But he also noted that “some Canadians have now reduced confidence in Canada's democratic process,” adding that “this is perhaps the greatest damage Canada has suffered from foreign interference.”

The report prepared and published this week by an independent monitoring agency looked at the issue from a different perspective. The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency examined what Canada's spy services and the government did with intelligence regarding China's election meddling.

One of perhaps the initial findings is that most of the material never reached Trudeau or members of his cabinet.

The committee discovered several obstacles. Inside the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, or CSIS, the spy agency was found to be facing a dilemma.

“On the one hand, information on foreign interference in elections was a priority for the government, and CSIS had geared its collection apparatus toward investigating foreign political interference,” the report said. “On the other hand, CSIS was sensitive to the possibility that the collection and dissemination of election information could be interpreted as a form of election interference.”

But when he tried to bring material to the government's attention, his reports were not always welcome. The review body found that when CSIS produced two overviews of Chinese election interference in 2021, the national security and intelligence adviser – a public service rather than a political post that changed hands multiple times that 'year – considered that they contained little more than a “standard account of diplomatic activity”. The reports were not forwarded to the prime minister or cabinet.

“What's really surprising is that the kind of reports that didn't get to the prime minister were exactly the kind of reports we should have been making to him,” said Wesley Wark, who studies Canadian intelligence systems at the Center for International Governance Innovation. Me. “I think this shows a huge problem in the Canadian system.”

Mr. Wark said the situation developed in part because the spy agency has traditionally attempted to pass on nearly every piece of intelligence it collects rather than emphasizing analytical reports. He said that these little “tidbits” probably shouldn't be passed on to politicians, but that their proliferation seems to have blocked even analytical, or strategic, reporting.

“These kinds of strategic assessments are exactly what the British, the Australians and the Americans do with intelligence,” he said. “But we don't seem to be good at this. And this is a problem that needs to be solved.”

Responsibility for this solution, he added, lies with the highest levels of the public service, not with intelligence agencies.

The report released this week offers nothing about exactly what China did, or attempted to do, during the last two elections, although it warns that the intelligence “does not constitute evidence that the activities described took place, or have taken place in the manner suggested by the source(s) of the information.”

Mr Wark noted that Judge Marie-Josée Hogue, who heads the public inquiry, carefully avoided assessing the veracity of the leaked information. She said she did not expect the situation to change in the coming months.

“So we don't know more and we probably never will,” he said.

Trans Canada

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• After retiring from music in 2008 to become a single mother to her two then-young children, Sarah McLachlan is on her first tour with the band in ten years. Her voice hasn't always cooperated in her return to the stage.

• In Travel, Richard Rubin writes that, in Quebec's Magdalen Islands, nothing “ever seems very crowded, even when there are a lot of people around.”

• Film critic Lisa Kennedy found that “Backspot,” a queer high school film directed by Toronto’s DW Waterson, initially “struggles and wobbles” but ultimately “sticks its landing.”

Born in Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has written about Canada for the New York Times for more than two decades. Follow him on Bluesky a @ianausten.bsky.social

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