Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 9th, 2023

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chiu and Mr. Salvo, for being here today.

Mr. Chiu, I'll start with you.

Would you agree that any form of foreign interference or domestic interference is wrong and should be stopped?

[Kenny Chiu]

It depends on what you define as “domestic interference”. If you define it the way the CEIPP wrote in their report, then yes, domestic interference is something we Canadians need to pay attention to.

However, foreign interference has no place in Canada, in my opinion.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Are you against foreign interference but okay with domestic interference, or are you against both?

[Kenny Chiu]

Well, we have election laws, and every Canadian, domestically, has to abide by the Canada Elections Act. Now, whether you can clearly separate domestic from foreign is a separate issue.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay. The reason I bring up domestic interference is that your party sent out flyers across my riding in one of the elections, which misinformed the public right across my riding. It's interesting that we're here talking about foreign interference. I think we should equally be opening up the conversation to talk about domestic interference.

Anyway, I'll move on from that.

You lost the last election, as far as I understand, by 9% of the vote—that's approximately 3,500 votes. You maintain that foreign election interference was the reason you lost. Is that true?

[Kenny Chiu]

Mr. Turnbull, if you could answer what the voter turnout rate for my riding was compared with 22 months previously, in the 2019 election, you would see that a lot of the supporters—a lot of voters—stayed at home.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I guess what I want to establish here is this: Did you lose by 9% of the vote or not?

[Kenny Chiu]

The candidate who won the riding won by a margin of 9%. I agree. Yes, 3,400 or something—

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay, thank you for that.

How many votes do you think were impacted by foreign interference?

[Kenny Chiu]

If I could have a camera installed in each and every booth and look at how people voted, then I would be able, for certain, to answer your question.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Mr. Chiu, thank you for that.

You admit that you don't exactly know how many votes were impacted by foreign interference. Is that the case?

[Kenny Chiu]

There is no way anybody, including the CEIPP, could tell that foreign interference was not a factor in the election result in my riding.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you. That's a clear answer. We don't know.

I think that's true, although there's evidence in a report I found and read very intently. It's called “Mis- and Disinformation During the 2021 Canadian Federal Election”. It goes through a very detailed analysis of.... It mentions your riding and the disinformation campaign you were subjected to, which I don't think anyone doubts.

I have a couple of quotes from this report:

If it is these Chinese Canadian voters who shifted against the Conservative Party, it should be detectable in the survey data. We evaluated whether Chinese Canadians switched their vote intentions or changed their evaluations of the Conservative Party using survey data collected during the campaign and just after the election. We compared Chinese Canadians' vote intentions during the first two weeks of the campaign to their vote intentions during the last two weeks, with the results in Figure 22.

Here's the important part: “The two left panels show that there was no change” in voter intentions. That's interesting, because it demonstrates the exact opposite of what you are maintaining and what you have said publicly numerous times.

Given the fact that you don't know and have now said that on the record at this committee, and that there's evidence to suggest there actually was no change in voter intentions, how can you maintain what you believe?

[Kenny Chiu]

I haven't read the survey or the report of the survey, and I would be very keen to understand what language the survey is conducted in.

You mentioned, sir, about the Chinese. There are no homogeneous Chinese in my riding. There are Chinese from Taiwan. There are Chinese from Hong Kong and from mainland China.

Some of them use WeChat, especially the mainland Chinese. Some of them solely rely on WhatsApp—the Hong Kong Chinese—and the Taiwanese Chinese use LINE as a communication means. I don't know when the last time was that you picked up the phone when you didn't know the number, but perhaps....

I would probably refer the committee to also study the McGill University data mining professor's study on the disinformation that I experienced, or maybe Infowatch, as well as the Digital Forensic Research Lab.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chiu.

To get a last quote and question in here, the report also states, “We also did not find evidence that those using WeChat for political information were less likely to support the Conservative Party or that using WeChat had a different impact on East Asians than other Canadians”.

Again, this report has a significant amount of evidence that contradicts the claims you've been making. I wonder if you've read the report that I'm referring to.

[Kenny Chiu]

Mr. Turnbull, like I said, there has been significant research done on this, including by this infowatch.org. There have also been studies conducted by the Digital Forensic Research Lab, as well as the McGill University data mining professors.

I wonder if you, sir, have read any of their studies.

To give a straight answer to your question, no, I have not read that particular report, which does not corroborate what's been reported by CSIS whistle-blowers, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you, Mr. Chiu, and thank you, Mr. Turnbull.

Next is Madame Gaudreau.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Chiu, when you appeared before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics on March 31, you said that you had been the victim of a plot. You just mentioned WeChat and allegations of anti-Chinese sentiment.

I'm trying to determine the source. How did you figure out this was a warning sign?

[Kenny Chiu]

During an election campaign, you have many volunteers and supporters volunteering for you. Many of my volunteers and supporters are people from the community. I did observe a significant detachment from supporting me between 2019 and 2021. There was a significant drop in mainland Chinese-background supporters of my campaign in 2021. However, there are still volunteers in my campaign who have access to WeChat, and they are also participants in the WhatsApp chat rooms. Therefore, they bear witness to much of the spreading of disinformation, the organizing to defeat Kenny Chiu, the organizing to defeat Conservatives in general.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Again, when you appeared before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, you said you were glad that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, had blown the whistle.

In your opening remarks, you said that no one had contacted you. Can you give us more information on what led you to a certain conclusion?

[Kenny Chiu]

In my term as a member of Parliament, I was first contacted by CSIS soon after 2020, I believe. It was an abrupt connection through my home phone here, and then, through my office in Ottawa, we sat down and chatted for the first time. It was all shrouded in secrecy. They would not tell me why they wanted to meet me. Similar meetings were conducted two more times during my term as an MP.

I know of a Vancouver contact of CSIS, so that's the person I contacted during the federal election. I also tried to collect this information on my own by going to YouTube and organizing a special town hall and all that. None of that was effective.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I gather that you made your own efforts to investigate the matter.

This morning, we heard reports of underhanded tactics being used repeatedly, causing the person being targeted to wonder what was really going on. Paranoia was even mentioned.

I'd like more information on that.

[Kenny Chiu]

Well, ma'am, this information and the interference work did not start or stop just during the election writ period. This is something that I wish all members in this committee to understand. The foreign interference and infiltration of our community and of our country continues today. I'm sure you all are aware of Minister Mendicino's efforts across the country to conduct a town hall study of the potential establishment of a foreign registry. Right now, in many of the community chat rooms, this is being linked to anti-Asian racism, and they're also trying to stoke members of the community to speak up, to put pressure on the government so that it will not establish the foreign registry.