Madam Chair, I will first read the motion into the record:
That, given the recent Globe and Mail reports written by Steven Chase and Robert Fife, which brought forward shocking revelations regarding Beijing's strategy to interfere and influence Canada's democratic institutions, the committee, for the purpose of addressing this significant threat to our democracy,
(a) extend its study of foreign election interference by as many meetings as required to investigate these reports and, to that end, schedule at least one meeting on February 23, 2023, and at least two meetings during the week of February 27, 2023;
(b) invite senior officials from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service; the Communications Security Establishment; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; Elections Canada, including the commissioner of Canada Elections; the security and intelligence threats to elections, or SITE, task force; the critical election incident public protocol, or CEIPP, panel; and the Privy Council Office, to testify on these reports;
(c) invite Katie Telford, chief of staff to the Prime Minister, to appear alone for a two-hour meeting;
(d) invite the Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to return to testify on these reports;
(e) invite the Honourable Marco Mendicino, Minister of Public Safety;
(f) invite the Honourable Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Infrastructure and Communities, to return to testify on these reports;
(g) invite Jody Thomas, national security and intelligence adviser to the Prime Minister;
(h) invite the Honourable Marc Garneau, former minister of foreign affairs;
(i) invite the Honourable Bill Blair, former minister of public safety and emergency preparedness;
(j) invite Vincent Rigby, former national security and intelligence adviser to the Prime Minister;
(k) invite David Morrison, former foreign and defence policy adviser to the Prime Minister;
(l) hear each of the foregoing witnesses in public; and
(m) order the production of all memoranda, briefing notes, emails, records of conversations, and any other relevant documents, including any drafts, which are in the possession of any government department or agency, including SITE, CEIPP, any minister's office, and the Prime Minister's office, containing information concerning efforts by or on behalf of foreign governments or other foreign state actors to interfere in the 2019 and 2021 general elections, including the documents which were quoted in the Globe and Mail reports, provided that
(i) these documents be deposited without redaction with the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, in both official languages and within three weeks of the adoption of this order,
(ii) the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel shall promptly notify the committee whether the office is satisfied that the documents were produced as ordered, and, if not, the chair shall be instructed to present forthwith, on behalf of the committee, a report to the House outlining the material facts of the situation, and
(iii) the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel shall make as few redactions to the documents as are necessary to protect the identities of employees or sources of Canadian or allied intelligence agencies and, as soon as reasonably possible, provide the redacted documents to the clerk of the committee to be distributed to all members of the committee.
Madam Chair, that is the motion.
I bring it forward to expand the scope of the study that this committee is undertaking with respect to foreign election interference in light of the shocking Globe and Mail report last week by Steven Chase and Robert Fife, which is reportedly based upon their review of CSIS documents that reveals a sophisticated strategy on the part of the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, to interfere in the 2021 election.
The Globe and Mail report characterized the Chinese Communist Party's interference campaign in the 2021 election as “an orchestrated machine”. The report from The Globe and Mail indicates that this sophisticated strategy, this “orchestrated machine” on the part of Beijing to interfere in the 2021 election, had two overriding objectives. The first was to see that the Liberal Party was re-elected with a minority government, and the second was to see that certain Conservative candidates deemed unfriendly to Beijing were defeated.
According to the Globe and Mail report, a CSIS report quoted an unnamed Chinese Communist Party consulate official as saying, “The Liberal Party...is becoming the only party that the PRC can support.”
This campaign of interference reportedly involved the active participation and coordination of Chinese Communist Party diplomats in Canada, including Beijing's then consul general to Vancouver, Ms. Tong, along with another former consul general to Vancouver, Wang Jin.
According to The Globe and Mail, CSIS characterized the activities of Ms. Tong and Mr. Wang as being involved in efforts to discredit, to rally support for the Liberals and to target Conservative candidates and work to see those candidates defeated. It was also reported that Ms. Tong and Mr. Wang, among other methods, used CCP “proxies” to achieve those objectives. Ms. Tong reportedly even boasted in 2021 about how she helped defeat two Conservative members of Parliament, including an MP whom she described as “a vocal distracter” of the Chinese Communist Party.
The scope and sophistication of this reported campaign of interference is troubling in terms of the multi-dimensional approach that Beijing took, which involved such tactics as funnelling money to candidates through illegal “undeclared cash donations”; “having business owners hire international...students” on the basis that they were being hired to work for those businesses when in fact they were being illegally paid to work for election campaigns “on a full-time basis” for certain Liberal candidates; active “disinformation campaigns” specifically targeting Conservative candidates; and collusion between political campaigns and this Chinese Communist Party “foreign interference” network.
Let me repeat what is being reported and what happened: illegal cash donations, disinformation targeted against Conservative candidates, collusion with Liberal candidates, the widespread use of proxies to advance the Chinese Communist Party's objective of helping the Liberal Party, and working to defeat certain Conservative candidates—all coordinated and directed by Chinese Communist diplomats on Canadian soil.
If these reports are true—and there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of these reports from The Globe and Mail, which were reported by two well-known and widely respected journalists, Robert Fife and Steven Chase—this campaign of interference is not trivial. It is not a case of one or two bad actors—not that one or two bad actors is something to turn a blind eye to. If established, what this amounts to is an all-out assault on Canadian democracy by the Chinese Communist regime in an effort that raises questions about the integrity of the election in 2021 in certain ridings targeted by Beijing.
This should alarm every Canadian, and it most certainly should alarm those who are entrusted with and have the responsibility to protect Canada's democratic institutions, including the Prime Minister and his ministers. More than alarm, it should have prompted immediate action on the part of the government, but that did not happen. More than 18 months after the 2021 election, there is no evidence that any action has been taken by the Liberal government. There have been no charges laid and no diplomats expelled.
The Conservative Party and Conservative candidates who were targeted by the Chinese Communist Party were not informed about this campaign of interference and that they were targets. Instead, they were kept in the dark, including by the government's election panel, the very panel that this government pats itself on the back for establishing. They were kept in the dark.
The government's election panel kept the Canadian public in the dark about this interference. Indeed, we would not have known about interference in the 2021 election but for the Canadian press, through access to information, having obtained reports that showed that the rapid response mechanism at Global Affairs had identified interference activities and a disinformation campaign, through proxies and through the use of social media platforms, targeting Conservative candidates, including then member of Parliament and now defeated member of Parliament, Kenny Chiu.
When it comes to the Prime Minister, I have to say that it's worse than inaction. Since Global News first reported back in November about a vast campaign of interference by Beijing in the 2019 election, involving at least 11 candidates, the Prime Minister has consistently failed to heed the advice that CSIS has provided him with respect to countering for interference, advice that the Prime Minister received, for example, in a CSIS memo dated January 21, 2021, which, according to the CBC, advised the Prime Minister as follows: “Canada can make use of a policy that is grounded in transparency and sunlight in order to highlight the point that foreign interference should be exposed to the public and clandestine practices are not equivalent to public diplomacy.”
The Prime Minister has been anything but transparent. He has refused to answer basic questions about what he knows about Beijing's interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections and when he first learned of that interference. He has deflected and engaged in political spin, using, among other things, carefully crafted language, such as saying that he was not briefed about candidates “receiving money from China”, even though, based upon the briefing document that Global News reported on back in November, no one was alleging that candidates received money from China, as if Beijing just writes a big fat cheque to individual candidates. Rather, what was at issue—and what is at issue—is a reported vast campaign of interference in the 2019 election campaign and, now, a vast campaign of interference in the 2021 election campaign.
The Prime Minister, again using carefully crafted words, talked about how the last two elections were “not compromised”, as if to say that anyone is alleging that those elections were compromised. That's a very different question from what appears to have happened, which was interference targeting certain ridings and certain candidates. The fact that the overall result of an election was not compromised does not negate the fact that there are serious issues of interference that may have had an impact on the outcome of the election in certain ridings.
Canadians deserve to know why, in the face of this reported vast campaign of interference by Beijing, the Prime Minister and ministers in his government continue to obfuscate and downplay the seriousness of this interference and have failed to take any meaningful action to protect our democracy against this serious threat. It seems as if the Prime Minister is content to turn a blind eye to this interference because this interference benefited the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party.
In the face of the obstruction, the non-answers and the lack of transparency on the part of the Prime Minister, and in light of the very shocking new facts that have been reported about what happened in the 2021 election, it's important that this committee, in order to get to the bottom of election interference, expand the scope of its study. It's important that we call in responsible ministers so that they can be asked questions and be held accountable, and so Canadians can learn what Canadians deserve to know, which is about the scale and scope of Beijing's interference in the 2021 election campaign. It's also important to work to ensure that interference of the kind that has been reported—or any interference, for that matter—is not repeated in future elections.
I hope this committee will move forward to pass this motion so that we can, as expeditiously as possible, expand the scope of the study and hold hearings.
Thank you, Madam Chair.