Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 25th, 2023

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

When you were in the role of campaign manager, though, were there any internal conversations about your getting any information that brought forward a concern about one of your candidates...? I heard very clearly that you didn't get that, but was there any discussion about how you would deal with that, or did you think, okay, if it happens we'll deal with it then?

[Fred DeLorey]

There are always issues with candidates in every political party, in every election, and we all deal with them in our ways. There are obviously systems and things that develop for each campaign, so that's not new. If something was to come forward on foreign interference, or anything like that, that would be dealt with just the same as anything else.

Again, as I mentioned earlier, the big thing that we were really focused on was cybersecurity, and making sure our systems were impenetrable.

[Hamish Marshall]

I can say that in 2019 we didn't have an explicit conversation about the idea of the committee, if SITE, the task force coming to us with information on one of our candidates. This was all very new at the time, and I don't think we had a specific, different process for it that would be different from normal issues with candidates, as Mr. DeLorey said, that all parties deal with.

It would be an interesting situation, because, based on information that I did see, as I mentioned before, it was very vague and top level. Generally, as a campaign manager—and I can't imagine that my view is any different from any other campaign managers who have spoken here today—we're loathe to fire and remove candidates. It's not something we enjoy doing. It's something difficult, and it's extraordinarily disruptive during an election.

The information that we would have to be presented with by the committee or somebody else, in order to take action would have to be very detailed. The very high-level, vague things and information that was passed on to us weren't about anything. It wasn't a situation that.... I just know our procedures. In order to decide to go to the national candidate selection committee and ask them to rescind someone's nomination, we have to have something very specific and something tangible. I'm not sure if what would have been provided would have met that test.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

I'm done all my questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you very much.

Our next round will be with Mr. Berthold.

Afterwards, it will be Ms. O'Connell's turn.

Mr. Berthold, you have the floor.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I thank the witnesses, Mr. Marshall and Mr. DeLorey, for being with us.

From the beginning of our study on foreign interference in Canada's elections, I've been preoccupied by something: the process in place. Witnesses gave us details on it.

According to the process, members of the party have the required security clearance to receive information during the campaign. Since an election campaign runs for a very brief period, there's not a lot of time to react.

I'm wondering what a national campaign director can learn from security clearances. From the beginning of our study, many witnesses told us they could not talk about what they learned during security briefings.

Given your experience as a campaign director, how were those briefings useful to you?

[Fred DeLorey]

That's a very good question.

I was the national campaign manager. I think I was one of the few not to get the briefings myself. I trusted others to do that and to report back on what we could action on what we needed to. Again, it didn't seem to be that valuable to us. There wasn't anything that could come back.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

If I understand correctly, Mr. DeLorey, the briefings didn't change your approach during the campaign, because you didn't get enough information from them. Information communicated during briefings flowed in only one direction.

Is that right?

[Fred DeLorey]

Again, I wasn't in particular briefings, but I got the feedback, yes.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

That's exactly the point I wanted to raise. As the campaign director, you're the only one who doesn't have the required security clearance.

Some people within the party received information, but they couldn't share it with you.

Is that correct?

[Fred DeLorey]

That's correct. They couldn't share, but, if they felt action had to be taken, they had the trust of the team to recommend that we do that.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

However, no measures were taken.

And yet, after the campaign, when you took stock of the situation, you were very critical of ridings affected by interference from Beijing's regime.

You identified a lot of ridings.

[Fred DeLorey]

I'm sorry; I don't understand the question.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

During a debrief at a working group meeting, you reacted very critically to the fact that you lacked information during the election campaign. You then said that several ridings were victims of foreign interference, but you were unable to act before the campaign ran.

Is that right?

[Fred DeLorey]

That information mostly came to us after the campaign; it wasn't during the campaign. There was some anecdotal stuff, but the memo that I read out came after the campaign. We were able to get that information from the ground up, from the local campaigns, not from the task force. It didn't come to us from them.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Why do you think the public couldn't be made aware of this information before the campaign ran? It might have allowed you to get involved and take action.

[Fred DeLorey]

Well, I don't think they knew what was happening, because we didn't get that information, didn't pull that together ourselves, and again, nothing came from them on this. It felt like a one-way street, as I mentioned earlier.

At the same time, I don't know what the thresholds are. I don't know how they determine when they alert the public. I don't think that's been very clear. At least it hasn't been to me. I think that's one of the things we need to figure out and address, because it is important. At the same time, it's risky. You have to make sure something has really been done before you alert the public to something because there could be a false flag.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

When you became aware of all the information flagging that something was going on during the campaign, shouldn't the public have been informed?

[Fred DeLorey]

Well, the public was informed after the campaign.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

But they were not during the campaign.

[Fred DeLorey]

They would have been during the campaign, if it had been concrete enough and real. That's why it needs to be investigated: I saw what I saw, but I'm not the one to determine how that should be shared with people.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

I'm done, Madam Chair.

You answered my questions, Mr. DeLorey.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

I'm really enjoying this. I really thank you for giving me your extra time back.

Ms. O'Connell, go ahead.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to both witnesses for being here today.

Mr. DeLorey, I'm going to pick up where you left off in terms of alerting the public, because when the national security adviser to the Prime Minister was here and Mr. Turnbull started down this line of questioning, she said it couldn't be determined whether or not information being shared was actually from a foreign entity and that it could have been Canadians who were upset and sharing these messages. So even with respect to this line of questioning about what should be public or not public, first isn't the critical test to determine that it's not just Canadians expressing their displeasure with a particular party, and that it actually has to be foreign influence by a foreign entity, instead of deciding that it's somehow foreign influence based on the nationality of those Canadians?

[Fred DeLorey]

I agree that's it's sometimes a big challenge to figure out who is behind this stuff, and that's why I think we need to give Elections Canada and whoever else, whatever entity comes out of this, the tools to do that, to determine what happened and who's behind it. I think that would go a long way.