Good afternoon, Madam Chair.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear and participate in the important work of this committee. I apologize that I was unable to attend at the previously proposed times, but hope that my testimony will be useful to you today.
I serve as the Canadian chairman of one of Canada's leading and largest law firms. I've been involved on and off as a volunteer for the federal and provincial Conservative parties, and municipally for a variety of candidates, for my entire adult life.
While principally, I have been a Conservative, I have donated to both Liberal and NDP candidates whom I have come to know and who I thought would make great representatives.
I have known the Honourable Erin O'Toole my entire adult life. He is an honourable family man, military man, lawyer and politician. I was thrilled when he decided to run for leader of the Conservative Party. While his campaign seemed like a long shot when he first got started, my family and I enthusiastically threw our full support behind him.
Canada needs as many Erin O'Tooles as possible in each of our political parties. He has just the right amount of partisanship coupled with the pragmatism needed to run this complex nation.
In 2021, Erin asked me to be the campaign co-chair for the upcoming federal election. The campaign co-chair role in our party was really a “fill the gaps and take on certain higher profile problems to solve” role. The campaign was run by a first-class team, including Fred DeLorey, whom you've heard from, Tausha Michaud, Dan Robertson and many others.
The common thread of this team was a drive to win, but ethically and with the best interests of the nation as best as we can interpret that in each of our actions. The tone was set by Erin. As Tausha put it, do the right thing in the interest of the nation first.
In mid-2021, I was appointed by Erin to be our party representative to Canada's security and intelligence threats to elections task force. Mr. O'Toole took the task force's mission very seriously. Mr. O'Toole wanted to ensure that we played our role in ensuring the integrity of the process.
The security clearance process was very extensive. I'd never been through such a comprehensive process. The task force met in heavily- secured buildings in Ottawa, where your phone and iPad were left at the door. Often, we were not permitted to leave with presentations or, sometimes, even take notes. Initially, I was very proud of our security establishment and the level of care it seemed to be taking.
Unfortunately, I can now confirm the following.
One, in several in-person meetings with briefings from multiple security stakeholders, not once were we made aware that there was any threat posed to the integrity of the 2019 election—not once.
Two, in fact, we were told very generically that there is interest in our elections from many global actors, but that there was, in fact, no evidence to suggest that there was anything for any of us in any of the political parties to worry about in 2021. We now know, unfortunately, that this was not entirely accurate.
I specifically raised two issues with senior members of the task force.
One, how are we to know, as political parties—all of us—if there is a fundraiser or candidate risk within our own party?
Two, it seemed that we were getting initial reports of issues in multiple ridings for the Conservatives, and we wondered if they had identified any risks associated with the 2021 election.
On both those questions, I increasingly felt that we were not taken seriously. After the election, and before the new government was sworn in, we spent more time providing everything we had to the task force and appropriate security channels. We were met with more shrugged shoulders, and I felt indifference. In our final call with the task force, I told them that I felt our security establishment had failed the process.
Political parties cannot formulate public policy under the threat that they are going to possibly lose ridings based on foreign influence because of, at least, a perception of a weak security infrastructure.
Here are my inputs for this committee.
One, as Tausha said, I don't know how many ridings were affected and whether or not the outcome of the election or Erin's leadership would have been any different.
Two, I did not believe that there was an appreciation in our security establishment for the chilling effect on public policy in all political parties that foreign interference may cause.
Three, I did not believe that our security establishment felt that it had the legislative tools to engage more transparently and constructively with senior members of political parties to foster confidence that the integrity of the system was, in fact, intact.
Overall I urge you all to leave partisanship out of this. It's too important. What's happened to Michael Chong should never happen again. No one on any side of the aisle should shrug their shoulders at this. Michael is quite brave and will continue to voice his perspective. I'm confident of that. Many might not.
The 2021 election is over—I'll be 10 seconds more, Madam Chair—but let's figure out what went wrong, how we can make our security establishment understand the chilling effect of the threat of foreign interference on public policy and let's make sure they have the legislative tools to work constructively with political parties.
I'll be happy to take your questions, keeping in mind, of course, that I can't share certain specifics regarding information exchanged with the SITE task force, as all members have confidentiality requirements.
Thank you, Madam Chair.