Front Burner - The push for answers over alleged election meddling

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once again resisted a call that’s been getting progressively louder in Ottawa: the call for a public inquiry into allegations of Beijing’s interference in our most recent elections. Opposition MPs on a Parliamentary committee have already voted in favour of an inquiry into foreign interference, although that motion is non-binding. Meanwhile, a number of reports, committee investigations and witness testimonies have either already been delivered, or are on the way. Today, CBC’s The House host Catherine Cullen explains the newest revelations, what big questions are still at play, and what avenues remain to get those answers. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Canadians have a lot of different reasons to be confident that indeed the integrity of our elections in 2019 and 2021 held and that on an ongoing basis the government will continue to strengthen

our capacity to counter those attempts at foreign interference that come from China. On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau again resisted a call that's been getting louder and louder in Ottawa. That call is for a public inquiry into allegations of Chinese interference in our most recent elections. Opposition MPs on a parliamentary committee have already voted in favor of an independent probe, although that motion is not binding. And that's in addition to a number of reports, committee investigations, and witness testimonies either already delivered or on the way. Today, Catherine Cullen is with me again.

She's the host of the CBC political podcast, The House. And we're going to go over the newest revelations, what big questions are still at play here, and what avenues we have actually gone to get those answers. Katherine, thank you so much for being here. It's always a pleasure. So happy to do it, Jamie. So I want to start with a story from last week about a considerable donation to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. So this is a foundation, obviously, in the name of the

Prime Minister's father, which provides scholarships, academic fellowships, other leadership programs. And this is a really significant story because this appears to be a direct attempt to target the prime minister, right, who at the time was leader of the Liberal Party. And so just take me through reporting from the Globe is saying actually happened here. Yeah. So according to the Globe and Mail, Beijing basically sees this Justin Trudeau guy coming along and they think, hey, maybe he's going to be the next prime minister. He's going to play an important role in politics. How can we curry some favor here?

They use a middleman to donate about $200,000 to the Trudeau Foundation. In total, though, the story talks about almost a million dollars donated to projects related to Justin Trudeau's father. And again, the idea here, according to the reporting in the Globe and Mail, is that the Chinese regime is trying to win some favor and influence with Justin Trudeau. Yeah. And has the prime minister or anyone in his office responded? They raised the point that after Justin Trudeau became leader of the Liberal Party, he withdrew his involvement. This wouldn't have been something that he would have been affected by because he wasn't involved in the foundation at the time. Okay. And what about the foundation itself? They have decided to give this money back. They do point out that they actually didn't even

receive all of the money, the $200,000, that in the end they only got $140,000, but they're giving that money back, they say. Okay. So these are some of the latest revelations. But of course, this is all part of a larger story, which is that the liberals are purported beneficiaries of Chinese the show, but the revelations, which have come largely from the Globe and Mail and Global, they are a bit confusing, hey? Big time. Big time. The first thing that we have to say is that, as you said, the reporting comes from the Globe and Mail and Global. The CBC has not verified the information. The stories are a bit different to what the Globe is saying versus Global.

So let's start with the Globe. They are citing leaked secret and top secret documents from CSIS. And there are a couple of real eyebrow raising moments in their reporting. They talk about diplomats being used as tools to help with this influence of what Beijing's aims are. But at one point, they allege that the Vancouver Consulate General is actually boasting, kind of crowing about helping to defeat two conservative candidates. The reporting also quotes one CSIS report that details how donors allegedly would be giving money to campaigns for candidates that Beijing likes. And in some cases that the campaigns refunded part of the money. refunded part of the money. That is, of course, a big deal because that would be illegal. Also,

because it would suggest that political parties or at least a campaign worker has some knowledge of what is going on. The global story, though, we should say this is based a bit more on sources. The big sort of stunner of an allegation, the most recent one, has to do with a Toronto area Liberal MP by the name of Han Dong. Global describes him as, quote, a witting affiliate in Beijing's network of election interference. Intelligent sources tell Global News that investigators have been tracking current Ontario Liberal MP Han Dong since the summer of 2019. And those sources say he is one of 11 Toronto area riding candidates believed to be supported by Beijing in the lead up to that year's federal election. The report goes on to talk about ways that, for instance, according to Global's reporting, the Chinese regime was trying to ensure through their

proxies in Canada that like enough people were able to vote in his nomination race, that they basically supplied people to that nomination vote in order to get him named the Liberal candidate. Global News has learned the consulate allegedly sent two busloads of Chinese-Canadian seniors to the Don Valley North Liberal nomination meeting. And those seniors knew who to vote for because Don's name was written on their arm. Sources also say CISA suspected that Chinese international students with faked addresses were bussed in and told by the PRC consulate to support their preferred candidate if they wanted to maintain their student visa status. It is important to say, Jamie, that Handong has vehemently denied all of this and the Prime Minister has been asked about it more than once. He is standing by his MP in all of this. I want to make everyone understand fully that Handong is an outstanding member of our team and suggestions that he is somehow

not loyal to Canada should not be entertained. They've suggested that what Global is reporting, I think the line was so filled with inaccuracies, we couldn't even begin to comment. And now we've talked about the fact that there are questions about what individual campaigns may or may not have known or what individual people, you know, the other very significant and important question here is what the government knew, like high levels. And what do we know when it comes to those questions right now? Okay, well, when it comes to Handong, this is actually a big part of the story. I mean, the global headline in all of this is that CSIS, they say, tried to warn the liberals,

don't have this guy as your candidate, that according to Global's reporting, a couple days before the nomination, CSIS came to the Liberals and said, there are concerns here. Do not go ahead with this. Should say about that, you know, we've been talking to a lot of people in the intelligence community as we do reporting about this, interviews that I've done on the House. about this, interviews that I've done on the House. And the thing that you hear over and over again about that part of the story is that that is just not how it works. That CSIS would never recommend a particular policy action to a political party. That's just not the way things happen in Canada, right? CSIS collects information, but they're not actually the ones who take action on it. And they certainly don't tell political parties what to do. Again, the Prime Minister's office suggesting that what Global is reporting here, just not true. The suggestions

we've seen in the media that CSIS would somehow say, no, this person can't run or that person can't run, is not just false, it's actually damaging to people's confidence in our democratic and political institutions. As for the Globe, their story also warns that the government was warned about these problems and that action wasn't taken. The Liberals are refuting that. It is not up to unelected security officials to dictate to political parties who can or cannot run. That's a really important principle. But again, they are not engaging with the substance of these allegations, particularly because some of this stuff comes from

what is supposed to be secret and top secret CSIS reports. Intelligence officials, various government officials, don't even want to comment on the validity of the report because you're not supposed to talk about things that are top secret. Let's pull that apart a little bit more. You mentioned some of what we've heard this week because there are, unsurprisingly, various institutions and tools, even criminal tools that could be used here,

and all sorts of them are being deployed right now. For anyone who loves acronyms, this is going to be amazing. We got we have so many acronyms coming at you. The first one is the Commissioner of Canada elections. That's an easy one. What's she doing on this? Well, she revealed this week that she is launching a review to see if she will launch an investigation. When these media reports came out, there were complaints. People publicly, like the Bloc Québécois, said that they wanted the Commissioner of Canada Elections to investigate. The commissioner, the commissioner's office, their whole raison d'etre is to look into concerns around anything to do with elections. to look into concerns around anything to do with elections. I would not necessarily bank on a big outcome here, though,

because what we also learned is that her office did investigate several complaints, both in the last election and the one before, about foreign interference. They say those complaints are resolved. Okay, okay. Here's one that's a bit of a real mouthful. The Critical Election Incident Public Protocol Group. I'm not even going to try the acronym for that.

And who are these guys and what have they been doing? Okay, so this is a group of the top level public servants, so bureaucrats, important bureaucrats. They're tasked with monitoring Canadian elections as part of their work. So it's a body that was actually created by the Liberals. They've looked at the last two elections. The whole idea is that because they're bureaucrats and not politicians, they're impartial. They're getting information from security services about attempted interference, both foreign and domestic. And part of their job, if things get really bad, they are tasked with warning the public and saying during an election campaign, hey, everyone, we've got a problem here. And have they issued any warnings on the last two

elections? Like what have we seen from them, if anything? They have not. We did just get a report on the work from the 2021 election, which says, yes, there was absolutely attempted foreign interference, no question. But when it comes to the big picture, the election was free and fair. We have no reason to think that whatever foreign interference or other interference took place changed the outcome in an individual riding. The foreign interference attempts didn't change the results, certainly not on a national level. I should say, though, that that report also questions whether Canadians are getting enough information. Yeah, it's probably worth us mentioning here. So while this report came to the conclusion that the overall election was free and fair, the Conservatives certainly seem to accept the results of the election as well, right? Like Pierre Polyev has said he accepts the results of the 2020 election, but they do believe that China's efforts may have cost them a good handful of seats, right?

So the previous leader, Aaron O'Toole, has suggested in the past that he thinks that interference from China affected, yeah, a handful, I believe he said eight or nine seats in the last election. but I do think we just need to take a step back and say no one really is saying that another country changed who was the prime minister and the reason it's important to make a big deal out of it Jamie there was a survey by Angus the Angus Reid Institute was released earlier this week one of the findings past conservative party voters are more likely to view the Chinese government's attempts as successful with a plurality 42% saying they feel like the election was stolen in 2021. So I think we just have to

say again, that is not the allegation. That's not what the leader of the Conservative Party is alleging. It's not what these independent experts says. I want to sort of like underline, bold highlight that particular point. While we're on the topic of this group of bureaucrats and the report that came out of this group, the conservatives, they are questioning the whole legitimacy of this report, right? Because of who wrote it. That's right. Before it was even released, they said it was incredible. Former senior civil servant Morris Rosenberg is the author of this report. He took everything that this committee, this panel learned and put it together and made these recommendations. What the conservatives have pointed out about him is that he is the former CEO of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. And he was the former CEO at

the time that the foundation took that big donation that we talked about. So the conservatives basically said, like, are you kidding me? This gentleman cannot be trusted to do this fairly. The liberals have said all this whole process involves impartial civil servants. They have faith in the process. Okay. Just another part of this web. If you're listening, just stick with us. We're almost through this.

One body looking into this that I want to talk to you about is a group of MPs and senators that is not carrying out its work in public. This is the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, acronym ENSACOP? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so the obvious criticism here is that we have to trust that the MPs with high security clearance are bringing some accountability to these matters. But we in the media or in the public, generally, we'll never get a whiff of what they learned. They put out reports, they put out reports. And so we do expect that eventually, we'll learn something about what they learned. But speaking to how secretive this process is, their secretariat can't even confirm what they're investigating. Now, I don't know if I was on a National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, and I'm not, like, of course, how could they not

be investigating this? It would absolutely be mind blowing. It's all the parties. And as you say, MPs and senators, and it really is supposed to be this institution that is out there to you know have a sober look at these security issues in a way that isn't sort of like a fully partisan thing because so much of it happens away from the limelight but we don't even technically know if they're investigating we just assume that they are and we don't know when we would see any results of that investigation. And of course, some of the results, anything they found about this would have to potentially be redacted because of national security concerns. The prime minister would get a report from them. It's unredacted. The prime minister has pointed to them as one example. It was also another institution created by his

government. Another example of why Canadians can have faith in the process, that people are doing the things that they need to do, that this is all being looked at. Again, though, it involves, if not a leap of faith, you know, just some understanding, let's say, from Canadians that this stuff has to happen behind closed doors. And maybe worth noting too, the other one that would happen in a black box would be a criminal investigation by the RCMP, considering there are allegations of illegality here. But the RCMP has said they're not investigating this. So this does seem to be a closed avenue right now. Yeah, and it's confusing, right? I mean, if you see in these media reports that some of this stuff, the Globe in particular, sounds illegal. We're left asking ourselves, what happened here? Did it not meet the bar? Was it the police couldn't figure out what happened? Is there some other complexity here?

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And has anything significant come out of this so far? Well, it's actually the most information we have been able to get on any of this because there have been hours and hours of testimony from all these top officials in CSIS, the RCMP, the Prime Minister's National Security Advisor. The thing is, none of them will talk about what is in these leaks or news reports, suggesting that when things are leaked, it can put people's safety at risk. They're not going to engage in speaking in a public forum about things that might be secret or top secrets. They won't say what's true and what's false. The big thing that we've learned is that these various investigations that you might assume were happening aren't. That, for instance, no diplomat has been ejected from the country in the last several years, despite the fact that the allegations in The Globe say it is diplomats who are sort of running some of this show. The biggest takeaway, really, I would say from what we heard, was one of the senior civil servants, David Morrison, who also used to be the national security advisor to the prime minister, saying there's a big difference between intelligence and evidence.

Intelligence is something we gather. Sometimes it's just like a rumor. Sometimes it's more serious than that. We put it all together. It gets analyzed. And then somebody decides if that actually meets the threshold of evidence for a criminal investigation. that actually meets the threshold of evidence for a criminal investigation. We must take all suggestions of foreign interference seriously, even where we only have partial or dubious information.

And let me assure you, we do just that. But the larger point is that intelligence needs to be seen for what it is and what it is not. And if that doesn't happen, we will all end up much worse off. Also, sometimes this information that we get, it's people who are putting their own safety, maybe even their family's safety at risk by communicating this information. Maybe it doesn't get to the point that it gets communicated to officials looking into criminal investigations because we just wouldn't ever want to out that source. So the insinuation there is just because this stuff was in a particular report, it doesn't mean that you should necessarily believe that it is particularly happening. Again, we're kind of left saying like, okay.

Yeah, it's a very convoluted spy movie right now. Some people I think will take what they heard from officials this week and they will accept that explanation and they will say, you know what, it's national security. We know we can't necessarily rely on particular pieces of intelligence. I can live with that. Others, I think, are still going to be left wondering. Yeah. And those people are definitely calling for a public inquiry, right? Which is actually something the committee succeeded at doing on Thursday. They did pass a motion calling for a public inquiry. And so I feel like the bodies that we've been talking about, they do all have their serious drawbacks, right? And so how do

proponents say that it would be better? The number one thing you hear is that it wouldn't be partisan, right? So we wouldn't have the idea that the people asking the questions actually have a stake in the outcome of all of it. It wouldn't be so punchy. But then you run into this problem, like what do we mean when we say public, right? If it's a truly public inquiry, don't we just kind of get a repeat of what we saw this week where so much of the information is too sensitive that officials can't talk about it on something that's, say, nationally televised. On the other hand, if what we mean when we say public is that a lot of it happens behind closed doors, but there's a public report, well, that's going to take a while. That's not a quick process. And so how effective is that at rebuilding trust? And how different is it from, say, the report that we talked about from that panel before

that says, like, everything's cool, guys can't get into specifics. Yeah. I think these are some of the debates about the best way to do it. But I will say there are a lot of people calling for it who think, you know, one way or another, this is an important tool to rebuilding public trust. I suppose the other question we're talking about, inquiry, is the scope of it, right? building public trust. I suppose the other question we're talking about, inquiry is the scope of it, right? Because, you know, for example, the Prime Minister's former principal secretary, Jerry Butts, is calling for a broader look at foreign election meddling that include

other countries like Russia. This seems to be also the model that the NDP supports. But Polyev, for example, he wants an inquiry into what happened with China and what the liberals knew when and what they did or didn't do about it. We can't simply bury it behind closed doors and have it in secret while Canadians are left in the dark, potentially with another election interfered in before the results of the commission come out. The results of the commission and the regular testimony must be public. With the Emergency Act inquiry, it was kind of baked into the legislation, right? But who would decide the parameters and who would decide if it happens? Well, it's up to the prime minister, ultimately, right?

There's no legislation that's being triggered here, so he gets to make the call. Huh. And so far, I know he's been asked about this repeatedly, and he hasn't said, but I don't know, he hasn't really said no. Can you just flesh that out for me? Yeah. So he keeps listing all these, you know, that whole list of like acronyms and the panel and the committee and like, he gives these very long answers about all the work that is currently being done, but he doesn't say public inquiry, good idea, bad idea. I think it's pretty clear, you can intuit from his answers, that he's not fired up about the idea. But I also

think it's important to say that the government hasn't closed the door to the possibility of this. We have to acknowledge that from a political perspective, this wouldn't necessarily be a very comfortable exercise for the prime minister, given that the allegation is that Beijing favored the liberals, thought that they weren't as tough on China as the conservatives, but it hasn't been rejected out of hand and the number of people calling for it keep growing. Yeah, the clamoring around this does seem to be only getting louder. So definitely something that we are following really closely. Catherine, thank you so much for this. This is, as we talked about at the beginning, a really kind of confusing story. So I feel like you've added so much clarity for me.

Thank you. I'm glad, Jamie. Thanks so much for having me. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.