The Decibel - New foreign interference allegations emerge in election campaign

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

In the first week of the federal election campaign, several new foreign interference stories have bubbled up. The first involves allegations that CSIS believed agents working on behalf of India organized support for Pierre Poilievre’s 2022 Conservative leadership bid.Meanwhile, the Liberals are dealing with fallout from the allegations that former Member of Parliament Chandra Arya had ties with India and met with Prime Minister Narenda Modi. Liberal leader Mark Carney is also responding to calls to fire a GTA candidate after remarks calling for a Conservative candidate be turned in for a Chinese bounty.Robert Fife has been breaking all of these stories, and he’s is on the show to discuss.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

The question of foreign interference has dominated Canadian politics for the last couple of years, and it hasn't taken long for new allegations to surface in this election. In 2024, Justice Marie-Josée Oge led a public inquiry into foreign interference, and we found out that our elections are big targets for foreign governments. And now we're in the middle of one. This inquiry was initially prompted by exclusive reporting by the Globe's Ottawa bureau chief Robert Fife and senior parliamentary reporter Stephen Chase. So today, Bob Fife is here. He has reporting about new allegations of foreign interference that have bubbled up during the election's first week, involving two Liberal MPs and Conservative leader Pierre

Poliev. I'm Maynika Raman-Wilms and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Bob, welcome back to the show. Always happy to be here with you. It has been a few months, of course, since the public inquiry into foreign interference wrapped up. And now we're in this election, which is exactly when a lot of meddling we've learned can occur. Right.

So can you just remind us, Bob, what exactly are we talking about when we talk about foreign interference? Okay. about when we talk about foreign interference? Okay, foreign interference under the criminal code involves threats of violence, but it comes in many, many variety of forms as we've learned from the Foreign Interference Inquiry headed by Justice Marie-José Hoag. It involves a disinformation campaign, so the spreading of disinformation about candidates that they think might not be favorable to them and to spread disinformation in favor of a candidate they think they may be able to influence or at least not criticize them, involve intimidation and bullying of people in the diaspora

community. It can be very, very sophisticated. And we know from the Foreign Interference Inquiry that the number one culprit is China, followed by India. And they're able to do this because we have large diaspora communities. But it's not just China and India. The other countries that are involved in these kind of foreign interference activities, Pakistan and Iran. Again, they're targeting their own communities where they hope to be able to either spread this information or to intimidate people to be able to try to elect members of parliament who may be more sympathetic to their views or at least less critical.

Okay, that's good to get some an idea of what form this takes. I think a lot of people are wondering about current things that we've heard like Donald Trump's terror threats or comments even by Alberta Premier Daniel Smith made to an American podcast. And so that's what I fear is that the longer this dispute goes on, politicians posture and it seems to be benefiting the liberals right now so I would hope that we could put things on pause is what I've told administration officials let's just put things on pause so we can get through an election let's

have the best person at the table make the argument for how they would deal with it and I think that's Pierre Paul you have and I do agree with you are those kinds of things considered foreign interference what Daniel Smith did was not considered foreign interference because she was reaching out and saying, you've got to pause these tariffs because it's helping the liberals and hurting Pierre Poliev. In the case of what Trump is doing with tariffs, he was doing this even before there was an election campaign, even before we knew that Trudeau was going to resign, he has not done the kind of foreign interference that Vice President Vanstead, when he went to Germany, met with the far-right leader, basically involved himself directly in the German election campaign.

That's foreign interference. We haven't had that kind of direct foreign interference in this election campaign yet, but we do have to watch for whether right-wing Republican type people in the United States are trying to help out, say, the conservatives. There's no evidence of that, but that's the kind of stuff you do have to watch for, because if they were funneling money or workers or aid in here, I would regard that as foreign interference. The same thing if the Democratic Party was trying to help out Mark Carney, that would

be foreign interference. Okay. You broke the news that there were allegations of foreign interference in the 2022 conservative leadership race. And that is, of course, the one that Pierre Pauliev won to become party leader. So Bob, what did you find? Well, first of all, let's go back to last June when the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians issued a stunning report. It talked about potential traitors in parliament who may have been unwitting or wittingly used

by hostile foreign powers. Part of that report also dealt with foreign interference by the government of India in the conservative leadership race. There was also two instances of where China allegedly being involved in one of the conservative leadership races. So flash forward to our story last week, which we were able then to be able to say that in fact the foreign interference from India was allegedly involved in trying to help out Pierre Poliev's leadership campaign. And what it involved really from the sources that we talked to was raising the money

and volunteers and organizers to help out in the leadership race. The sources said that it wasn't very sophisticated or highly organized operation, but nonetheless, there was Indian involvement in trying to help Mr. Poliev get elected as a conservative leader in 2022. AMT – Bob, just very quickly, what's in it for India here? Like, why would their agents allegedly do this? BK – So it's really an attempt to see if they can have some influence over elected representatives and it can be any political party. I do have to say this and it's really important for our listeners to hear this.

Mr. Polly have won a landslide victory in 2022. So let's be very clear here that this alleged involvement by India did not have any material influence over the election of Mr. Poliev. And as we've also learned from the foreign interference inquiries, and CSIS has actually said this in testimony before the inquiry, that many of the politicians have no idea that this is even going on. In our reporting from last week, our sources had also said that there was absolutely no intelligence or evidence whatsoever that Mr. Polly ever is in her circle or even aware

of this. Okay. So you brought up a couple of really important points there, Bob, that this did not affect the outcome of the leadership race. He would have won anyways, and he probably had no idea this was going on but then I guess it begs the question why does it matter if these agents apparently were involved in organizing and fundraising for his leadership campaign why is this important? Oh I think it's really important and this is

goes with all crocks of why he should get a national security clearance because if he was able to get a briefing from CESAs, he would know who was allegedly involved in, at what level they were involved, but who in the party were working with agents of India to try to have an influence over his election as a Conservative leader. And that means he could say to people in the party, these people, I don't want them to be involved in the Conservative party whatsoever. Keep them at a distance. That's the advantage of having a national security clearance. Yeah, and we will get to that security clearance in a moment. But Bob, staying on this alleged

interference, Poliev and his team didn't know about it at the time. But what about after? Did CSIS tell anyone from his team? Well, we know they didn't tell Mr. Poliev because Mr. Poliev has refused to have a national security clearance. We do know that his Chief of Staff, Ian Todd, did get a security clearance and presumably was briefed on it. CSIS said in a statement to us last week that they had briefed Ian Todd on foreign interference. So one assumes that Mr. Todd knew about it, but the problem with that is he can't tell Mr. Poliev because he's been sworn to secrecy. What Mr. Todd did with it, whether he told other people in the party to keep away from

these particular people, we don't know. But when it comes to his own political party, one would assume he would want to have a national security clearance. So he would know which members of parliament that he may suspect has been playing footsies with a foreign power or other people within the Conservative Party. That's the advantage of a national security clearance. It's not so that they can try to muzzle Mr. Poliev at all. It's about being able to give him information so that he can be proactive in dealing with foreign interference within his own party. I'm glad we're talking about this, Bob, because this is something we've been hearing for a

while now about Poliev not wanting to get a security clearance. This isn't the first time he's defended his choice not to do that. But can you just remind us like how how is he justifying this position to not have his national security clearance? Well, he argues that he's a leader of the opposition and that if he gets a national security clearance, the liberals are trying to set him up so that they will tell him information that he is then not able to speak about because he's sworn to secrecy. They don't want me to be able to

speak about these matters. So they bring me into a dark room and they'll say we're going to give you a little bit of breadcrumbs of Intel and then we'll tell you you can't talk about any of this stuff anymore. You know Marie Jose Hoag who headed the public inquiry into foreign interference, has said in her report very clearly that all leaders of the federal leaders need to get a national security clearance so that they can deal with issues of foreign interference, which is only going to increase and not decrease, so that they can deal with it with their own political parties.

And there's another reason why security clearance would make a lot of sense. In during election campaign, there's something called the caretaker convention, which means that governments can't do a lot of big issues or spending or anything like that because we're in the middle of an election campaign. But when there are instances of, let's say there's a terrorist threat or a very serious national security threat, as the prime minister, the liberal leader, Mark Carney, would be obligated to talk to the other leaders to inform them, look, you've had national security clearance, there's a terrorist threat, I feel an obligation to let you know because of this caretaker convention.

Hmm. You mentioned something about earlier, Bob, about how he didn't want his clearance though, I feel an obligation to let you know because of this caretaker convention. Hmm. You mentioned something about earlier, Bob, about how he didn't want his clearance though because he didn't want to be kind of muzzled by the liberals if he's getting briefings by the liberals. Is that how it works though? Like, is he getting security briefings by the liberals? No, he isn't. And he's misleading people by saying that I don't trust these guys if I have to submit myself to a security clearance, which by the way is quite detailed, it goes into your family background, your criminal record, your finances and whatnot.

He doesn't trust the liberals with that kind of information. But the fact of the matter is that the security clearances are conducted by CESAs and non-partisan public servants. The information in a security clearance is not shared with the prime minister, cabinet ministers, political staff at all. So after your reporting was published last week, Bob, what has Poliev said about all of this? He just continues to say what he's always said, which is that he's not going to get one because he doesn't trust the liberals and he thinks it's the way the liberals try to muzzle him. And, you know, he's suggesting that our story was somehow a liberal plan to try to embarrass

him. Of course, he made the obvious point that he won the leadership fairly, which he did. I mean, 68% of the vote. We'll be back after this message. All right, so Bob, those are the allegations around the 2022 Conservative leadership campaign. Now, the day after you released that article, you reported some other allegations involving former Liberal MP Chandra Arya. What were those allegations about?

Well, as you recall, Mr. Arya was disqualified from running for the Liberal leadership, which the Liberal Party was very unclear about why he was disqualified and then just before the election call he was disqualified for running for the nomination in the writing of Nepean of which he's held that seat for three terms and it turns out that the right he's now being given to Mark Carney to run in. Nobody in the Liberal Party or Mr. Carney or anybody would say why he was disqualified. We found out that he was disqualified because allegations of foreign interference by India, the specifics of what he was allegedly involved in or what they had allegedly had concerns

about the party has not said, but we were reported that they were concerned about his close connections to the Indian government, particularly the Indian High Commission here in Ottawa. But also last August, he went and had a personal one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India at his official residence. And he had never told the government about it. And Mr. Arya has said that nobody's ever criticized him for meeting with Mr. Modi. Nobody told him not to. Of course, they didn't know. And that he meets with all kinds of

diplomats from all various countries. He said he thinks he was disqualified because he's been a strong critic of the calistan movement in this country. And that's the reason why he thinks he was ouisted as a liberal MP. Okay, so Chandra Arya, who was not allowed to run for liberal leadership and then not allowed to run in his previous riding of Nepean in Ottawa, and it seems like your reporting is uncovered. Maybe this is related to his meetings with PM Modi of India. Do we know anything though, Bob, about what allegedly took place during that meeting with

India's Prime Minister? No, I mean there are pictures of the two of them sitting together. What we know is that he said that he's talked about Indo-Canadian relations and the importance of India as a market for Canada. Canada would obviously love to be able to have a free trade agreement with India, but that's not going to happen until we resolve the dispute of Indian government allegedly killing a Canadian citizen and being involved in other violent acts in Canada. You're talking about Hardee saying, NINJER, yes, which is... Yeah, yeah.

And we also know from the RCMP that there were other violent acts and extortions that Indian government has been accused of and other attempted murder, of which we don't know the details of that. So here we are at a situation where Canada-India relations are at an all-time low because India has been accused of killing Mr. Najjar and committing other violent acts. And Mr. Arya goes and meets Modi. Needless to say, the Canadian government was not very happy about that. – How normal is that for like an MP to meet with a leader of another country

on their own like this, Bob? Like even in normal times with normal relations between countries, is that a thing that happens? – It doesn't happen very often, clearly. He's a backbench member of parliament. It would be very rare that he would get a meeting with the Prime Minister of India. So, needless to say, there were a lot of eyebrows raised in Ottawa, both at the political level, but at the national security level as well. Now, of course, he has been removed as the liberal candidate for the writing of Nepean, which is actually now where liberal leader Mark Carney is is going to be competing for his seat in the House of Commons. Do we know, Bob, who

actually made the decision to remove Aria from running in that writing? Well the liberals, in fact the conservatives, have this as well, but the liberals have a committee which is called the Green Light Committee that looks at the viability and looks into the details of the various candidates to run for them. So they basically do background checks on them and they have to answer very detailed questionnaires. And one of the sources said that there were some troubling discrepancies or problems with Mr. Erie answered some of these very detailed questions on the questionnaire. Should also know that some of these people who are involved in that committee have had

national security clearances and they do get briefings from CESAs on foreign interference. So it's a small group of very senior people in the Liberal Party with national security clearances who make these kind of decisions. And presumably that is the same kind of situation that would happen with the Conservative Party as well. Hmm. Do we have a sense of how much Mark Carney knew about any of this with Aria? Well, Mr. Carney does have a national security clearance and he seemed to be lack a lot of

curiosity in asking about this because he says he didn't know all the details of what happened. And then at a later question under reporters, he then suggested, well, even if he knew what was going on, he couldn't talk about it because he had a national security clearance. I want to ask you about one more story here, Bob, and this involves a liberal candidate in the GTA named Paul Chang. Can you tell me what is going on there? Well, Mr. Chang is a former police officer. He won the writing for the liberals in 2021. Recently, in January, he told a group of people in which a Chinese language newspaper was

there that his conservative opponent, who's since moved to a different writing but would have been his conservative opponent, Zhou Tai, he is a human rights activist and very critical of China's national security law on Hong Kong. And China has put $186,000 or a million Hong Kong dollar bounty on his head if he can be captured and brought back to Hong Kong or China. And this Mr. Chang told people, well, if you get Joe Tai, you can bring him to the Chinese consulate and you'll get a million Hong Kong dollars.

Ha, ha, ha. When we found out about this, we immediately went to his office, asked him for a reply, and then the Liberal Party found out about it as well. And we were waiting for a reply on Friday around two o'clock, and he put something out on Twitter ahead of time to say that he's really sorry, he should never have done this. The conservatives obviously jumped on this, but so did Michael Chong, who was a conservative MP, and Jenny Kwan, who was an NDP MP, both jumped on this. They had both been subjected to disinformation campaigns directed at them targeted by China. And also members of the Chinese-Canadian diaspora community were also demanding his resignation

as well because they are themselves the victims of Chinese harassment and bullying and disinformation. AMT. And what is Mark Carney, what have the Liberals said about why they're sticking with him as a candidate then? MR. Well they said that because he's apologized, it was a one-time incident, he apologized and he should be allowed to continue. He's made those apologies, he's made them directly to the individual concerned, he's

made them directly to me, he has my confidence. And I've certainly talked to quite a number of liberals, including people in the liberal war room, who all feel that they should just tell Mr. Chang, you're not going to be allowed to run for the Liberals. So they're probably worried that they may lose the seat if he's let go. But this is really important, Manika, because we've had an inquiry for over a year and a half that dealt with foreign interference. And we have a sitting Liberal MP saying that another rival, conservative rival, should be turned over to the Chinese embassy for a bounty.

That's not a joke. That's a serious issue. And if you're going to take foreign interference seriously, then they should take it seriously. Just very lastly here, Bob, I know that the Globe has come under some criticism about the timing of this reporting, since we are we are of course currently in an election. What do you say to people who accuse the Globe of trying to influence people's votes by putting this information out there? Well I mean I was trying to find out why Mr. Areo was banned and in the process

of finding that information I was able to find out about India's involvement in the conservative leadership race. Both of them are legitimate journalistic endeavors. I'm trying to find out information, and I found out this as well. And so it wasn't like, oh, this is some planned thing to somehow target Pierre Poliev. This was what reporters do. Why did Mr. Areo, why did he get banned from the nomination and the leadership? And in the process, I found out that, well, in fact, India had also interfered in Mr.

Poliev's 2022 leadership race. So that's the reason. Bob, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. You're welcome. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. You're welcome. That's it for today. I'm Maynika Ramon-Wilms. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Allie Graham. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. You can subscribe to The Globe and Mail at globeandmail.com slash subscribe. Thanks so much for listening.