The Decibel - What we’ve learned from the foreign interference inquiry

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

After a spate of news stories and immense public pressure, the government of Canada established the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference to examine allegations that foreign countries like China and Russia interfered in our elections. The inquiry has heard from many high-ranking officials, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, about interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections.Robert Fife, The Globe’s Ottawa bureau chief, is on the show to explain the main points from the public inquiry so far and whether it will answer the lingering questions around foreign interference in Canada.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

Ultimately, democracy only works when people are confident in its ability to keep them safe, but also be the articulation of what they want for their community and their country. That's where confidence in the integrity of the elections in 2019-2021 is so important. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau testified on Wednesday at the Inquiry into Foreign Interference, which is looking into allegations that countries like China interfered in our elections. We've also heard from important officials and cabinet ministers, and there's been a ton of information being made public. So today, we're speaking to the Globe's Ottawa Bureau Chief, Bob Fyfe. He'll take us through the most important things we've learned so far from the public inquiry.

I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Bob, thanks so much for joining me. Always a pleasure to talk to you. So this inquiry has been going on for the past few months. Can you just remind us, though, what is the purpose of it? Like, what is it meant to accomplish? OK, well, let's step back a year ago. and secret CSIS documents that laid out a sophisticated Chinese state operation to interfere in the 2019 and 2021 elections. These were CSIS documents and investigations that showed

that China and its proxies were trying to elect people to parliament who they believe would either be neutral or would favor the national interest of Beijing. The liberal government had consistently rejected any calls from the opposition parties for a public inquiry. They had appointed former Governor General David Johnston to do a report. And finally, in the end, the government was compelled to hold a public inquiry. And this inquiry, by the way, is not solely based on Chinese foreign interference, although clearly that has been largely the focus of the public hearings that we've heard so far. But it also deals with Russian interference and interference by Iran, as well as Pakistan and India. Okay. And you mentioned, Bob, this report from David Johnston that we got last summer.

He was the special rapporteur looking into foreign interference. How is this inquiry different from that report that we got then? Well, the big difference is that we have a judge who is overseeing the public inquiry. She has a commission counsel and a staff to work with her. She has access to, I believe, more of the classified documents than Mr. Johnson. And she has also been able to declassify a significant amount of the documents. Well, I want to ask you about this a little further, this idea of the documents and the information in them. Because before the inquiry started, there were concerns, I guess, about the access to information because a lot of these documents were dealing with national security, of course. And so there was concern that this might not be as public. But what has that been like, Bob? Like how open has this all been?

Well, I think it's been fairly open in these many of these documents. There are large sections that have been redacted. And that's largely because CSIS does not want to identify potential sources or how they gathered the intelligence. But we are also seeing a lot of documents that explain exactly what China has been doing. The CISA says that they did interfere in both elections. They talked about how they use cash donations to help candidates, how business people will hire international students and get them to work on the campaigns of favored candidates. It's pretty wide ranging. And, and, you know, you're not just relying on, you know, documents that the Globe and Mail may have seen last year. You as a Canadian citizen can see these documents and understand that this threat is real and it is

serious. Okay, so yeah, let's go through some of the big things then, Bob, that we've learned from this inquiry. I want to start with the allegations around Han Dong. He was elected as a Liberal MP in 2019. He's now an Independent MP after allegations came out about ties to a Chinese diplomat. But Bob, what have we learned about him and the allegations against him in this inquiry? Well, what we learned is that according to CSIS, international high school students from China were bused to his nomination meeting on September 12th, 2019. The CSIS alleged that this was a bus was arranged through the People's Republic of China's consulate in Toronto, and that some of these students were coerced to go and vote for Handong.

And if they didn't, they were threatened to lose their student visas and that some of the students had false documents. Interestingly enough, when Handong testified at the inquiry, and boy, that was not a good day for him. He was pausing and sweating and, you know, he did not look very good. But at the last minute, he updated his evidence that he had provided to the commission. And he said, well, by the way, there was another bus, and there was a bus that took Chinese students from this high school. Of course, I didn't know that at the time.

I suddenly remembered it when I talked to my lawyer, and then later under questioning, he said, well, my wife reminded me of it. I was reminded recently that my wife that, you know know there was a bus came in with students. Did you take any steps to advise the Commission prior to yesterday about this information? Um... No. And then he went on to say that he obviously would not support the use of false documents. And when he was asked about whether he believed the CSIS documents that there was Chinese interference, not only in the election, but with him.

He said, well, I have no evidence to prove that. And what did we hear from senior officials about that allegation, Bob? I guess like how serious they thought it was. Well, Ceasar's thought it was serious enough. In September 28th of 2019, Ceasar's went to the national director of the party and informed him of these allegations. Two days later, the national campaign manager, Jeremy Broadhurst, met with the prime minister in a secure room and told him all of this stuff. Mr. Broadhurst testified before the inquiry that, well, he checked with people in the nomination process. Everything was above board and that there was no need to disqualify him.

And the prime minister agreed there was no, you know, these were just allegations. a brief conversation with Mr. Broadhurst to sort of agree that the threshold for overturning a democratic event, like an official party nomination to find out who would be the candidate for a general election, must have a fairly high threshold for removal of that candidate. And later in testimony on Wednesday, Bill Blair, who was the public safety minister at the time, said he was also alerted about the allegations of Chinese involvement in the nomination. And he said, well, from his point of view, it wasn't clear that Handong was aware of these allegations and it wasn't 100% proof that China was behind this. And another allegation around Handong stemmed from a report from Global News,

this was last year, saying that he had told a Chinese diplomat to delay the release of the two Michaels, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were being held in China at the time. Bob, what did the inquiry learn about that allegation? Well, David Johnson in his report said that that allegation by Global was false. We finally actually got a summary of what the conversation was about. And it's not quite as black and white as David Johnson said. Yes, Global was wrong in saying that he asked the Consul General to advise China to delay the release. But he did also say, look, if you release the Michaels

right now, it's not going to change the hardline attitudes that the opposition parties have towards China. And he also said to them, well, you know, maybe you should just announce a date for a trial. So at least placate the Canadian public. And yes, Dong acknowledged that he spoke to the consul general about the two Michaels, but he said that he didn't recall making those specific comments. Correct. Something that came up a few times in the inquiry is questioning the accuracy of intelligence information. This is an important point here, of course. So Justin Trudeau said this in his testimony.

So did National Defense Minister Bill Blair and Trudeau's chief of staff, Katie Telford. We have come across errors at times. And sometimes we can also bring information and shed light on it that might cause officials to look at something a little differently. Intelligence isn't necessarily factual evidence of what took place. If someone perceives that this is happening... So what I am saying is that you have to take this intelligence, you have to take this information with a certain awareness that it still needs to be confirmed or it might not be 100% accurate. What do you make of these comments, Bob, that this intelligence has caveats? Well, all intelligence has caveats.

I mean, even when the documents we saw, they will say that this has been corroborated by two sources, or this is a single source, but very reliable, or that one of the four people that have spoken to CSIS is a first time source. So we're not sure 100% of the reliability of one of those sources. It's very surprising because, you know, the prime minister was 100% assured by the CSIS reporting that India had played a role in the killing of a Canadian Sikh leader. But when there is intelligence that suggests that China is favoring a liberal over conservative MPs, in fact, determined to, in the 2021 election campaign, to defeat conservative MPs. Well, you know, that's

not reliable information. You know, he's got a double standard here. But what is clear is that CESA is like screaming at the top of a roof saying, this is serious stuff here. We even have a case where they've had a taped conversation of the then-council general in Vancouver bragging after the 2020 election that China helped defeat Kenny Chu, a conservative MP who had taken a very hard and hawkish stance against China. And the prime minister was asked about that on Wednesday in his testimony. And he said, well, just because a diplomat says that doesn't mean it actually happened. But the line is that they said was bragging is not doing is what they kept saying. Just the fact that a foreign official was taking credit for having delivered a particular outcome in no way

meant that anything that particular official did actually created the outcome. Bragging is not doing. The other factor, of course, he said, and I don't read these documents. He was saying he was getting oral briefings, basically. He's getting oral briefings. And I think this is a serious issue. You know, I agree that we can't accept all intelligence on face value. And, you know, you have to use your judgment. But when it is the totality of the documents tabled, they're pretty strong. And just try to dismiss this as saying that, well, CSIS's intelligence is just not reliable. On this issue of intelligence documents, Bob, like was this something that you considered in your own reporting that the intelligence, I guess, has to be taken with a grain of salt the information that we saw in the documents

because it would say, for example, that this came from a single source and the source is not reliable. So we chose ourselves not to report that. In some of the instances, we also spoke to people who had been in senior roles in the security establishment for advice on, you know, should we okay to write this? And in some cases, they would say, look, I don't think you should do that for reasons that could jeopardize the security of the country. We'll be right back.

Bob, another one of the big moments from the inquiry was about misinformation campaigns around conservative candidates in the 2021 election, specifically around former conservative MP Kenny Chu and former conservative party leader Aaron O'Toole. What did we learn about those campaigns? So what we learned from these documents and the testimony is that China and its proxies were using WeChat, other Chinese social media and Chinese language newspapers and media in this country to put out inflammatory false information about the Conservatives that they were anti-China, anti-Asia, that they wanted to register all Chinese Canadians as part of this foreign agent registry, which is absolutely not true. Mr. O'Toole testified that he believed that this disinformation campaign, which was pretty extensive, suppressed the vote in five to nine ridings. Certainly nowhere near enough to change the results of the election. But for people in those seats, if they were undergoing intimidation or

suppression measures, their democratic rights were being trampled on by foreign actors. So he believes they lost these writings because of this disinformation campaign that China had taken on during the campaign. Do we have a clear connection here, Bob, from the campaign to the government of China? Like, is that connection clear? No, the CSIS documents say that they can't be 100% sure that it's being directed. You know, they don't have a smoking gun, in other words. Do they have 100% proof that they have some Chinese official on a phone call saying this is what you must do? No, they do not have that. But the intelligence is still pretty strong that it was China. Another concern in this inquiry has been whether the candidates in these elections were actually told about the attempts from China to interfere.

Right. So there were reports issued at the time about this. What happened there exactly, Bob? Well, I think it really hit a very important issue during the election campaign, the Security and Intelligence Threat to the Election Task Force, which is a group of security people that were charged with monitoring the election campaigns for foreign interference, we call that SITE, knew that this activity was going on. They knew about covertly directing financial and voting support to favored candidates. They knew about the disinformation campaign that was through social media, largely, that was going on by China. But they never told the candidates, or the parties, I should say, but none of them were ever told what these

officials saw in terms of the documents about the warnings of what China was doing. They never told them this. And one of the officials testified on the panel said, well, you know, this site was a new, relatively new body. And we weren't used to sharing classified information with people. And that's why we really didn't share them. You mentioned an important point there, Bob, about the potential of releasing this information to the public. Was there a concern then about sharing this with the public about potential interference and the consequences it might have? Well, there was one of two things was, you know, sharing this information are the people that are vulnerable and that are at risk, and that I think were failed by our system.

And then there was the second issue of whether the panel of five, we'll call it, it's called the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol, which is quite a mouthful. This group of senior civil servants was charged with the responsibility of alerting the public if they felt that there was serious threats from foreign interference. They testified that they didn't believe it reached the threshold to issue a public warning. And they did not want to be in a position where it looked like they were interfering in an election campaign by coming out and saying, hey, China's trying to defeat conservative MPs. So they never issued a public warning. The last thing I want to ask you in this vein, Bob, is I want to go over the flow of information. So how much the government knew about all this and when they knew it? You know, how much information were senior officials getting? Like, do we know how many meetings

or briefings they actually got around foreign interference? Well, they got a lot. And it was all laid out. According to the documents, there were 34 briefings on foreign interference from 2018 up until late 2022. They were briefings on foreign interference with the prime minister's office, the prime minister, cabinet ministers, and senior officials. We know that the prime minister himself had gotten three briefings, one on Handong and two on foreign interference by China in 2021 and 2022. There were a lot of warnings and a lot of people knew about this,

but nobody felt it was necessary to take any action to either alert the conservatives or alert the public. The political officials who spoke about this said, you know, there's a high bar to publicize the information, basically, to give it to the public. Yeah, they said the threshold was high. Bob, how helpful has this inquiry been in answering the questions we had at the outset about foreign interference in our elections? Well, I think it's helpful because the best way to deal with foreign interference is sunshine and transparency. And one of the best things about this inquiry is that we are being told in black and white and documents, but also in testimony that there is indeed a problem and that China particularly

is the greater threat, has played a very important role in trying to elect people into parliament who would be more sympathetic to their views. And taking all of this together, everything that we've learned here, how confident should we be as the public? Like, how should we feel about the 2019 and 2021 elections and in elections going forward, I guess? Can we have confidence in those? The Liberals won those elections fair and square, did not have an effect on the overall results of the election campaign. Aaron O'Toole was very clear in saying that in his testimony. And he said, look, we largely lost because we blew it on the vaccine mandates. And that's where we end, and to some extent,

possibly on gun control. But he still believes that there was voter suppression in eight to nine ridings. And then in that case, that's serious. That sounds like a problem, yeah. Yeah, well, look, if one riding is affected by this kind of disinformation, that's a serious issue because the most important thing in a democracy is the right to be able to vote the way you want. Very lastly here, Bob, what are the next steps in this inquiry? Like what happens now? Well, we are going to hear on Friday from the CSIS director has been recalled because the prime minister said he never read some of these briefing documents and notes that outlined the clandestine and covert way that China was dealing with it. And more importantly, the CSIS director said it's time for the government to start wake up and start to take some decisive action, which is pretty strong criticism. that's done on May 3rd, there's a very tight deadline. They are going to submit a report,

which they're required to do, on interference in the 2019 and 2020 election campaign. So that'll be fascinating to see what conclusions she comes to. And then there will be the second phase, which will be public hearings as well, where you're going to hear from a lot of people about this problem of foreign interference, not just from China, but obviously from other countries and what can be done to deal with this. To come back to what I said earlier, if we're going to combat foreign interference, we need to know about it and we need to understand it. And so sunshine and transparency, the more we have, the better it will be. Bob, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. You're welcome. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior

producer and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you next week.