On 17 February 2023, Canada’s The Globe and Mail released a leaked Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) document claiming that PRC employed a sophisticated strategy to interfere in the country’s 2021 elections. The report stated that Chinese diplomats and their proxies backed Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party while simultaneously working to defeat Conservative politicians who were known to be unfriendly to PRC. However, this is not the first time that CSIS had warned about possible election interference. Former CSIS officials informed local media that the Canadian intelligence has been warning successive governments for decades, but all of them had failed to act. "Thirty-two years in national security work, every time we've had a crisis, every time we've had an incident, that's what the government's done. We'll throw money at the RCMP [The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the federal and national police service of Canada], we'll say you folks have got to sort that out. And I don't think that's really an appropriate response," Dan Stanton, former executive manager at the CSIS, told a committee of MPs on 31 March 2023.

CSIS had also warned Trudeau that China has been interfering in the 2019 elections by clandestine funding of at least 11 candidates. The briefings by CSIS did not identify the candidates, but the alleged election interference apparently included both liberal and conservative politicians. The CSIS briefing stated that the election interference on Canadian soil is being coordinated by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CPC) United Front Work Department (UFWD) which is responsible for mobilising large numbers of the Chinese society overseas to fulfill CPC’s objectives. The operations carried out by the UFWD can include people from different backgrounds including politicians, media, businesses, community leaders etc. CSIS claimed that several politicians met with officials from UFWD.

As per the allegations, UFWD has used several means to influence elections in Canada, which includes undisclosed cash donations to political campaigns, potentially swaying the election in favour of candidates aligned with PRC's interests. Furthermore, Chinese diplomats are said to have facilitated the hiring of international Chinese students by businesses, deploying them as full-time volunteers in electoral campaigns to indirectly impact the political landscape. Additionally, Chinese authorities encouraged sympathetic donors to financially support candidates aligning with PRC's agenda. Moreover, the reports also claimed that according to CSIS briefs, the Chinese intelligence agents conducted in-depth background checks and surveys of Canadian politicians who voted in favour of the resolution in the House of Commons regarding the United Nations resolution on PRC's treatment of the Uyghur minority; the objective being, if PRC could leverage the businesses and local economies against those candidates who voted in favour of the resolution.

One of the crucial aspects of PRC's interference operation in Canada was its efforts to influence the opinions of vulnerable Chinese immigrants in Canada. The intelligence reports cite an unnamed Chinese consulate official who commented on the ease of influencing Chinese immigrants to align with the stance of the PRC. This strategy targeted a segment of the population that might be more susceptible to external influence. While the Conservative Party saw a slight increase in its overall share of the popular votes in recent elections, it simultaneously lost several seats which had a significant share of the Chinese-Canadian population.

The report by the Globe and Mail also reveals that PRC’s former Consul-General in Vancouver, Tong Xiaoling in 2021, boasted about how she helped defeat two Canadian Conservative MPs. The report states that CPC, however, wanted to keep Trudeau's power in check by trying to ensure that the Liberal Party was a minority in Parliament. The officials at Chinese diplomatic missions in Canada were heard saying that they preferred a Liberal minority in Parliament as an 'ideal outcome' as a minority government cannot easily implement policies that are against the PRC, possibly also hinting that the CPC may have some level of influence on some Canadian MPs enough to oppose policies that are viewed as being against the PRC.

Interestingly, the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force, established by the Trudeau government earlier to monitor threats to federal elections, did not issue any public warnings regarding foreign interference during the 2019 or 2021 campaigns. Trudeau maintained that the task force found no evidence, assuring that the integrity of their elections remained intact. Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre has, however, alleged that Prime Minister Trudeau knew about the claims of Beijing's meddling and chose to cover them up because he believed it benefited his party. This claim has led to accusations that the Prime Minister prioritised his interests over Canada's.

Nevertheless, post the CSIS leaks that happened in February, the Trudeau government again tasked a judge to set up a public inquiry into allegations of Chinese election interference. The Chinese Consulate in Vancouver has denied the allegations, characterising them as a 'smear campaign' aimed at discrediting PRC. In a statement, the Consulate asserted that PRC has never interfered in any Canadian election or in its internal affairs.

The allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian elections, as reported by The Globe and Mail, have thrust the issue of foreign interference in elections into the spotlight. While the government may maintain that election outcomes were not impacted, the leaked CSIS report has definitely dented the level of integrity of the Canadian elections. It further calls into question, what led to the leaks of the CSIS classified reports into the media in the first place. Were the leaks deliberately done by CSIS because there was very little action from the government? This could also possibly indicate a clear split between the security and political dispensations in Canada.

(Views expressed in the article are personal to the author, a research scholar, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AICIS. AICIS is neither responsible nor liable for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information in the article.)