The five senior bureaucrats who decided not to warn the public about potential foreign election meddling in 2021 were briefed on intelligence suggesting several interference incidents during the campaign, according to testimony and documents presented at the public inquiry Friday.
Members who sat on this “panel of five” non-partisan decision makers during the 2019 and 2021 elections face questions as witnesses on two separate panels Monday in front of Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue, including the former deputy minister at the justice department, Nathalie Drouin, who is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s current national security and intelligence advisor.
Other panellists include former and current deputy ministers at Global Affairs Canada, Marta Morgan and David Morrison, as well as Janice Charette, the former clerk of the privy council.
During the campaign, the security and intelligence task force monitoring for threats to the integrity of the national vote met weekly to brief this panel of bureaucrats before leaving it to deliberate in private about what action may be required to respond to what they learned.
The ongoing public inquiry on foreign election interference has shifted focus to what is considered the second biggest threat: India. Intelligence officials testified that India targets a number of ‘high-priority individual races’ rather than the election as a whole.
An unclassified witness summary disclosed Friday said that on Aug. 17, only days into the 2021 campaign, the task force was made aware that a member of Parliament had reported “cultivation and elicitation attempts by an official of a foreign state.” The country wasn’t specified, but the document said that, in deciding what information to send the panel, the task force “erred on the side of providing more intelligence than less.”
On Aug. 23, a report from the task force discussed how a foreign official was “liasing with a member of a political campaign to discuss potentially sharing confidential information about the campaign and possibly arranging an introduction with the electoral candidate.”
A week later, on Aug. 30, the task force briefed the panel, but the document shows its CSIS representative was not aware of any response by the panel.
Separately, testimony released Friday showed that, during and after the campaign, the task force was briefing the panel of five on what was characterized as “very textbook” foreign interference activity involving the People’s Republic of China supporting a particular candidate. Neither the candidate nor the party was disclosed.
This information was presented separately from numerous references to security officials detecting Chinese-language media and social media critical of the Conservative Party, and in some cases circulating false information. On Aug. 31, for example, officials detected Chinese-language WeChat accounts posting a false story about how then-leader Erin O’Toole would ban WeChat if a Conservative government was elected.
On Sept. 10, officials also noted false narratives circulating about Conservative MP (and 2021 candidate) Kenny Chiu’s private member’s bill to create a foreign agent registry, but the officials noted that the Rapid Response Mechanism team at Global Affairs was not able to assess if this was a PRC-backed campaign or “organic activity.”
On Sept. 12, CSIS debriefed officials from the Liberal Party of Canada on a specific foreign interference issue. While security officials were regularly briefing representatives from all parties throughout the campaign on general interference risks, documents and briefing records released so far suggest no other parties received the briefing the Liberals received on this specific issue.
The briefing said the spy agency officials “regret having to inform” the Liberal Party of this issue and said they understood the “difficulties associated with the limitations of what [they could] do with it.” The briefing was provided for “awareness and action based on [their] judgment,” the note said.
In late August, separate reports refer to the detection of an “individual who was assessed to be a foreign interference proxy.” By mid-September, officials were briefing on a “Government of India proxy agent who may have attempted to interfere in democratic processes.”
“Indian FI maybe have occurred in a covert manner,” the testimony said, and intelligence corroborated that the government of India intended to “influence the outcome of the Canadian elections.”
The testimony summary said the intelligence “appeared to reveal what could be considered a potential Criminal Code offence.” A task force member sought direction on how to proceed with sharing the intelligence with the RCMP, but testified that she was unaware if there was an active investigation based on this intelligence.
Last week, the RCMP disclosed at the inquiry that it is still investigating an undisclosed number of issues related to the 2021 campaign.
The commission of inquiry has heard that a deliberately high threshold was set by the panel for alerting the public, because not only could such a warning affect voter choices and impact the election results further, but it could also severely impact Canada’s relations with a foreign country to condemn it for election meddling in the heat of a campaign.
Last week at the inquiry, CSIS director David Vigneault said he was “comfortable” with the decision the panel made not to alert the public. Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, however, testified that he felt this process failed to disclose attempts to interfere in specific ridings that, while not serious enough to impact the overall national result, nevertheless are significant for the candidates and voters involved.
O’Toole said ridings in B.C.’s Lower Mainland or the Greater Toronto Area should not be treated as “rounding errors” when decisions are being made as to what constitutes significant interference.
Hogue also will hear separate testimony from a panel of former national security advisors who served the prime minister during the 2019 and 2021 elections, as well the period between the two campaigns: Greta Bossenmaier, Vince Rigby and David Morrison.
At the request of Hogue’s inquiry, Canada’s intelligence agencies have taken the extraordinary step of selectively summarizing or redacting previously classified intelligence information so the public can better understand what happened.
Officials have repeatedly cautioned journalists and lawyers at the inquiry that interpreting intelligence reports can be subjective. These reports may not contain complete information and may not always have been verified by multiple sources, so cannot be assumed to be definitive.
