Canada’s inquiry into foreign interference resumes public hearings Monday with an initial focus on the targeting of MPs.

The earlier phase of the commission, led by Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, examined foreign meddling leading up to the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, but the hearings that take place this month and next are expected to look at interference outside of these election periods, as well as consider measures Canada could take to counter this activity.

Part of the hearings will look into stunning allegations that some parliamentarians collaborated with foreign governments for their own benefit, with some of them “wittingly” helping foreign governments, such as China and India, meddle in Canadian politics.

The House of Commons added to the inquiry’s workload in June when it passed a motion asking for the commission to investigate further those findings in a report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), an oversight body for national-security and intelligence organizations set up by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The report said Canadian intelligence services have gathered information indicating some federal politicians are collaborating with foreign governments to advance their own interests.

Some politicians are accepting money from foreign governments and are communicating frequently with them to obtain support from community groups or businesses that foreign diplomats have promised to mobilize to help their campaigns, the report said. Others are allegedly providing foreign diplomats with privileged information on fellow parliamentarians, knowing that this information will be used to press these colleagues to change their positions. Some are lobbying colleagues or influencing parliamentary business to help a foreign state, and some are leaking confidential information to known intelligence officers of foreign states, the report said.

NSICOP said that according to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, China believes it has a quid pro quo relationship with some MPs and “that any member’s engagement with the PRC [People’s Republic of China] will result in the PRC mobilizing its network in the member’s favour.” The report also alleged Chinese and Indian interference in Conservative leadership races.

The redacted version of the NSICOP report that was released to the public did not identify any of the parliamentarians it alleged collaborated with foreign powers.

The inquiry’s timeline

Throughout the summer, Hogue commission staff pored through documents and pre-interviewed witnesses, including those who will be giving in-camera testimony, to determine how effective the government and its security agencies have been in detecting and countering foreign interference.

Beginning Monday, Justice Hogue will hear testimony in public hearings that will run until Oct. 16. Near the end of these hearings, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and members of his inner circle are scheduled to return to testify, as they did in the first phase of the inquiry about election interference.

The inquiry will then hold five days of policy hearings to hear from experts about how to safeguard the country from acts of foreign meddling.

The commission is mandated to complete its final report on measures to combat foreign interference and its study of compromised parliamentarians by Dec. 31.

The initial report: What the inquiry has said so far

On May 3, Justice Hogue released her first report that dealt with foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections. While foreign meddling did not alter the overall outcome of the two elections, she said the interference may have affected results in a small number of ridings.

She said foreign meddling was a “stain on our electoral process” that undermines the right of Canadians to vote “free from coercion or covert influence” – and identified China as the “most persistent and sophisticated foreign-interference threat to Canada.” She called on the government to enact measures to tackle this “malign” threat.

Justice Hogue also cited India, saying intelligence reveals a “Government of India proxy agent” attempted to clandestinely funnel money to candidates in 2021.

The inquiry laid out how China and other hostile states interfered in Canadian elections, including illegal campaign donations, bribery, blackmail, threats, cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns.

New legislation passed to fight foreign interference

Before the summer recess, Parliament passed sweeping legislation to combat foreign interference by creating a mandatory registry for people undertaking “influence activity” in politics or government on behalf of foreign powers and giving Canada’s top spy agency more authority to combat threats.

The Countering Foreign Interference Act, which received all-party support, also created new criminal offences, including one to deal with political interference. The law makes it easier to prosecute anyone who tries to coerce someone with intimidation or threats on behalf of a foreign entity or terrorist group.

The law also establishes a new position of Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner, who would hold office for up to seven years and be appointed after consultation with leaders in the House of Commons and Senate. The office, which would have the same investigative powers as a Superior Court, would oversee a mandatory registry requiring people who conduct influence activity for foreign entities in provincial or federal politics and governments to register. It has yet to be set up.

MPs targeted by China to testify

As the hearings get under way this week, the commission will hear from former Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole and four MPs – Liberal John McKay, New Democrat Jenny Kwan and Conservatives Michael Chong and Garnett Genuis. All five were targeted by China.

Mr. McKay and Mr. Genuis belong to a global interparliamentary organization critical of the Chinese government that said the FBI informed the group earlier this year that 18 legislators in Canada were targeted in 2021 by hackers linked to Beijing. China’s hacking of Canadian members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China was passed on to the House of Commons but MPs and Senators were not told of this warning.

Mr. McKay said he and Mr. Genuis are “live examples of how our system at large could do a better job of protecting itself from foreign interference.”

Mr. Chong, the Conservative foreign affairs critic, said he expects the commission to clear up why he and other MPs were not notified by the federal government that CSIS had learned they were being specifically targeted by China. He’s scheduled to testify at the inquiry this week.

As The Globe and Mail first revealed in May of 2023, CSIS had informed federal decision-makers years earlier that Mr. Chong and his Hong Kong relatives were being targeted by China after he led a campaign to pass a motion in Parliament that condemned Beijing’s repression of its Uyghur minority. The goal of this scrutiny was to find leverage China could use to silence Mr. Chong.

After The Globe published the story, the government confirmed internal warnings had been issued but had not been passed on to Mr. Chong. Mr. Trudeau changed the rules so that MPs would be notified in the future if CSIS learned they were being targeted. Canada also expelled Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei over the targeting.

“I hope there will be accountability for the Trudeau government in terms of failing to act on intelligence that was brought to their attention about parliamentarians being targeted by PRC diplomats, because it was a tremendous failure on the part of Trudeau ministers who received this intelligence that they failed to act on it,” Mr. Chong said.

Will the inquiry name names?

Will the public learn which parliamentarians are accused in the NSICOP report of participating in foreign interference?

The inquiry indicated that it may not release the names because Justice Hogue has an “obligation to respect the principles of procedural fairness and the fundamental rights of any person affected by its work, in compliance with the rule of law.”

NSICOP, which is comprised of MPs from all major parties as well as senators, declined to identify the parliamentarians publicly because restrictions built into its mandate constrained it from doing so. The government also has refused to identify the federal politicians, saying revealing classified information is irresponsible, and won’t say how many are accused or whether any sit in cabinet.

The Prime Minister’s Office has had the classified version of the report since March, including the names of parliamentarians identified.

But the NDP’s Ms. Kwan said the inquiry needs to remove the suspicion hanging over all MPs by getting to the bottom of the allegations by NSICOP.

“The redaction of parliamentarians’ names who wittingly or semi-wittingly engaged in foreign interference from the NSICOP report has harmed the reputation of all MPs,” she said in a statement. “The Commission must examine how to create a process to review those allegations in a manner that is transparent, avoids compromising national security, and respects due process.”

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May have already read the unredacted version of the NSICOP report and their reactions differed substantially. Ms. May played down the findings while Mr. Singh said he was alarmed by the report, adding there were “serious examples where parliamentarians engaged in activity that undermined our country.”

The inquiry said it has access to the unredacted version and all classified documents used to prepare its findings. The inquiry also has access to all documents used in a recent report by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, a watchdog agency that oversees federal intelligence agencies. That agency described Canada’s approach to Chinese foreign interference as an “unacceptable state of affairs” in which the country’s spy agency and the Public Safety Department failed to track who has read and received key reports.

Preston Lim, one of the lawyers working for former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole at the inquiry, said he believes a major goal for Justice Hogue will be to probe the NSICOP revelations.

“Given the big bombshell that occurred with the NSICOP conclusion that Canadian parliamentarians have abetted foreign agents in interfering in Canadian democratic processes, I think really, the commission is concerned with the extent to which the current intelligence setup works,” Mr. Lim said.

“I think they must be seized with this. I think it is a public expectation. I think that’s also the expectation of many participants, many counsel, because these were bombshell revelations and there’s no real path forward other than to really dig into those findings.”

China expert Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa and board member of the China Strategic Risks Institute, said she’s concerned the inquiry may not be digging deep enough on the NSICOP findings.

“The key question is: Have they been interviewing the parliamentarians whose names were redacted, in addition to reading all the documents that NSICOP reads,” she said.

“Canadians have a right to know which parliamentarians have been working in China’s interest and not Canada’s interest.”

Safeguarding democracy

Justice Hogue’s mandate also includes hearing from experts about how to safeguard Canadian democracy from foreign interference.

Jean-Pierre Kingsley, who was Canada’s longest-serving chief electoral officer, has drawn up proposals to deal with disinformation campaigns on social media and bring in greater protections for elections, nominations and party leadership contests.

“We are in a terrible mess in Canada. Foreign countries have dared to interfere in our system,” he said. “What that invasion of our system has done is that it created doubt about the legitimacy of our system.”

Mr. Kingsley was not invited to testify before the inquiry after he refused to be pre-interviewed about his policy ideas, but he recently sat down with The Globe to discuss the issues involved.

One of his proposals: cleaning up nomination contests.

In the first phase, the inquiry heard how former Liberal MP Han Dong was able to bus in international students from China to vote for him in the 2019 Don Valley North nomination. The inquiry also heard how social media, particularly the Chinese WeChat app, was employed in disinformation campaigns to attack some Conservative MPs and candidates in the 2021 election. As well, it was told that people as young as 14 are able to vote in Liberal nominations.

Mr. Kingsley believes the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the country’s broadcast watchdog, needs to be given beefed-up powers to oversee social media, including WeChat and X, formerly Twitter.

“If any social media wants to do business in Canada, they should have to apply to the CRTC. The CRTC would monitor them the same way it monitors radio and TV. They would set standards to be met,” he said.

“The other thing we must do is eliminate anonymity, the ability of people to go on the web or any social media and say anything at all and hide behind anonymity. That would mean that when social media accepts a comment from anyone, they have to verify that person is a Canadian.”

Mr. Kingsley said the Chief Electoral Officer should also take over party nominations and leadership contests. The rules need to be changed to allow only Canadian citizens over age 18 to vote in these contests, he said. Parties should also be banned from issuing instant memberships, he added.

Mr. Kingsley also believes the onus of election watchdogs must be on openness as soon as they are aware of foreign activities. And there need to be tough penalties for anyone who interferes in Canadian democracy.

“I would like to see real deterrence,” he said. “We have to have regimes of penalties which include jail time.”

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-foreign-interference-public-inquiry-phase-two/