Federal officials let threats of foreign meddling by the China Communist Party (CCP) in the 2021 and 2019 elections slide because they couldn’t read social media posts written in Chinese, per Blacklock's Reporter. The Commission on Foreign Interference heard despite there being five cabinet appointees assigned to keep a lookout for foreign agents — none of them could read or speak Chinese. The Critical Election Incident Public Protocol panel members, dubbed the 'Panel of Five,' were all Liberal appointees: the Clerk of the Privy Council, the national security advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the deputy attorney general and deputy ministers of public safety and foreign affairs. “The fact it is written in Mandarin meant the content would likely only reach Chinese diaspora readers,” Allen Sutherland, assistant secretary to the cabinet, said in a sworn statement at the China Inquiry. (There is no such thing as writing in Mandarin. All written Chinese is the same, while Mandarin is a spoken dialect: author). Sutherland said he did not intend to be patronizing.“It was simply that in the case of WeChat, the ability of that to go viral in a national scale is different,” said Sutherland. “It doesn’t mean – I don’t want to leave you with the impression it was treated with any less seriousness.”A March 4 report called In Camera Examination Summary shows that a Chinese translator was subsequently hired by election monitors.Experts “identified the lack of a Mandarin speaker as a gap,” it said, adding that election monitors “hired a China expert who spoke Mandarin and was able to monitor Chinese social media.”The commission to date has heard evidence the People’s Republic of China (PRC) funneled $250,000 in illegal payments to “pro-China” public office holders and targetted unfriendly MPs with slander campaigns in Chinese-language media such as WeChat. Election monitors never issued any warning though internal memos acknowledged WeChat campaigns were “aimed at discouraging Canadians particularly of Chinese heritage from supporting the Conservative Party.”Sutherland testified election monitors did not want to “overreact.”Security warnings were never issued by cabinet’s so-called Panel of Five assigned to monitor foreign agents.“An announcement by the panel was really seen as a kind of last resort,” testified Sutherland. “Panel members are our most accomplished, non-partisan, professional public servants,” said Sutherland. “They are experienced in nuanced judgment, judgment under uncertainty and judgment under pressure. It was a difficult task that was given to them. It would require nuanced judgment and it was thought this panel of five was appropriate for that task.”Nando de Luca, counsel for the Conservative Party, noted the election monitors never alerted any Conservative candidate of suspicious activity in the 2019 or 2021 campaigns despite numerous internal warnings from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).“The panel didn’t think in either election the integrity of the election at either the national or a riding level warranted the issuance of an announcement?” asked de Luca.“I think that is generally fair,” replied Sutherland.Mani Kakkar, counsel for NDP MP Jenny Kwan, depicted the election monitors’ work as an all-or-nothing approach that overlooked clear evidence of interference. “So far in this inquiry we have heard about instances of election interference that may seem somewhat small perhaps,” said Kakkar. “Maybe it is a WeChat post. Maybe it is a campaign event.”“Understand the aggregated impact of these smaller events. On a particular week it might look like that was a very small event and therefore the situation was still stable, but by Week Four you had six of these and perhaps collectively the picture looks different.”
