At the Commission on Foreign Interference Wednesday Prime Minister Justin Trudeau deflected the claim Canada is the worst country in the Five Eyes (Canada, US, UK, New Zealand and Australia) when it comes to handling foreign interference. The Commission on Foreign Interference is specifically addressing hundreds of allegations of meddling by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agents in Canadian elections. Trudeau instead pointed to instances of Russian interference in other countries such as the US, France and Ukraine, and said when he came to power in 2015, he knew foreign interference was a big issue and immediately began creating special “intelligence apparatuses” to upgrade the systems that already existed in Canada. There have been zero complaints of Russian interference in Canada. .The prime minister said in 2015 his caucus “had growing concerns” the Canadian government was lacking in legislation. “Before the 2015 election (there was a) lack of oversight by parliamentarians into what was going on in our national security universe in this country,” said Trudeau.He said his government implemented and strengthened a number of national security agencies and committees, and allowed for higher security clearance for parliamentarians. “One of the things I did is I changed our national security adviser to a national security and intelligence advisor, because it's not just about security, and obviously the work around intelligence was getting more and more complex,” said Trudeau. “Over the course of that first mandate, we witnessed the significant foreign interference allegations or threats during the 2016 presidential election in the United States where Russia certainly through misinformation and disinformation online attempted to interfere.”.“Also, more interestingly, as a key example in 2017 during the French presidential election there was actually a moment in which officials within the French governmental apparatus actually had to come out and tell the citizens of France that a particular piece of information or news that was about to break was in fact Russian disinformation and should not be given any weight or heed.”“That got us to reflecting on whether or not Canada had a potential to intercede in an election campaign if there was a significant threat of foreign interference impacting the ability of our elections to actually unfold in a free and fair way.”.Trudeau said as a result, he developed “two mechanisms” to combat foreign interference — particularly “disinformation.”“One of the other examples of things that we did during that time in 2018 when Canada hosted the G7 leaders meeting in Quebec, we created the G7 rapid response mechanism which was designed to monitor and respond to threats of misinformation and disinformation.”It allowed the Trudeau Liberals and other G7 countries to “weigh in a little more on the democracies in Eastern Europe, where we're seeing significant interference by Russians given the conflict in Ukraine.”.Trudeau was then shown a CSIS memo from 2017 emphasizing though there are “other threats around but the CCP is the big one.” The document talked about allies who are facing similar challenges and referred specifically to Australia, where “it was found that agents of the Chinese government were donating millions of dollars across the political spectrum.”“It then brings it back to Canada. Politicians and elected officials are largely unaware of the PRC's (People's Republic of China) and others efforts to influence Canada's political landscape, making them more vulnerable to these attempts either in Canada or when traveling abroad.”.He was asked to address these threats from the CCP, including the level of knowledge, the level of threat, but instead talked about other countries again. “First of all it's a good example, as I spoke about the experiences in the United States and in France. The experience that Australia had, not with Russia, but with China, is another excellent example that we were very aware of at the time and highlighted the fact that there are foreign state actors who are interested in playing a role in our democracies or in disrupting our democracies.”“The difference between Russia and China is a significant one in that China has a very large diaspora of Chinese Canadians who are often the first targets of interference efforts by a foreign state. “So we were very aware of it as a politician in Canada for, um, eight years when I became prime minister, uh, I was certainly aware of the various ways, um, officials and different countries through diasporas can take an interest in Canadian political processes.”.Trudeau elaborated that he “suddenly had an excellent intelligence apparatus,” but did not address the question on what his government did to combat foreign interference by the CCP. “There’s always been a complex approach that every government has to take with China. But the relations of Canada took a certain turn when they chose to detain two Canadians.”“We were pushing back hard against China on the arbitrary nature of those detentions and the fact that they needed to release those two Canadians, but we were extremely active around the world in mobilizing other countries to bring up Canada and the plight of the two Michaels during their bilateral conversations, which was something I can say ended up putting a significant amount of, um, strain on our relationship.”“It was a massive irritant to China that everyone kept talking about these two Michaels even when, uh, they didn't have anything to do with Canada. We heard it regularly.”“It came to a head when I saw the president of China Xi Jinping at the opening ceremonies, I mentioned to him that I needed China to stop interfering in Canadian democratic processes because that was very much something that people were very concerned with back home.”
