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Trudeau not briefed on some foreign interference concerns about 2021 election, inquiry hears
Canada's security services did not tell the Liberal Party to drop 2019 candidate Han Dong over concerns about possible campaign irregularities and links to China, the Foreign Interference Commission heard Tuesday.
That testimony by Jeremy Broadhurst, the Liberals' national campaign director for the 2019 federal election, appears to contradict reporting by Global News in February 2023. That story, citing unnamed sources, said national security officials told senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) that Dong "was part of a Chinese foreign interference network" and that the party should "rescind Dong's candidacy."
Broadhurst said that security officials did brief the party about allegations related to Dong, the 2019 candidate in the Ontario riding of Don Valley North, but the briefing was only to inform the party that the allegations were out there.
"They weren't making a recommendation that the party should do anything," Broadhurst said Tuesday. "They weren't advising that the prime minister take any specific actions. They just wanted us to have the information that they had at that time."
Broadhurst also said "it would have been very, very surprising to" him if "intelligence officials had felt it was their place to advise a party on whether or not to drop candidates."
The Chinese government has been accused of attempting to influence the results of the 2019 and 2021 federal elections and of meddling in Canada's affairs.
The Foreign Interference Commission inquiry, led by Quebec judge Marie-Josée Hogue, is hearing testimony from more than 40 people, including community members, political party representatives and federal election officials.
The commission is probing actions foreign states may have taken to interfere with those elections and the flow of information within the government about foreign interference efforts.
Broadhurst: no reason to rescind candidacy
Broadhurst, who has held multiple positions in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's inner circle, said he was alerted to allegations about the Don Valley North nomination process around Sept. 28, 2019. Broadhurst said he saw no information that was reliable or cogent enough to justify removing a candidate.
"I had asked the intelligence officials whether there was anything more that could be shared at this time and there was not," he testified Tuesday.
"I felt we took every step we could at the party's side [and] I was satisfied from those answers that there was there was no alarming event that suddenly made sense in light of these intelligence reports."
He said the party also reviewed the nomination process and "saw nothing that stood out as irregular."
"And having done a lot of these nominations, you do sometimes see irregularities, but at the end of the day there's a limit to what the party can do. We're not a forensic organization," he said.
Dong and the two Michaels
Last year, Dong announced he would sit as an Independent and work to clear his name after Global News published a seperate report alleging he advised a senior Chinese diplomat in February 2021 that Beijing should hold off on freeing imprisoned Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
Dong filed a $15 million defamation lawsuit in April 2023 against Global News and its parent company Corus Entertainment. Dong told the commission last week that the lawsuit is in the discovery stage. He also said he has no news about his chances of returning to the Liberal fold.
Former Liberal MP denies knowledge of Chinese interference in campaign
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Former Liberal MP Han Dong, who now sits as an Independent, testified before the federal inquiry into alleged Chinese government interference in Canadian elections that he had no knowledge of Chinese students using falsified documents to vote in his nomination.
On Tuesday, Brian Clow, the prime minister's deputy chief of staff, addressed the allegations about Kovrig and Spavor. He said he learned of the accusations only after the media reports were published.
"We had a number of discussions about how we could get the truth out about this document so that it could be known that Han Dong did not actually advocate for the delay of the release of the two Michaels," he said.
Clow said the PMO had classified information that would refute the claim and senior staff to the prime minister were discussing whether they could declassify it. Ultimately, Clow said, they decided they could not make it public at the time, despite his strong feeling that the allegations were "wrong."
Katie Telford, Prime Minister Trudeau's chief of staff, said the PMO has challenged intelligence given to it about MPs in the past.
The PMO, she told the inquiry Tuesday, receives assessments related to the security clearances of MPs before they're appointed to cabinet or parliamentary secretary roles.
"Flags will sometimes be raised and flags can be any number of things," she said, adding that the individuals in question rarely know they've been flagged.
Telford cited one example of CSIS raising a red flag about a "threat linked to an MP" that "didn't seem right." She said the PMO asked the intelligence service to go back and further substantiate its allegations.
"And to the credit of the officials involved, they went and they worked through the night and they came to us the next day and reversed their assessment because they had made a mistake in how they were looking at the information," she said.
"It taught us not to have blind faith in or first blush trust in the information that we would see, because we watched that reversal of the assessment happen and would have had a significant impact on this person's career."
"I cannot think of a time where we have not deferred ultimately to an assessment that is made, that hasn't been reversed, to any assessment given to us by officials."
Trudeau not briefed
Earlier in the day, the commission heard Trudeau was not briefed in 2021 about possible foreign interference efforts targeting Liberal and Conservative candidates during the 2021 federal election.
Janice Charette, who sat on a five-person panel tasked with determining if Canada's election was at risk in 2021, said Tuesday that she and the director of CSIS decided to brief the Liberal Party directly about foreign interference concerns during the 2021 election.
Charette said that briefing, given on Sept. 12, 2021, passed on classified information to the Liberal Party's representative to the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force.
Charette said Tuesday that the decision to brief the party was made by her and the CSIS director in an effort to "mitigate" possible efforts by China to interfere in the election. She said Prime Minister Trudeau was not briefed by her or the Privy Council Office.
"I did not brief the prime minister on this, either during the election or after the election. And in fact I believe the first briefing of the prime minister took place not until 2023, by the Privy Council Office," Charette told the commission.
Charette also said no other branch of the public service briefed Trudeau on the 2021 issue, and she knew that because she was the point of contact for the prime minister.
"He may have had other briefings through the Liberal Party" that she didn't know about, she said.
Later Tuesday, Broadhurst said that after being briefed himself by his party's SITE representative, he decided that the allegations were sufficient to report them to the prime minister.
Liberal Party notified of foreign interference twice
The panel of five Charette sat on in 2021 is a group of senior bureaucrats tasked with monitoring threats to elections and deciding whether to issue a public warning if they feel the electoral process is under threat from foreign interference.
Nathalie Drouin, who was deputy minister of justice and deputy attorney general during the 2019 federal election and a panel member at that time, told a commission hearing Monday that foreign interference concerns about the riding nomination contest in Don Valley North in 2019 were also conveyed directly to the party during the 2019 federal election.
The 2019 concerns involved international students being bused to the riding of Don Valley North to vote in the Liberal nomination contest, and financial allegations that were referred to the Commissioner of Canada Elections.
The Don Valley North riding race normally would have fallen outside the panel's remit, but in this case it overlapped with the 2019 federal election.
Drouin told the commission Monday that concerns about Don Valley North were also forwarded to the commissioner of Canada Elections because they had a financial element to them.
Conservatives' 2021 concerns
Last week, Walied Soliman, the Conservative campaign co-chair for the 2021 election, told the commission that after that election, his party provided its documented concerns to the SITE Task Force. Those concerns, related to possible efforts by China to interfere in the 2021 election, were reviewed by the panel of five.
Last week, former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole told the commission those concerns involved Kenny Chiu, then the Conservative MP for the B.C. riding of Steveston—Richmond East.
"The level and volume and tone of misinformation towards Mr. Chiu was horrendous," O'Toole said. "He was fearful for his own well being and that of his family and it was a personal attack of a racially motivated nature, suggesting he was a race traitor."
'I thought I would be protected by my country,' former MP tells foreign interference inquiry
7 days ago
Former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu told the public inquiry into foreign interference that he might not have run for office, if he'd known Canadian intelligence showing he was the target of Chinese government interference would not be shared with him.
Charette, who was the Clerk of the Privy Council during the 2021 federal election in her role as a panel member, told the commission Tuesday that she received a detailed briefing note in March of 2023 about the concerns raised by the Conservatives, the process followed to assess those concerns and how those efforts were communicated back to the Conservative Party.
Charette said none of the members of the panel of five in 2021 felt the Conservative Party's concerns raised to SITE suggested a threat Canada's ability to hold free and fair elections. She said she also did not inform Trudeau in 2021 about the concerns.
"I did not advise the prime minister at the time of this," Charette said Tuesday. "I didn't think there was any information that required his action and he was generally aware of the situation in terms of the capabilities here, so I didn't think there was anything new to bring to his attention."
The commission is hearing from the PMO's Katie Telford, Jeremy Broadhurst, Brian Clow and Patrick Travers today, before members of cabinet and Trudeau appear Wednesday.
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