Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called for a review of foreign interference in his country’s elections and will appoint an independent special investigator to probe alleged Chinese meddling in Canada’s polls.
Trudeau has come under pressure to act amid Canadian media reports, citing anonymous intelligence sources, that detail alleged schemes run by China to influence Canada’s elections in 2021 and 2019.
The Globe and Mail newspaper reported last month that China preferred to see Trudeau’s Liberals reelected in the 2021 election and had worked to defeat Conservative politicians considered unfriendly to Beijing. Opposition parties have demanded a full public inquiry.
‘Today, we’re taking even further action to protect our democratic institutions, to defend their integrity, and to uphold and strengthen confidence in our democracy. We will always take foreign attempts at undermining our democracy very seriously,’ Trudeau said in a statement on Monday.
The prime minister said that he had asked legislators in the parliament’s national security committee to launch an investigation to “assess the state of foreign interference’ in the country’s federal electoral process.
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Trudeau also said that he would appoint an ’eminent Canadian’ who will have powers to make recommendations on “protecting and enhancing” democracy in Canada, including holding a public inquiry or another formal independent review process.
Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Review Agency will also investigate how the country’s intelligence services handled the threat of foreign interference during the elections and report its findings to Parliament.
‘Together, these measures will give us a better understanding of what happened in the last two elections, how foreign governments tried to interfere, how security agencies in Canada responded to the threat of interference, and how the information flowed across government,’ the prime minister said in a news briefing.
Trudeau and Canada’s top security officials have acknowledged China’s interference attempts but insist that election outcomes were not altered. They have not confirmed the details of the media reports.
Trudeau also raised “serious concerns” over the alleged Chinese election interference with China’s President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) meeting in Indonesia in November.