Nearly 70% of Canadians Believe Ottawa is ‘Afraid to Stand Up’ to Beijing: Survey

Chinese police officers stand guard outside the Canadian embassy in Beijing on Dec. 10, 2018. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

Nearly 70 percent of Canadians believe the federal government is “afraid to stand up” to Beijing amid mounting evidence that the Chinese regime interfered in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 federal elections, says a new survey.

Conducted by the Angus Reid Institute, the survey found those who said they voted for the Conservatives in the last election were most likely to say Ottawa feared Beijing (91 percent), followed by 78 percent of past Bloc Québécois voters, 62 percent of NDP voters, and 46 percent of Liberal voters.

Published on March 1, the survey report titled “China, Canada and Challenging Diplomacy,” also said that two-thirds of Canadians surveyed believe the Chinese government either “definitely” or “probably” tried to meddle in the last two federal elections.

“Majorities across the political spectrum are of this view, while half of Canadians [53 percent] say this attempted interference represents a serious threat to democracy,” said the report, adding that just six percent of those surveyed rejected the possibility of Beijing attempting to interfere in the elections.

Canadians residing in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, and Saskatchewan were most likely to believe that Beijing attempted to interfere in the elections.

Over 60 percent of Canadians also said they believe Ottawa needs to “put additional focus” on safeguarding Canada’s security and defence, according to the report.

Among Liberal voters surveyed, the report says that over 30 percent believe the allegations of interference by Beijing in the past two elections are “overblown.”

“However, more (43%) of those who voted Liberal in 2021 believe the allegations to be a serious threat to Canada’s democracy,” it added.

Public Inquiry Calls

The survey comes amid cross-partisan calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to launch a public inquiry into the election interference allegations.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh called on the federal government to initiate an inquiry on Feb. 27, while similar calls were previously made by former CSIS head Richard Fadden, Canada’s former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley, Trudeau’s former principal secretary Gerald Butts, and a number of Conservative MPs.

The prime minister has previously ruled out the possibility of an inquiry, saying the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol (CEIPP) panel, which was created by the Liberal government in 2019 to monitor and report threats of election interference, had already declared that both the 2019 and 2021 elections were not compromised.

The panel’s report on the protocol in the 2021 federal election designed to inform Canadians in the event of threats was released on Feb. 28 and concluded that no attempts by foreign actors to interfere in the election changed its outcome.

The report, which was written by former senior public servant Morris Rosenberg, said the panel did not find there was foreign interference of enough magnitude in either the 2019 or 2021 elections that would’ve met the threshold for an announcement.

However, Rosenberg did note that there were “efforts at foreign interference.”

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told reporters in Halifax on Feb. 28 that the interference allegations represent a “serious threat to our institutions,” but said the Liberal government has already “put in place a number of tools that will assist our intelligence community and other agencies that operate within the public safety apparatus” to counter the threat.

Noé Chartier contributed to this report.