Why China’s Interference in Canada’s Election Mattered

The loss of seats changed control over parliamentary committees and the ability to expose wrongdoing.

A woman walks past the the Office of the Prime Minister and Privy Council building in the parliamentary precinct in downtown Ottawa, on June, 30, 2020. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Commentary

Canada’s press and pundits are understandably heaping scorn on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his glib claim that “not a single riding” was changed due to the foreign interference widely believed to have influenced Canada’s 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

Hard-hitting though the criticisms may be—The Globe and Mail pointedly stated that “If the Prime Minister has evidence that no ridings were swayed, he should share that with Canadians”—they inadvertently let Mr. Trudeau off the hook by accepting his broader claim that, since the Conservatives wouldn’t have won the election even if the Conservative Party’s claims of election tampering in 13 or more ridings were valid, nothing much would have turned on it.

Not so. The repercussions of a shift of 13 ridings in 2021 would have been profound and likely consequential. This can best be seen at the parliamentary committee level, where the composition of committees is roughly proportional to the number of seats each party wins. Control over the committees determines the investigations they can launch, the witnesses they can call, and the documents they can uncover.

Take the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, one of three Parliamentary committees investigating Chinese election interference. After the 2021 election, the Liberals and NDP working together controlled 6 of the committee’s 11 votes, allowing them to repeatedly thwart motions from the opposition Conservatives and Bloc Québécois, who together controlled 5 votes (the 12th member of the committee is a chair, who only votes to break ties). Had the Conservatives won 13 or more ridings and the Liberals 13 fewer, that 26-seat swing could have given the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois control over the committee, allowing Canadians to learn which government officials knew about Chinese interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections, when they knew it, and why they failed to take decisive actions to stop it.

To take a real-life example of the infighting that occurs, the many attempts by the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois to obtain Chinese-interference-related documents were continually thwarted by a 6 to 5 vote at the committee level. If the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois had the votes to place these documents on the official public record, the government would have been forced to justify its failure to stop the Chinese regime’s election interference.

A small difference in the number of seats that minority parties control can also set in motion events, forcing minority governments to resign. Many believe the 2021 election was triggered by the ability of the minority parties—the Conservatives, Bloc Québécois, and NDP—to demand the governing Liberals explain their role in allowing Chinese scientists involved with the Wuhan lab to work at a high-security laboratory in Winnipeg and to ship deadly viruses on a commercial Air Canada flight to China. Because the minority parties had sufficient numbers to prevent the Liberals from endless stalling tactics, the Liberals decided to cancel the business of Parliament by calling an election rather than admitting to Wuhan-related deeds too damaging to contemplate.

Now that a meaningful Public Inquiry into China’s foreign election interference is underway, Canadians are finally hearing testimony from public officials unveiling the deceptions and distractions that have kept them at arms’ length from the truth. If these hearings confirm that Conservatives did indeed lose 13 or more seats in 2021, Canadians would learn of the Chinese regime’s malign influence three years later than otherwise and be three years behind in curbing it.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.