Erin O’Toole says warnings from intelligence agencies were ignored by successive governments until things came to a ‘boil over.’
Successive governments in Canada have ignored interference by the Chinese regime until it reached a boiling point in recent years, former MP and Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole told a House of Commons committee on Oct. 26.
“As a country, we must realize that Canada has been like the frog in a pot of boiling water,” said Mr. O’Toole in his testimony before the Procedure and House Affairs committee (PROC).
“Multiple governments of both stripes ignored our intelligence agencies who’ve been warning about the heat in the water from China.”
He said the warnings were ignored until things came to a “boil over” with what he called the “Three Michaels.”
The Chinese regime arbitrarily detained Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor for nearly three years in retaliation for Canada placing Huawei executive Meng Wangzhou under house arrest in December 2018 in response to a U.S. extradition request.
This put Ottawa’s relations with Beijing on ice and made it complicated for the Liberal government to pursue its up-to-then friendly policy toward China.
The other Michael Mr. O’Toole referred to is Conservative
MP Michael Chong, who revealed in May that he and his family in Hong Kong were being targeted by Beijing and its spy agency.
Being a ‘Target’
Mr. O’Toole was testifying before PROC as part of its study to determine if Mr. Chong’s parliamentary privilege was violated by a foreign state.
Mr. O’Toole explained what it means to be a “target” of a foreign country. “We often think of target in a much more aggressive way, ... but it doesn’t always mean that. It could mean observation, it could mean tracking, but that is equally concerning.”
The former Tory leader, who resigned his seat in the House at the end of the spring session, was the last witness to testify for the study.
As part of his last stand in the Commons on May 30, Mr. Toole
said he had been briefed by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) about threats he was facing from Beijing.
He said the briefing had confirmed what he already suspected, that he and his party were the
target of a “sophisticated misinformation and voter suppression campaign orchestrated by the People’s Republic of China before and during the 2021 general election.”
Other threats identified by the briefing included the use of foreign funds to undermine the Conservatives and Beijing using people on the ground affiliated with the
United Front Work Department (UFWD). The latter is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organ tasked with intelligence and influence campaigns.
Mr. O’Toole told the PROC committee on Oct. 26 that CSIS had used the present tense during the briefing, meaning he was still a target of the regime even though he was no longer party leader. Mr. O’Toole was
ousted from Tory leadership in February 2022.
This was “in part because of my long concerns about certain conduct of the Communist Party in China,” said Mr. O’Toole.
‘Colossal Failure’
Mr. O’Toole was at the helm of the Conservative Party when it lost the 2021 election and has previously spoken about how Chinese regime
interference had an impact.
He told MPs at the committee on Oct. 26 that the different mechanisms put in place by the government to protect against election interference served no use and that subsequent reviews into the matter were flawed.
He described the
Critical Election Incident Public Protocol, which has the mission to warn of threats to the integrity of a vote, as a “colossal failure” and said this was demonstrated by what came out in the news afterward and by what Morris Rosenberg wrote in his report reviewing the protocol.
Mr. Rosenberg, a former high-level public servant, wrote in his February 2023
report that the protocol had worked well in 2021. However, while he said there was an “
opportunity to meet with representatives of major political parties,” Conservatives say they were never consulted.
“The fact that Mr. Rosenberg didn’t speak to me; to my designate Mr. [Walied] Soliman, who had to be security-screened to be part of the election protocol; or Mr.
[Kenny] Chiu—who was very, very publicly targeted during the election in a manner that we were complaining about during the election
—makes his report completely incomplete, to a point of professionally negligent in my view,” Mr. O'Toole said.
Special Rapporteur
Mr. O’Toole also criticized the work of
former special rapporteur on foreign interference David Johnston, who met with him after having already sent his draft report for translation.
“It really disappointed me,” Mr. O’Toole said. “It was like I was a checkbox on a list and I provided them and knew more information than they did.”
The former Tory leader acknowledged that intelligence is a grey area but said one can provide a curated view of intelligence to “drive an outcome.”
“Who provided that curation to Mr. Johnston?” he asked.
Mr. Johnston, a former governor general, was
appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in March. In May he released his report, with the main conclusion being that
no public inquiry into foreign interference was needed. He
resigned in June under pressure from opposition parties.
The government opened up to the idea of a public inquiry following Mr. Johnston’s resignation and
launched the inquiry in September after all major parties agreed on the terms of reference and the commissioner. A first interim report is expected in February 2024.
