Former Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart says he believes interference by the Chinese regime is likely taking place ahead of the upcoming municipal elections.
Stewart, who led Vancouver from 2018 to 2022, says little has been done to prevent vulnerabilities that he says China exploited and which contributed to his 2022 re-election loss.
Foreign Interference Reports
Stewart said municipal elections are highly vulnerable to foreign state interference of the kind that he says took place in his 2022 re-election run.During his 2022 campaign, Stewart says a radio station operating from Washington state and thus outside the jurisdiction of Canadian broadcast regulators broadcasted messaging against his campaign throughout the election—which he believes was connected to Chinese state interests.
“Municipal elections are so vulnerable,” Stewart said. “There’s hardly any oversight. They’re all usually run by the municipalities themselves, it’s very low information and media coverage. It’s the perfect place to crank up a funded social media campaign.”
In addition to the radio station broadcasting “propaganda” against him, Stewart said the Chinese consulate in Vancouver also later issued material that he believes was meant to tell residents not to vote for him.
“They were actively interfering all the way through the election,” Stewart said.
The mayoral election that year was won by Ken Sim, who is currently Vancouver’s mayor. He has said that his ethnicity is a factor behind the allegations, calling the reports a “bunch of insinuations.” He has not returned requests for comment by The Epoch Times.
Kennedy said that he believes Canadian authorities are aware of the scale of the Chinese regime’s interference in Canadian elections and political institutions, but said political leaders don’t take the threat seriously enough.
“I think this is quite widespread. I have some friends, some academic friends, who study this stuff, and this is so widespread in countries all around the world, and it’s happening here in Canada right now,” he said.
“I think CSIS, RCMP are aware of it, but the government just doesn’t really take it that seriously. So that’s not good for us. So we need to take that more seriously.”
He added that the federal public inquiry investigating foreign interference led by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue that concluded in 2025 did not fully address his concerns.
“It’s a big problem that I don’t think the recent commission has really dealt with,” he said.
The Hogue inquiry said in its report that Beijing is the most active foreign power interfering in Canada, and noted that foreign interference is a threat at all levels of government, including federal, provincial, municipal, and First Nations. The inquiry also presented testimony and intelligence records about China’s interference at individual ridings, however it concluded that foreign interference didn’t change the overal results of the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.
The City of Vancouver said that it takes all necessary precautions to prevent meddling in elections and “has various measures in place to secure and monitor its technical infrastructure.”
“The City’s voting technology: has been acquired through standard and transparent procurement processes; involves experienced providers with numerous federal, provincial and local government clients; is thoroughly tested prior to deployment; and, encompasses a variety of security measures to ensure integrity and accuracy of the election results,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.
This includes “procedural controls” to protect the accounts of elected officials including “industry-leading cyber threat protection software,” according to the spokesperson.
CSIS Briefing
Stewart said that during his 2022 run for re-election, he received a briefing in-person from members of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Two intelligence officials attended the meeting, one of whom Stewart said he later learned was a China specialist.“It was a weird meeting. Like I had no idea it was coming, and it was two officials,” he said.
According to Stewart, the two CSIS members outlined the ways in which foreign powers interfered in elections and questioned him and his chief of staff about their observations of possible foreign meddling. He said CSIS appeared frustrated due to having passed on information to senior officials that wasn’t being sufficiently addressed.
“I think the reason they came and met with me is they know I have a big mouth, and I would go out and talk about it,” he said.
“What I remember being told is that they were telling people and they said no one upstairs was listening. So they had fed a lot of this information up, and then nobody was really paying attention.”
Despite the alleged warning from CSIS, Stewart said he and his chief of staff had few practical options for next steps they could take to address the risks.
“So we just conducted the election like we would,” he said.
Stewart added that following his election loss, he was met by reporters who questioned him with information he believes came from intercepted Chinese communications.
“They had been fed wiretaps from the consulate here in Vancouver, in which I was included, and there was collusion to get rid of me,” he said.
“I didn’t see the transcripts, but I was looking at the reporters’ notebook,” Stewart said. “They had seen the transcripts. They had written quotes down from the transcripts, and that’s what they were asking me about,” he added.
Despite the alleged interference and collusion, Stewart said that baggage over COVID-19 restrictions contributed to his loss as well.
“In the end, Vancouver voters decided that election,” but added that he felt “interference made it difficult.”
Stewart got approximately the same amount of votes in 2022 as he had in his 2018 election victory but was defeated by Sim by a margin of more than 36,000 votes.
Other Allegations
Stewart’s recent comments follow earlier allegations he made in May about an unnamed member of B.C. Premier David Eby’s cabinet allegedly collaborating with the Chinese regime.Stewart said that CSIS officials interviewed him for hours about an investigation into this possible collusion.
“This is an ongoing RCMP investigation that nothing’s being done about it,” he added.
No charges have been announced in regard to this issue, and the RCMP and CSIS have not confirmed Stewart’s allegation.
Eby has said he has received multiple briefings from CSIS and the RCMP but has not been made aware of any concerns pertaining to a member of his government caucus or cabinet.
“At a minimum, if there was concern about a cabinet member, given the sensitive information that cabinet has access to, I would remove that person from cabinet,” Eby said, adding he’d received “not one concern” from federal agencies.
Stewart said that Eby’s statement doesn’t mean he is unaware of the potential security risk.
“When you say I have not been briefed by CSIS or the RCMP about this, full stop, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t know,” Stewart said, though adding he doesn’t want to identify the cabinet minister in case he is hit with another defamation lawsuit.
Stewart told Pete a past defamation lawsuit against him took three years to resolve and could have cost him roughly $400,000 if he’d lost.
“I think I’m kind of in a way whistleblowing, but I don’t need to get sued,” he said. “So I think that’s why other people haven’t come out either. There have been threats of legal action if this goes any further.”
Stewart said other MPs and MLAs who have information on the matter should speak in legislature where privilege protects their statements.
“There’s total pathway for an elected member of Parliament because you can’t be sued if you stand up in your seat and say something and you bring it up in the House of Commons,” he said.
In addition to fear of a defamation lawsuit, Stewart said his statements against the Chinese regime’s interference have led to unfounded accusations of him being racist, something he denies.
“Every time I do, I get totally killed for it,” Stewart said. “They call me racist.”
Further Allegations of Interference
In addition to Stewart, Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West has previously said that CSIS approached him to warn about meddling by the Chinese regime in September 2022.He said that contacts he trusted in the Chinese community had shown him messages on the Chinese social media platform WeChat where “individuals associated with the Chinese Communist Party” were trying to recruit a candidate to run against him and defeat him.
It was “an attempt to neutralize me and to defeat me, and to stop my political representation of the people,” West said.
West went on to be re-elected in 2022.
