Mendicino Won’t Say if Panel That Found Elections ‘Free and Fair’ Received CSIS Documents Alleging China Interference

Signs outside an advance polling station in Burnaby, B.C., on Sept. 10, 2021. (Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters)

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino has refused to say if an election integrity panel was given access to confidential Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) documents that allege China interfered in the last two federal elections.

This interference is alleged to have included providing support to 11 candidates, mostly Liberals, in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in the 2019 election, and using various tactics to enable the Liberals to return to power with a minority government following the 2021 election .

In a Feb. 19 interview with The West Block program on Global News, Mendicino said the review panel members “look at the information that they need to make the assessment around the integrity of the elections. ... They get the access that they need to the information that is required to come to those conclusions.”

“We’ve always been upfront with Canadians that foreign interference is a significant threat in the national security landscape,” the minister said.

He stated that the panel “made up of independent, non-partisan public servants” conducted a review and came to the conclusion that the results of the 2019 and 2021 elections were “free and fair.”

“Canadians and Canadians alone determined the outcome of those elections. And we will continue to be sure that we’re eyes wide open about that,” said Mendicino, whose office did not respond by press time to a request for an interview.

The minister also said the government had taken steps to protect the Canadian economy, including banning federal funding for research projects with Chinese military institutions, and would continue to take any steps necessary.

“If that means condemning hostile state actors, we will do it. If that means taking other measures then we will do it. And we’re eyes wide open about what those threats look like,” said Mendicino.

He added that “we’re taking very aggressive action to deal with the threats, and I’ve laid out a number of concrete tools so that Canadians can be assured that their elections are free and fair.”

“The corresponding responsibility of the government is to be transparent,” he said. “That is the high bar that the government will continue to live up to.”

Interference ‘Not a New Phenomenon’

The minister’s comments follow Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s comments to the media on Feb. 17 that election interference “is not a new phenomenon.”

“This is something that countries around the world have been grappling with for a long time and Canada is no exception,” Trudeau said. “I have been saying for years, including on the floor of the House of Commons, that China is trying to interfere in our democracy, in the processes in our country, including during our elections. We are aware of this.”

However, Trudeau had earlier said, on Nov. 20, 2022, that “there has never been any information given to me on the funding of federal candidates by China.”

During a Calgary press conference on Feb. 17, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre alleged that Trudeau had been “covering up the interference of the authoritarian regime in Beijing.”

According to secret and top-secret CSIS documents covering the period before and after the September 2021 election, cited by a Feb. 17 Globe and Mail article, Beijing used a variety of sophisticated tactics that sought to defeat Conservative MPs considered critical of China. Another goal of the regime was to ensure the Liberals formed only a minority government so that their power would be kept curtailed, according to the article.

In September 2021, an analysis by a federal research unit said researchers had documented the Chinese regime’s use of Chinese-language social media to spread a narrative that the Conservatives would drastically curtail ties with Beijing if they are elected to power.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.