Foreign Interference in Canada

It's not just adversarial powers who play in our sandbox

Last week, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians issued its Special Report on Foreign Interference in Canada’s Democratic Processes and Institutions. As has been widely reported, several Members of Parliament are alleged in the report to have been “wittingly” aiding foreign powers in interfering in our democratic process, with their names redacted from the publication. Who and why is probably far more interesting than we even dare to imagine. Less discussed is the redaction throughout the report of countries involved in foreign interference in Canada.

There are several instances of countries themselves being removed from the report. Page 13, as one example, has the sentence: “the primary perpetrators of repression against ethnocultural communities in Canada were the PRC, India, ***, Iran, *** and ***.”

It leads one to wonder what interference is so dangerous to Canada that the Privy Council Office feels identifying the very countries involved would be harmful to our national security. Perhaps if we name these countries, they will interfere in our democratic processes or repress their diaspora communities?

Isn’t that what they are already doing? Wouldn’t it be harder for them if we identified them? Or is there a more acceptable reason?

The frequent references to China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and Iran through the document are all countries that will be of little surprise. The at least three countries that have been redacted leave much to the imagination. What other countries see an interest in interfering with Canada’s national politics, and to what end? And why can’t we name them?

I had numerous interactions with foreign representatives while in office. Few raised any particularly bright red flags to me.

As a Parliamentarian, I was actively courted by the Anatolian Heritage Federation, an opposition group in Turkey linked to the Gülenist Hizmet movement, once they learned that my grandfather was born in 1926 in what was then still called Constantinople. But they were an opposition group, not a government one, and I never heard boo from any representative of the government directly or indirectly.

Israel, on the other hand, has a strong organisation through CIJA, CJPAC, and B’nai Brith. They effectively wield disproportionate influence on the Hill through internship placements and, frankly, the sheer competence of those they recruit. It is hard to refuse some of the best and brightest minds in Ottawa for your office when they’re provided to you free of charge to do with essentially as you please. But it is easy to forget that they are sent there by an institutional structure with an interest in the well-being of a foreign power, and those interns are there specifically because they believe in the cause of that power.

In 2018 the program was killed by a Conflict of Interest commissioner report describing it and five other organisations providing funded interns as being in conflict. However, Procedure and House Affairs, on which I sat at the time, recently revised the CONFLICT OF INTEREST CODE FOR MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS specifically to allow these interns to resume their work. Their benefit so great that MPs could not do without them, they now specifically exempt interns directly from the very definition of a “benefit” that may be received by a Member (emphasis mine):

“benefit” means

(a) an amount of money if there is no obligation to repay it; and

(b) a service or property, or the use of property or money that is provided without charge or at less than its commercial value, other than a service provided by an intern or a volunteer working on behalf of a member; but does not include a benefit received from a riding association or a political party.

This source of condoned foreign influence nigh interference is therefore free to resume, the committee finding the individual experiences received of greater value than a legitimate institutional pathway to enable less obvious foreign interference, of which Israel is but one of several beneficiaries.

Is Israel one of the redacted countries? It is anyone’s guess, but it seems likely. It would certainly be explosive in an already deeply volatile time for Canada’s Jewish community, so redacting them would make sense. The propaganda value of such a revelation for Israel’s opponents would be immeasurable.

Another country that benefits from this program is Ukraine. Locked in an extended conventional war with Russia, a country that is explicitly listed as trying to nudge Canadian politics and politicians in helpful directions, Ukraine has been enjoying very strong support from Canada and Canadians, myself included. Could they be interfering in Canada’s democratic processes? They certainly have the motivation to and a track record of inserting their interests into Parliamentary offices, so it is not outside of the realm of possibility. Much of the technology used by Russia to interfere in western democracies is Ukrainian technology. Like Israel, naming them in the report would be politically problematic, if indeed they are one of the countries.

On April 19th, 2017, I met with Taiwanese First Deputy Minister Cheng-Yi Lin in Taipei, where my delegation of 7 MPs from the three recognised parties in the House were flown in, entirely at Taiwan’s expense, in a ritual performed by the country across the world to recruit foreign politicians as friends and allies of the country in an effort to counter China’s influence.

Conspicuously absent from the report, though, is the United States of America. It is difficult to imagine that the United States, known for having intervened in the domestic affairs of most of the world at some point, does not have an interest or program to ensure its own interests are protected through both overt and covert means in Canada, its largest trading partner, neighbour, and close ally.

Only Russia and China being explicitly listed as countries involved in interfering in Canada’s domestic affairs when Russia, China, and the United States are in a protracted background conflict to be the most influential superpower in the world is a little bit too convenient.

We know that the American far right works with their Canadian counterparts to undermine our democratic integrity, and in much of their country the far right is in power. Susan Delacourt last year asked a similar question to me here on the topic: why is US influence not considered foreign interference?

If an ally, especially a close ally interferes in our domestic politics, is it not still interference? When the Foreign Interference Commission references the United States, it is to cite their definition of foreign interference, not to identify it.

Perhaps it is because, to too many of our leaders, the United States is not actually considered foreign.

And that is a much more concerning idea than any of the other redactions in this report.