Canada not doing enough to stop foreign interference, Erin O’Toole says

The former Conservative leader said the Liberal government ignored warnings from Canada's security agencies that China had allegedly interfered in the 2021 federal election.

Former Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole says Canada is not doing enough to safeguard democracy and to prevent foreign interference in Canadian politics and public institutions.

“We must realize that Canada has been like the frog in a pot of boiling water,” he told a parliamentary committee on Thursday.

“Multiple governments of both stripes ignored our intelligence agencies who’ve been warning about the heat in the water from China.”

O’Toole, who resigned his seat in June, said the Liberal government’s failure to alert Tory MP Michael Chong, NDP MP Jenny Kwan and himself that China attempted to interfere in the 2021 federal election and specifically targeted their campaigns was “the largest breakdown of accountability” between intelligence services and members of Parliament of which he was aware.

He called on the chair of the public inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian elections, Quebec judge Marie-Josée Hogue, to use the inquiry to answer why the government did not do more to stop the alleged attempted interference and why it didn’t alert Canadian politicians that China had allegedly targeted their campaigns.

“The fact that we are learning years after the fact about some of the risks they were briefed on only due to leaks and good reporting should trouble Canadians,” he said, also referencing reports of Chinese attempts to influence the 2019 federal election.

Foreign interference has been a persistent issue in Ottawa over the past year amid reporting from The Globe and Mail and Global News on allegations of Chinese meddling in Canada.

As stories broke, so did revelations that Beijing attempted to target sitting politicians, including Chong, and that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was aware of China’s alleged attempts to disrupt specific candidates’ campaigns but that the Liberal government did not inform the MPs.