‘China is trying to interfere’ but Canadians alone determined recent elections: Trudeau
Global News
Canadian voters alone decided the outcome of the last federal election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday amid reports of Chinese interference.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday China is trying to interfere in Canadian democracy, “including our elections,” but said it remains clear Canadians were the ones who decided the outcome of the two recent federal elections.
Trudeau spoke to reporters Friday after a final public inquiry report into the federal government’s use of emergency powers during the so called “Freedom Convoy” protests in Ottawa last year was released. The report found the government met the “very high threshold” for invoking the act for the first time in Canadian history.
“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,” Trudeau said.
“We are aware of this and I can assure you that our intelligence and security agencies have been working very hard over the past many years to develop more and more tools to counter this, to make sure that our institutions are kept safe. This is not a new phenomenon.”
He added: “All Canadians can have total confidence that the outcomes of the 2019 and 2021 elections were determined by Canadians and Canadians alone at the voting booth.”
His comments come after the Globe and Mail put out a report Friday saying China deployed a “sophisticated strategy” in the 2021 election to defeat Conservative candidates and attempt to support the federal Liberals towards a minority government, citing national security memos.
The report follows months of exclusive reporting by Global News into allegations of attempted Chinese interference, starting with a Nov. 7, 2022, report that Canadian intelligence officials had warned Trudeau that China has allegedly been targeting Canada with a vast campaign of foreign interference, which includes funding a clandestine network of at least 11 federal candidates running in the 2019 election, according to Global News sources.
On Dec. 21, 2022, Global News reported that an unredacted 2020 national security document alleges that Beijing used an extensive network of community groups to conceal the flow of funds between Chinese officials and Canadian members of an election interference network, all in an effort to advance its own political agenda in the 2019 federal contest.
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