Mickey Djuric, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — National security agencies and Liberal cabinet ministers are being summoned by a House of Commons committee to testify about China’s alleged influence in the recent federal election.

The move follows a report in the Globe and Mail newspaper last week that said China worked in the last federal election to defeat conservative candidates seen as hostile to Beijing and to help win re-election for a liberal minority in Canada .

The House Procedures and Affairs Committee unanimously agreed on Tuesday to invite Secretary of State Mélanie Joly and Secretary of State for Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc to another round of questions.

The committee also brings together Minister for Public Safety Marco Mendicino, representatives from Elections Canada and national security organizations including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

The Commons Committee has been investigating foreign interference in the last federal election since November 2019. Most of the Members the Committee intends to hear have therefore already been interviewed.

“This is really going to the bottom of our democracy and we need to start hearings as soon as possible to get the relevant ministers involved and get answers,” Conservative MP Michael Cooper told The Canadian Press on Tuesday. Today is a starting point.”

The Committee on Procedures and Household Affairs has agreed to continue its work until further notice and to hold at least three more meetings later this month.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week argued that Canadian voters were the sole masters of the outcome of the last ballot, downplaying the suggestion that China was trying to unduly influence the outcome of the election.

In a letter to the committee’s Liberal chair, Conservative, New Democrat and Bloc MPs said they wanted to discuss The Globe and Mail’s “disturbing revelations” attributed to classified Canadian spy service files.

In their letter, lawmakers say the committee should address these disturbing reports of Beijing’s interference in Canadian democracy and consider how to broaden the scope of its current review of the issue.

Damage to democratic institutions

Michael Pal, associate professor of law at the University of Ottawa, said academic sources, journalists and Canada’s national security agencies have suggested that “there is now foreign interference in every federal election in Canada,” although its impact is uncertain.

“It’s just very difficult to measure how people would otherwise have acted without foreign interference. Would you have voted differently? Wouldn’t you have voted?” Mr. Pal picked up.

Under federal protocol, there would be a public announcement if a group of senior officials determined that an incident – or a cluster of incidents – threatens Canada’s ability to hold free and fair elections.

There was no such announcement for the 2021 or 2019 elections. Both times, the Liberals remained in government with minority seats, while the Conservatives formed the official opposition.

“Presumably they either didn’t have the information at the time, or they did have it, and they just didn’t think it was at the level required for such an announcement to the public,” Mr. Pal said.

In Tuesday’s committee, Liberals called for a bipartisan approach to move forward.

Jennifer O’Connell, Parliamentary Secretary to the Secretary of State for Intergovernmental Affairs, warned Conservative MPs against politicizing the issue, saying it could harm Canada’s democratic institutions.

“This is the same Trump-like tactic for questioning election results going forward,” Ms O’Connell claimed in response to Tory allegations that the government kept the public in the dark about the election disruptions that have occurred.

It can be difficult for the Canadian government to share specific details, Professor Pal pointed out, because officials don’t want to reveal too much to foreign governments, including the steps they are taking to counter interference.

He believes the issue should be treated impartially as it would be a “big deal” if the public started to doubt the integrity of the electoral process.

“Part of that fueled this idea that elections are rigged. We saw it in the United States. We saw it in Brazil. This is happening in many countries around the world,” Pal said.

“It is part of this larger and ongoing struggle between democracies and dictatorships. That is why we must work together in Canada, but also with other democracies.”