Liberals have been bombarded for weeks with questions about allegations published in the media that the government failed to act after being informed that China was trying to interfere in the last two federal elections.

“There are few greater challenges we face than foreign interference,” Mendicino said at a news conference on Parliament Hill on Friday morning. As a government, we need to keep our eyes wide open.”

Mendicino says the consultation, which he hopes all Canadians will participate in, will run from now until May 9 and will include a virtual portal the website of the Ministry of Public Security.

We will never accept foreign interference.

Today we launched consultations to establish a Foreign Interference Transparency Registry in Canada.

We invite Canadians to comment on this tool to protect our institutions. pic.twitter.com/rwbhPj5JiP

— Marco Mendicino (@marcomendicino) March 10, 2023

As part of such a register, individuals acting on behalf of a foreign state to further its goals would have to disclose their ties to the government that employs them.

Also read:

The idea of ​​a registry, already in place in Australia and the United States, aims to make these interactions more transparent, with the possibility of fines or even jail time for non-compliance.

The Liberal government signaled late last year that it wanted to hear from experts and the general public, including members of affected communities, about setting up a registry.

Mr Mendicino said late last year that the Liberal government wanted to hear from experts and the public, including members of affected communities, about setting up a registry.

However, he gave no details on Friday about when a register would be operational and said he needed to take the time to get it right.

One of the goals of the consultation is to “fully engage all Canadians in a conversation about how we can protect our institutions from foreign interference in an inclusive manner that respects the diversity of our populations and, of course, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” said the minister.

Chinese-born international trade minister Mary Ng said it was important to create the registry in a way that didn’t fuel anti-Asian racism.

“We have a great responsibility to ensure that we are not unfairly or unintentionally creating a cloud hanging over an entire community that has felt incredibly insecure and felt the uneasiness of unconscious bias that became very conscious at the start of the pandemic,” said her next to Mr. Mendicino.

For its part, the Bloc Québécois has described the Trudeau government’s strategy as “shoveling forward”.

“RCMP and CSIS experts are calling for this and what is the Trudeau government doing? He is initiating consultations, said party ethics spokesman René Villemure. It is high time for the government to seize the opportunity and take concrete action by compiling a register of foreign agents and setting up a public and independent commission of inquiry into revelations of Chinese interference in the elections.

Message from Mélany Joly to diplomats

Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly assured on Thursday that any diplomat on Canadian soil violating the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations will be expelled.

Testifying before a parliamentary committee investigating allegations of Chinese interference in the last two elections, she did not say whether diplomats were ever expelled on this basis.

Also read:

The Vienna Convention “obliges diplomats to respect the laws of the country in which they are located,” according to a Global Affairs Canada website.