Achi news desk-
Commissioner Marie-José Hogg released her interim report Friday looking into foreign election interference, concluding that while Chinese interference occurred in some ridings, it did not affect the overall outcome of Canada’s 2019 and 2021 general elections.
In concluding the first phase of her work — which focused on determining whether China, Russia and other foreign actors interfered in the last two federal votes, the flow of official information and how the government responded to what it knew — Hogg noted a handful of areas that require further examination before she can draw conclusions or recommendations.
Here are five elements of foreign election interference that Hogg says she needs to investigate further in the second phase of the public inquiry before she can announce them.
Vulnerability of nomination races
A notable area of ​​focus throughout the reporting and discussion of foreign interference has been how political parties manage their nomination races to determine who will be the candidate in each riding and whether additional oversight is needed.
Pointing to the example of Liberal MP Han Dong’s 2019 nomination contest, Hogg said the experience illustrates the extent to which nomination contests can be a gateway for foreign countries seeking to interfere in Canadian democracy.
“This is undoubtedly an issue that will have to be carefully examined in the second phase of the committee’s work,” she said in the 193-page preliminary report.
Although Hogg highlights the vulnerability of nomination races, national security expert Wesley Work notes that the report may not lead to changes on that front.
“The problem here is that the nomination contests are run by political parties. So it will be up to the political parties, not the government, which is the intended focus of the report, to decide,” said Work, who is a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation.
The threshold question to alert Canadians
The hearings also examined the question of when the public record of critical election events should be invoked to alert Canadians to an act of foreign interference during a written period. Arguments have been made that the bar should be lowered for future races.
In Friday’s report, Hogg notes that “once the impact of foreign intervention is known, there is a loss of confidence in our democracy.” She said the federal government was right to set a high bar for sounding alarm bells, being careful not to “serve the purpose of a foreign country to sow discord and discredit democracy.”
At the same time, Hogg says people are right to be concerned and want officials to “shed light” on what’s going on.
“This paradox is one of the issues I will explore in the next phase of my work,” she said.
How to deal with disinformation
Citing the example of former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu, whose 2021 campaign was influenced by Chinese efforts to defeat the Conservatives, Hogg says how governments can handle cases of foreign disinformation during elections needs further consideration.
Hogg believes the government “seemed to require very high certainty that foreign countries were responsible for online activity,” but she worries that officials are putting too much stock in politicians’ public statements against false narratives that are cleaning up the “information ecosystem.”
“By the time the disinformation dissipates, it may be too late. The damage to the democratic process may already be done. The fact that the narratives… died out by election day does not mean they had no impact.”
The next step of the committee “must” examine this, according to her.
How to inform, shared
A fourth concept Hogg wants to dig into more is whether national security and intelligence agencies should say more than they have in the past about various attempts or threats they are tracking.
This includes the question of how intelligence and information about foreign interference should be communicated within the government, to the public and to those vulnerable to its effects.
“In my opinion, the evidence I have heard to date does not prove bad faith on the part of anyone, or that the information was deliberately and wrongly withheld,” Hogg said.
“But it does indicate that in some cases, information related to foreign interference did not reach the intended recipient, while in others the information was not properly understood by those who received it,” she said. “These are serious issues that need to be investigated and considered.”
According to her, revealing only general information – as was clearly the case in high-profile examples of interference concerns – “risks obscuring the importance of what is being communicated, thereby reducing the likelihood that those who receive the information will internalize and act on it.”
Attribution of disturbance to the country
Finally, the commissioner said that further reflection and consideration is required regarding how Canada decides to name the foreign countries behind various attempted interventions.
“The evidence I’ve heard is that attributing election interference to foreign state actors can be extremely challenging, especially with the sophisticated online tools and tactics now available, and the use of proxies and co-ops,” she said.
Look for questions to come up next that aim to shed light on how and when federal officials determine they have what they need to confidently name and accuse another state of meddling.
Work says he’s frustrated there wasn’t more in the report to push for action with interim recommendations given the tight frameworks under which Hogg is working. The commission will not submit its final report until 2024. Work says judicial inquiries typically give the government one year to respond, making it difficult to implement any of Hogg’s recommendations before the next election, which is expected in the fall of 2025.
“It was designed to examine not only indications of election interference, but how the government responded and how it handled the intelligence. There is very little of that,” Work said. “This first phase report is probably going to disappoint many people who expected more money from the commission.”
