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14-04-2023
OTTAWA/ BEIJING: When Member of Parliament Kenny Chiu was contacted by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) ahead of Canada’s federal election in 2021, he was puzzled.
He had never expected to be part of a CSIS investigation, let alone one that required an in-person talk at the height of Canada’s COVID-19 pandemic.
“At that time, everything had moved online, so it was quite unexpected that they insisted on a face-to-face sit-down,” Chiu told media but the topic of the meeting was highly sensitive: alleged Chinese interference in Canada’s elections and soon, it would be a dominant issue in Canada’s politics, shaping Chiu’s political fortunes and eventually even the prime minister’s.
Intelligence reports leaked from the CSIS in recent months indicate that Canada’s intelligence community has been concerned about Chinese election interference for decades.
The documents suggest the Chinese government has not only been spreading disinformation but has also been operating a clandestine network to influence the past two federal elections, in 2019 and 2021.
The alleged network includes Chinese diplomats, Canadian politicians, business owners and international students. They are accused of using their influence to support pro-Beijing candidates and scuttle voices critical of China.
One of those figures is the former Chinese Consul General of Vancouver Tong Xiaoling. In a leak to the newspaper The Globe and Mail, Tong allegedly boasted that Chinese efforts resulted in the defeat of two candidates from Canada’s Conservative Party in the province of British Columbia. Chiu was one of them.
Chiu started to note a shift six months ahead of his reelection bid, in the early months of 2021.
First elected to represent the district of Steveston-Richmond East in 2019, Chiu had recently introduced a private member’s bill called the Foreign Influence Registry Act.
It would have required individuals working for foreign governments and political organizations to register their communications with Canadian officials if they sought, for example, to introduce policy proposals or influence public contracts.
According to Chiu, the bill was intended to provide Canada with tools to combat foreign interference without singling out any country in particular.
“Yet, we saw a lot of disinformation being circulated about the bill, saying things like, ‘It is going to put Chinese-Canadians in jeopardy and that people with ties to China would risk being fined 400,000 Canadian dollars’ [about $300,000],” Chiu said. “Of course, none of that was true.”
Chiu himself came under fire. “There was also slander directed at me, saying that I am a sell-out and accusing me of racism in spite of my own Chinese heritage” but Chiu was not alone in noticing an increase in scrutiny after the introduction of his bill. The Canadian disinformation monitor DisInfoWatch closely reviewed the stories about Chiu and other Conservative Party candidates during the 2021 election.
It found there were strong indications of a coordinated campaign aimed at influencing Chinese-Canadian voters.
Benjamin Fung, a cybersecurity professor at McGill University, also analyzed the disinformation disseminated during the election. He too concluded that there were links to Asia.
“It was widespread but a lot of the activity would be concentrated around a 9am to 5pm time slot only not in Canada time, but in China time,” Fung told media. “So it was most likely being coordinated from somewhere in East Asia.”
Chiu’s district had a large Chinese-Canadian community and experts found that a sizeable proportion of the disinformation was being spread through WeChat, a Chinese social media app used widely in the diaspora community. (Int’l News Desk)
