Cold War 2.0: Spy vs Spy + Canadian Election Interference
Canada and the world need to be ready for a new level of interference from foreign actors seeking to influence and control Canadian decision makers
There has been a lot of justified concern about interference in Canadian elections, with Canadian CSIS agents leaking to the media that there has been widespread Chinese interference in Canada for many years, including targeting specific politicians.
CSIS has openly stated that there has been election interference, not just by China, but by Russia and India as well.
In a speech to the House of Commons, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that there was credible evidence that the murder of a Canadian on Canadian soil had been, ordered by the Government of India.
The reaction at first, from many in the Canadian conservative media, was to suggest that Trudeau was “isolated” and “alone”on the world stage. Writers like Brian Lilley of the Sun, repeated and parroted the same framing and positioning offered up by India, and American and British commentators followed suit.
Considering the seriousness of the charge - that the Government of India was hiring criminals to implement murder-for-hire plots in other countries, the reaction was to treat it as political theatre.
That changed when it emerged that the murder in Canada was one of several aimed by the government of Narendra Modi, in both the U.S. and Canada. Referred to as “brazen murder-for-hire-plots” the U.S. indictment suggests that there were multiple schemes to assassinate Sikhs - one in the U.S. and three in Canada.
Former CSIS officials said that Trudeau had been vindicated.
It no secret that Modi is a Hindu nationalist. In 2002 when he was Chief Minister of Gujarat, he was accused of “allowing” anti-Muslim riots that killed over 1,000 people. That led to him being denied a visa by the US - which had to be reversed once he was elected Prime Minister of India in 2014.
Conflict and tension with China has led to the U.S. and other countries shifting their offshored manufacturing to India - making it an important alternative, but one that has been complicated, to say the least, by certain nations looking to shrug off the existing world order.
BRICS
For decades, we have been talking about the benefits of global trade, but we should be very conscious that the BRICS nations - Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa are seeking to challenge and change the world order through a variety of means - political, economic, financial.
Of these, one of the most important, and most underestimated, is BRICS’ attempt to forge a new common currency that would compete with or supplant the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. The more alarming and is the shows of military power, sabre-rattling and intimidation, which is happening around the world.
This is combined with active efforts to “groom” politicians and exert influence in many ways, with donations, organization, or helping them into power on the one hand, or to work to destabilize and divide a country on the other, through propaganda. New technology is being used to spread: hate, fear, and demonization.
Of these, Russia and China have been the most active. India is clearly playing a role. The situation with Brazil has changed somewhat with the defeat of Bolsonara.
As Canadians, we should at least recognize that we are in a second “Cold War” and act accordingly. Security and the global situation has changed, and that we are in a heightened state of tension, conflict, and international subterfuge.
China is not the only country that has been identified by CSIS as interfering in Canada’s elections: so has Russia, and so has India.
Election Interference Starts Early: With Nominations
That election interference can take a number of different measures. It’s important to realize, off the top, that Canada’s elections themselves are generally well-regulated by Elections Canada, which was created over a century ago, in 1920 is was one of the world's first independent election agencies, because Canada was the first countries in the world to make the Commissioner independent from government.
The issue for Elections Canada - and Canadian Democracy - is that the prize of winning power has generally dwarfed whatever punishments there are for cheating. That “basic” cheating can include election overspending, misleading information, collusion with third party vested interests, both domestic and foreign.
There are also opportunities for election interference that aren’t covered by Elections Canada - all the organizing, fundraising and choosing candidates and leaders that happens in political parties, which actually determines who Canadians are going to vote for in the first place.
Aside from the votes cast by Canadians at the polls, and the fundraising, organization and messaging that goes into that, there is the separate, and equally important process by which parties choose both candidates and leaders.
There are often serious, and well-founded charges about candidates for nomination or Leadership being turfed or disqualified. Because of the lack of independent oversight - and since political parties in Canada are still private entities - the parties can be said to be marking their own homework.
Even the requirement of having paid memberships seems like a security measure - but it can be hijacked, by having a single person or organization “deliver” those memberships by buying all of them. In addition to fraudulent memberships and votes, those are also means illegal donations.
Brown v Poilievre: the Shocking Allegations of Indian Interference in the 2022 Conservative Leadership
There is now a truly shocking report from “The Bureau” which reports that CSIS is alleging that in the 2022 Conservative Party Leadership in particular was targeted for interference by the Indian Government.
The document suggests India also tried to elect the Conservative’s new leader.
“CSIS intelligence indicates that the Government of India has engaged in Foreign Interference activities related to the leadership race for a political party in Canada,” the October 2022 report says.
It continues, saying “recent CSIS reporting indicates that a proxy agent claims the Government of India is providing support to an elected Canadian politician’s campaign for the leadership of a political party in Canada, by securing party memberships for that campaign.”
The elected Canadian politician isn’t identified.
The document says “separate CSIS reporting” alleges an Indian Consulate in Canada “informed a different leadership candidate who was running for the leadership of the same political party that he ‘cannot attend any Indian community events or events hosted by the [Consulate].’”
The October 2022 Intelligence Assessment says this unidentified leadership candidate had previously taken a policy position contrary to India’s interests, which is why India tried to hinder his campaign in the diaspora.
“This example [of election interference] highlights the degree of influence some foreign states can have over diaspora communities, acting as gatekeepers between elected officials and community organizations,” the document says.
You can read the whole article here:
When the Convoy arrived in Ottawa, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole was suddenly deposed, resulting in an early and unexpected leadership race.
The initial Conservative leadership contestants were Pierre Poilievre, Patrick Brown, Jean Charest, Leslyn Lewis, Roman Baber and Scott Aitchison.
Of these, it looked like Brown was a front-runner. He was Mayor of Brampton, and though he had previously been ousted as the former leader of the Ontario PC party just months before an election, based on accusations of sexual impropriety. Those allegations unravelled, and Brown eventually settled a lawsuit with CTV with “no money changing hands.”
Patrick Brown had spent years travelling to India over a dozen times, even cultivating a relationship with Modi.
However, Brown was eliminated from the Conservative Party Leadership contest. The party alleged that Brown allowed more than 500 non-compliant membership sales.
"Correspondence on this issue from the candidate indicates both an unwillingness and an inability to provide the [chief returning officer] with information about the individuals who were accessing the portal to register memberships the [party] had found to be non-compliant," the decision says.
Brown also represented a community with a strong Sikh presence, and apparently had the habit of saying whatever was required to a given community, and saying the opposite to another community, if required.
In 2020, Brown criticized Modi - something that Tarek Fatah termed “an attack”, because Brown suggested that India’s laws were Islamophobic. The story was picked up by the New Delhi Times.
Because of Brown’s shifting stances, it’s hard to know where he stood with Modi. It’s hard to know which Conservative leadership candidate was in India’s bad books - but the idea that any foreign government is directly involved in trying to elect the leader of one of Canada’s major political parties is astonishing.
That India is allegedly paying for memberships in a Canadian political party’s leadership race is a degree of foreign interference that is off the charts - because those memberships also fill the party’s coffers.
It’s also the case, however, that the week that Trudeau raised the issue of a Canadian citizen being murdered, when you run through Hansard, the Conservative Party stayed “on message” and asked no questions about it at all.
Fortunately for Canadian, a public inquiry into Foreign interference has now been called -
On September 7, 2023 the Government of Canada established the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions. Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, a judge of the Quebec Court of Appeal, was appointed Commissioner.
The Commission will undertake its work in two phases. The first phase will focus on the interference that China, Russia and other foreign actors may have engaged in, and any impact it may have had on the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. The Commission will also examine and assess the flow of information within the federal government in relation to these issues, and evaluate the actions taken in response.
Unfortunately for Canadians, the inquiry will only cover the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, and not the allegations about India trying to pick the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada in 2022.
As long as there is a system, there will be people lying in wait to game it. When the prize is power, influence, control and riches, the drive to game it will be stronger, and the need to protect it even greater.
Whatever gets revealed, one of the major problems remains the role of money, especially “dark money” in politics.
There are a couple of legal and political solutions that, by making the process more open, it would be harder to hide malfeasance.
One relates to how easy it is to flow funds to provincially-registered shell companies in Canada. While Canada’s national government has committed to the OECD to create searchable public registries of beneficial ownership, the provinces have not gotten on board.
The reason for the registries is that Canada, like many other countries, is a tax haven where it’s easy for people to use shell companies to avoid paying taxes. The very wealthiest people in Canada tend to own huge numbers of companies, which they can use to spread their income around to avoid paying tax.
In many provinces in Canada, it is easier to start a corporation than get a library card. And aside from legal tax avoidance, it is known that these corporations are also used as fronts for criminal organizations to launder money from the proceeds of crime: drug trafficking, and human trafficking, including child sex trafficking.
The Globe and Mail ran an article in March, 2023, detailing how shell companies across Canada are being used by transnational criminal organizations to launder their profits.
Canada’s provincial business registries have been fertile ground for criminal activity to flourish. Every province needs to pass legislation requiring the creation of a free and publicly searchable database that reveals the beneficial owner of corporations registered in their juridiction.
This is also important because it’s been suggested that both governments of China and India have worked in Canada by putting pressure on criminals. Authorities use threats against family, or suggest criminal charges will be dropped if they collude. If the criminals already have registered corporations, it’s easier for them to take payments.
So, corporate transparency is one, and reducing political parties’ dependence on private donations is another.
The job of a politician is to serve all their constituents, and ultimately, a system that runs on private donations when we have record inequality means people without money are left out.
If we want political parties and politicians to have higher ethical standards, making them politicians and elections alike harder to buy would be a good start.
And that means having a more level playing field in politics - and some more transparency as well.
For decades in politics, there have been organizations created to promote political or economic views. Institutes, think tanks, foundations. Some are genuine, and some are fraudulent and exist solely to manipulate the public. Not to educate, inform or persuade the public, simply to manipulate it, often in the name of a political cause or party.
Similar disclosures about beneficial ownership and donors would help the public know just where people are really coming from.
Finally - reduce private influence with some public funding for political parties or their campaign. The U.S. solution is simple. If you agreed with the public financing of political parties, you checked YES in a box on your income tax form. If you didn’t want your taxes to go to political parties, you checked NO.
These measures don’t eliminate corruption, but they make it harder in the first place, and make it easier to catch and prosecute.
To the old saying “Politics is too important to be left to politicians” we should add, “Elections are too important to be left to the market”.
DFL