VANCOUVER – British Columbia Prime Minister David Eby says he is “very concerned” about allegations of Chinese interference in last year’s Vancouver municipal elections and has requested a briefing from Canada’s intelligence agency.
Eby said Friday that Canadians deserved a “thorough and independent investigation” into the claims reported in the balloon and mail newspaper this week that the Chinese consulate in Vancouver meddled in municipal polls by using diaspora community groups and grooming certain candidates.
The prime minister said he had requested a “full information” from Canada’s Security Intelligence Service but had not yet received it.
The newspaper report cites CSIS documents, but Eby said he was not in a position to comment on its credibility.
The report prompted Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim to say Thursday that he was disgusted by her “innuendos” and would not be a part of the conversation if he were Caucasian.
Eby said most of the tools to combat international interference were in federal hands, but he needed to know if there was any way for BC to “close the loopholes.”
He said that, for example, Elections BC had already come up with recommendations to combat misinformation.
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“We’re always looking for ways to make sure our elections are free and fair,” Eby said at a news conference in Prince Rupert, in northwestern British Columbia.
This week’s newspaper report says the CSIS documents did not name the consulate’s favorite Vancouver mayoral and council candidates, but China’s diplomats wanted the incumbent Kennedy Stewart to lose.
Sim, Vancouver’s first mayor of Chinese descent, defeated Stewart by more than 36,000 votes.
British Columbia Prime Minister David Eby says he is “very concerned” about allegations of Chinese interference in last year’s Vancouver municipal elections and has requested a briefing from Canada’s intelligence agency. #cdnpoli
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced the impact of the allegations on Sim, saying “small bits of uncorroborated and unverified information” were being amplified.
Trudeau said Friday that while threats of foreign interference must be taken seriously, Canadians must also be “very, very careful” about such speech, which could undermine the foundations of democratic institutions.
“The impact on people who choose to step up and serve their communities, like Ken Sim, being attacked by leaked, sketchy allegations that he can’t even respond to, is kind of an underscore of the delicacy of these issues and how they should be treated with real seriousness,” he said in Guelph, Ontario.
Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, who visited Vancouver on Friday, said the latest report indicated the Canadian intelligence community had lost confidence in Trudeau and his ability to deal with potential foreign interference.
“There is an open revolt against the prime minister,” Poilievre said of the CSIS leaks. “I think our intelligence community is very concerned about what the prime minister is covering up and keeping secret. He is putting his own partisan interest before our national interest.”
Poilievre also said that Canada’s exclusion from alliances such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, between Australia, India, Japan and the United States, indicated that Trudeau had also lost the trust of traditional allies.
Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Institute for Science, Society and Politics, said there are a number of reasons why a foreign government might want to influence municipal politics.
McCuaig-Johnston, an outspoken critic of Beijing, said that while municipal governments do not dictate foreign policy, they are instrumental in creating official relations between sister cities.
Those sister city agreements often involve programs that facilitate cultural and business ties between cities, which would then lead to potential “preferential business and trade connections.”
There is also the possibility of gaining favor with a city politician who then advances to other levels of government, McCuaig-Johnston said.
“Municipal politicians sometimes go to the … provincial or federal level,” he said. “So it’s worth investing efforts to build close, dependent relationships with them early on.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on March 17, 2023.