Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole claims that China’s foreign interference in the last election cost her party seats. But some media and national security experts are rejecting it, arguing that it is difficult to conclusively prove interference and that it is unlikely that any intervention has been so decisive.
O’Toole commented on the influence of the state of China during an interview with O’Toole CBC’s The House, which aired on Saturday. He told host Chris Hall that while the level of interference he describes would not have changed the overall election result, it had an effect on several key areas, including the continental lowlands of BC and some districts of BC. Toronto.
When asked for evidence that the interference was decisive, O’Toole cited his party’s internal review of the election, but did not share further details. Conservatives did not respond to a request for comment on O’Toole’s allegations or provide additional evidence to support the claim.
Earlier this month, the party he told the Politico press I had nothing to add on the subject.
O’Toole spoke specifically about the WeChat platform, a messaging and social networking application developed by Chinese multinational Tencent. He said misinformation about the Conservatives spread to the platform and turned many voters against the Conservatives.
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Part of that was a “suppression of voters,” he said. “People were worried about appearing on a voter list as a voter if a Conservative won.”
O’Toole said his campaign had been in contact with the CSIS before and during the campaign on the issue of interference and that he had asked the national intelligence agency to make public what they knew.
CSIS declined to comment on the story, citing a statement sent to CBC News earlier this month. In this, a spokesman for the agency pointed to a working group set up to monitor interference, which has not made any public announcements related to the elections. He threshold because an announcement is whether there is a substantial threat to “free and fair elections,” according to national security policy.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa did not respond to a request for comment. Asked in December about his Huawei-related activities, Ambassador Cong Peiwu denied that China was involved in espionage.
“China, we don’t do this kind of thing, you know, espionage or electronic monitoring. It’s the United States that’s been doing this kind of thing for the last few decades,” he said.
There is no evidence of an influential and decisive campaign: report
O’Toole stressed that the level of interference he describes would not have changed the overall outcome of the election. But he told Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith in a podcast it had been decisive in up to nine montages. Former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu, for example, has argued that misinformation played a role in his loss.
O’Toole also said he had not been more open about it because he believed the CSIS would alert the public and did not want it to look like “sour grapes”.
“We should demand a better defense against this interference in the next federal election.”
Former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu rises during the question period in the House of Commons in April 2021. He said misinformation played an important role in losing his seat. (Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press)
But some experts are skeptical that the interference will be as coordinated and decisive as O’Toole suggests. The Media Ecosystem Observatory, a joint project between McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy and the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, published a report in March on the subject of misinformation in 2021.
The report noted that there was misinformation against conservatives spreading on China-based social media platforms, such as a statement that conservatives would sever diplomatic ties with China if elected.
But Aengus Bridgman, director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory, said his organization had found no evidence of a coordinated and influential campaign.
“May be [the Conservatives] having data pointing to something very crucial that they found in internal surveys, “he said.” But I’m surprised. “
He said that while there was clear misinformation against conservatives on Chinese-language social media channels, his group had found no evidence of systematic attempts to amplify and spread those messages.
Bridgman said his work did not rule out the idea that the interference could have had an effect on the margins, but said it was unlikely to have been the factor that tipped eight or nine constituencies against the Conservatives.
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“I don’t mean that it’s completely impossible, but I think we need to have a limit for testing,” he said.
Bridgman said his group had generally found minimal evidence of foreign interference. He also urged Canadians not to automatically distrust people who receive their news from other countries or in different languages.
Conclusive evidence of elusive interference: expert
Akshay Singh, an international policy and security scholar and non-resident researcher at the International Policy Council, said it can be difficult to establish conclusively whether interference occurred, in part because Canada does not have the same legislative framework as a country. like the United States.
“Many times there is a lot of smoke and there are not enough signs of fire,” he said.
The difficulty in proving interference may also arise in part because it is difficult to distinguish between genuine beliefs and the direction of an external government, Singh noted.
“It is not always necessary to give direction to specific groups, whether you are a foreign government, to vote in a specific way or not. Because some of these groups implicitly understand what is the interest of this country or not and that of its own group. interests or not, “he said.
Singh said China’s “single front” system, a political strategy for influencing Chinese communities around the world, is a key example of this dynamic.
“There is no need for leadership in these spaces, these groups, to decide proactively [support China’s interests]. And as such, it can be very difficult to show that there is foreign interference because there is no clandestine or misleading direction. “