OTTAWA: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday (Mar 6) he will appoint an independent special investigator to probe alleged election interference by China and also announced separate new probes into the suspected foreign meddling.
Canadian media have recently published detailed reports, citing anonymous intelligence sources, alleging schemes run by China to interfere in Canada’s elections in 2021 and 2019.
Trudeau has come under scrutiny ever since those media reports came out and a recent poll showed a majority of Canadians wanted him to respond more forcefully to alleged election interference by China.
“I will be appointing an independent special rapporteur, who will have a wide mandate and make expert recommendations on combating interference and strengthening our democracy,” Trudeau told reporters in a press briefing.
The rapporteur will be an “eminent Canadian” and will have power to make recommendations on foreign interference including a public inquiry, Trudeau said.
The prime minister also said he asked lawmakers in the parliament’s national security committee to launch an investigation into the alleged foreign election interference.
China denies all allegations of interference, saying it has no interest in meddling with Canada’s internal affairs.
Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), an intelligence watchdog, will investigate and report its findings to the parliament.
Trudeau added he will ask another oversight agency, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA), to review how national security agencies in Canada handled the foreign interference threat.
“Together, these measures will give us a better understanding of what happened in the last two elections, how foreign governments tried to interfere, how security agencies in Canada responded to the threat of interference and how the information flowed across government,” the prime minister said.
