By Liz Rowley
On January 28, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue released the final report on foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. She concluded that the outcomes of the elections were not in doubt and that there is no evidence of “traitors” in Parliament, which was the claim in the report of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) in June.
She also wrote that the NSICOP report didn’t stand up to rigorous examination on other charges, conclusions and evidence.
Hogue’s conclusion about the election outcomes echoed the statements made by the Chief Electoral Officer to Parliament in June 2022, and to the media several times after as the issue was blown up. It was his job to know, and as has just been demonstrated, he did know. But it was not the answer some were looking for.
Hogue’s second main conclusion was that “it is no exaggeration to say that at this juncture, information manipulation (whether foreign or not) poses the single biggest risk to our democracy … This includes misinformation and disinformation in media and social networks. It is an existential threat.” Hogue said disinformation “is noxious, and it is powerful. It poses a major risk to Canadian democracy. If we do not find ways of addressing it, misinformation and disinformation have the ability to distort our discourse, change our views and shape our society.”
This is an apt description of the campaign that followed.
While the most notable advocate of the “traitors” claim in the NSICOP report was NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, it was the Conservative Party and Canada’s security services that created the bogus case that the election results in 2019 and 2021 were altered by China through its influence on Chinese Canadian voters and Members of Parliament. This included the baseless charge that Liberal MP Han Dong had told Chinese Embassy officials not to release the “Two Michaels” imprisoned for spying in China – a charge dismissed by the Hogue report.
The Liberal Party responded to the accusation by ejecting MP Han Dong from the Liberal caucus and forcing him to sit as an independent.
This campaign of misinformation and disinformation began more than four years ago, when media across Canada began to report that members of the Security Services were leaking secret information about foreign interference in elections, but that it was being covered up by bureaucrats and government personnel. The “leakers” were never identified, and the leaks were never verified, but the frequency reports suggested there was substance to them. Responses from government sources were taken to be cover-ups and the Tories campaigned on them with that message, along with other right-wing politicians and organizations.
The Chinese Canadian community was the target of ugly attacks including physical assaults and beatings on individuals in cities across the country.
Democracy and labour rights were also targets, as it became increasingly clear that the campaign had nothing to do with China, but was organized by right-wing forces such as the Freedom Convoy and sections of the police and military, as well as some very wealthy financiers with links to the Conservative Party, the People’s Party, the US Republican Party and far-right parties and movements outside North America.
Anti-communism is a key feature of this movement, as evidenced by Pierre Poilievre’s increasing references to Liberal policies as “socialist.” In social media posts, he’s lumped fascism, communism and socialism together and called fascism a “socialist ideology” when it is the mortal enemy of socialism and of working people.
For working people across the country, this is dangerous stuff indeed. Justice Marie-Josée Hogue has issued a warning that needs to be widely heard and acted on by the labour and democratic movements and all those opposed to reaction and fascism.
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