Interference's Internal Contradictions
On May's Presser
I think she’s telling the truth as far as the law goes, but I also think there’s a lot of people who are guilty of what Canadians would like the law to be.
Let’s lay some cards on the table, shall we? Elizabeth May, who has seen the unredacted report on foreign interference, gave a press conference today whose basic message was “Relax”. She said there were some small irregularities and a former MP is facing some serious problems but in general, the message was much ado about nothing. Which, in and of itself, isn’t worth a column.
What is worth a column is the broader game that’s happening in Ottawa. Two Conservative nomination candidates were disqualified in a safe Conservative seat in Calgary for vague reasons, and only one of them has talked about availing themselves of any form of review or said much of anything at all. There is a parlour game of text messages going on with bits and pieces of some form of … I was going to say the truth, but the honest answer is I have no idea what’s true and what’s speculation.
Everyone who has any connections anywhere has heard something, and there’s no way of knowing what names are real, what are educated guesses based on riding demographics and public statements, and what is racist horseshit being thrown around at non-white MPs. But what isn’t compatible is Elizabeth May’s press conference and the broad conversations that have been going on in private since the report.
And the only way to square it is that there’s a lot of things that fall between the lines of the illegality and immorality, or more bluntly will be seen to be illegal, even if the law doesn’t agree. And if that’s true, welcome to our nightmare.
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While we’re laying cards on the table, let’s have a few more. A spy agency that declared Han Dong as “suddenly and suspiciously” showing up as a potential candidate in Don Valley North is not infallible; not caring whether the suspiciously well funded community group that’s offering to bus all of its members to your nomination meeting has foreign ties is bad, even if not illegal; and the very nature of political parties in this country don’t make transparency easy.
I have no idea how many votes Jenna Sudds got in her first nomination, and I have no idea if she even faced any form of renomination fight in my seat of Kanata Carleton. The last time I remember knowing when a General election nomination was Marco Mendicino’s nomination for 2015, but that was because he was running against Mississauga Tory turned Liberal Eve Adams in Toronto. It was also a Sunday, if I recall correctly (editor’s note: it was a Sunday. How the fuck do you remember this), and in Toronto so some press went out to cover it.
The choice not to formalize this process, not to run these as primaries with voting centres set up and run by Elections Canada (a process non-existent in a comparable Westminster democracy), means that the parties get to set the rules. A party process doesn’t mandate fairness, nor should it. The ability to organize a highly vocal group in a seat doesn’t mean you’re the right choice to be its MP. You could try and legislate some things - all nomination dates must be publicly announced some number of months in advance, with a mandatory period between announcement and the membership role closing, say, but even then it’s either toothless because of what happens in a snap election scenario or the Government could nominate candidates right away and call a snap election so that parties literally can’t field enough candidates.
A proper US style primary is incompatible with Westminster democracy, because primary dates are set in law in a way that can’t be assured in a Westminster system. Unless we were to rewrite the constitution to enshrine the four year term and explicitly say that there is no mechanism to dissolve a Parliament prior to 33 days before the fixed date, it can’t happen. The only way to even begin to contemplate a formal primary process in a snap election scenario would be to say something like the fourth or fifth Monday after dissolution is Primary day, and then 6 weeks after that is general election day. It would be a massive advantage to the two major parties who have the money and resources to staff and spend for an 8-12 week campaign. It would also cost a fucking ton to have Elections Canada staff 343 seats worth of polling places like a general election.
The incumbent nomination system is messy, and it’s greasy, sure - a relic of a politics where decisions were made in back rooms. It’s one that is susceptible to manipulation, and I don’t just mean from foreign agents. If a first year Poli Sci student at UOttawa wanted to get the Conservative Party nomination in Ottawa Vanier right now I’m sure you could do that just by getting your friends in campus residence to sign up and show up to the meeting. We mostly hear about block-voting in nominations as a matter of ethnic groups voting together but plenty of people win these contests through sheer ability to get their friends and social contacts to show up. Oftentimes, the people that have the flashiest CVs and the highest profiles lose, because these contests aren’t about electability or the broader seat. It’s about winning the room.
If what Elizabeth May is saying is true, then there’s very little actual illegality being alleged in these documents. If that’s true, we can probably rule out candidates calling their city’s consulate of [insert foreign country] and explicitly saying “hey, I need 300 members to win this seat, wanna help me out?” But that doesn’t necessarily mean that some candidates didn’t win because they got 300 members of an ethnic group signed up. It also doesn’t mean that’s illegal or immoral to do so - there’s nothing wrong with a Chinese or Indian Canadian wanting to run and asking their friends to sign up to vote for them any more than it would be for a beer league hockey player to get the guys in his league to sign up for him.
Where it gets murky is foreign interference, obviously, but we cannot just start tossing around accusations whenever there’s an election where some non-white people vote. Acting like Chinese and Indian Canadians only vote, or only vote the way they do, because of the colour of their skin is incredibly racist. Plenty of internal political campaigns based around the crass idea that you can just run a minority and win minority voters have proven remarkably ineffective.
That said, yes, in most times, a nomination is all you need for victory. And yes, sometimes the easiest way to win it is to engage with existing community groups to help, but this isn’t necessarily nefarious. In 2016, there were two vacancies in Ottawa Vanier, one federal and one provincial. That entire fall was full of drinks events for prospective candidates and gatherings and hell, I sat through an OLP nomination debate run by the campus young liberal association one time despite not living in the riding. You have to win the room, and if the room’s gonna be full of University students then that’s who you pander to. If you’re trying to win a nomination in Mount Royal or Thornhill, you should probably have decent connections inside the Jewish community. The thing about ethnic groups - be it racial or religious - is they tend to have community groups that can, if wooed successfully, bring a lot of votes for not a lot of work.
Are there foreign countries that have figured this all out? I’m sure. Have they attempted to help candidates over the last decades? Almost assuredly. Is it the candidate’s fault if they unknowingly took an in-kind contribution from a community group that also gets money (directly or indirectly) from a foreign government? That’s for others to say. But the only way you can square Elizabeth May’s laissez faire with the kinds of texts everyone is passing along privately is if there’s been a lot of things that live between the lines. Can CSIS prove any of it actually crossed the line? No idea. Should we believe them, given their assessment of Han Dong as “suddenly and suspiciously” jumping up to the Don Valley was so out to lunch? Cautiously, sure. Should we start calling everyone traitors? No.
At some level we have allowed this. Public ignorance around the way our MPs have been selected has enabled this. I’ve never bothered joining the Kanata Carleton Liberal Association, I never bothered going to a meeting or even bothering to ask when one was. The fact that hundreds of votes can be enough to win a nomination is pathetic. But what I won’t abide is people blaming politicians for playing the game when they’ve never made any effort to make it a genuine contest. These things aren’t democratic but it’s our faults they’re not. If we wanted to we’d sign up and vote, and we don’t. You want to help stop China or India or whoever the fuck else influencing who your next candidate is? Become a member and help make it so that the meeting isn’t swayed by whether a couple of busloads from a community group show up.
Have MPs committed treason? I don’t know, and nobody who does know has said anything. Poilievre won’t get the clearance to look, presumably because he’s quite aware that there’s much less there that’s politically juicy than he wants there to be. He looks like an idiot, because clearly you can see the intelligence and talk about it - hell, May saw it and this is the most she’s been listened to in years.
(This nonsense that Poilievre didn’t go through with his run for the Tory leadership in 2020 because of some scandal that is now the reason he won’t get a security clearance is bullshit, by the way. The reason he didn’t run is that he was going to lose. Private polling I saw at the time in late 2019 had him sub-5%, and without a path. That’s why he ended that campaign.)
It’s probably comforting to think that we’ve been betrayed, because it gives all of us some enemy to blame for our current malaise. It is easier to blame China/India/Iran/whoever else for politicians we dislike and don’t respect, and the conspiracist nonsense is a distraction. The Conservatives are not going to the right on trans rights because of foreign interference and the Liberals aren’t pro climate action because of the globalist WEF, they hold the positions they do because that’s where their voters are.
Foreign interference is a real problem. There are probably lots of people who have lived in between the lines to win their nominations. And those lines should be clarified and those gaps closed. But the panic over foreign interference seems to be a limp vessel, for a simple reason; it’s a hell of a lot easier to say that Senior Politicians are compromised by foreign governments than to accept our current discontent is our own fault.
And us stepping up and acknowledging that is the best way to move forward.
Excellent analysis. I would agree that this whole topic appears to become more into focus. Last year with Fife and Cooper torqued leaks we saw little incomplete vignettes that had been carefully selected to make the current government look bad. Now we are getting a more complete and balanced insight of what is really going on.
It is probably not a surprise that with the current lack of rules around nominations there is ample opportunity for foreign entities to assist a particular candidate with or without the candidate’s knowledge or participation. I don’t know if we are seeing this right now with the CPC nominations throughout the country, I get more the impression that this is Poilievre/Byrne, and perhaps Harper, shaping the roster of candidates to their liking (not too many independent thinkers, please).
It is a different story with leadership races. There is so much smoke around Poilievre leadership race that there must be multiple fires. First there is Mike Roman of the IDU and MAGA doing stuff in Ottawa during the convoy (why would an American be interested in a protest in Canada?), which led to O’Toole’s departure as leader. Then there is the involvement of India in the membership sign-ups. Followed by the disqualification of Patrick Brown with the Poilievre campaign paying the legal bills of the accuser. The whole thing smells.
I have no doubt that Poilievre is neck deep in foreign interference when it comes to his own leadership campaign. It is also the only plausible explanation why he does not want to get a classified briefing. I don’t know if this is all going to come out before the next election, but if it does, it would certainly be poetic justice in my opinion.
So, what is left? A bunch of MPs and Senators that have been too close with foreign entities. Documented by a spy agency that has trouble providing clear guidance on what is a hard fact and what is merely a rumour. Not terribly helpful and certainly not something for the PM to get excited about.
Finally, talking about this spy agency, it has been one year since the unauthorized leaks and the leaker or leakers have still not been caught. Is our spy agency really that incompetent it cannot find the culprits? Or is there another reason?
"in general, the message was much ado about nothing."
I don't know what you listened to, but I listened to the entire hour of May's presser and that was not the conclusion I came to. What she stated was "there is no list of MPs" - this alleged list that has been the constant topic in the press and in Parliament - but she certainly did go on to say there are serious issues about foreign meddling and not just at the federal level. She is bound by her oath to not reveal state secrets but she did mention a host of issues from politicians accepting state-sponsored travel to bussing in voters for leadership races and the influence of corporations, foreign and domestic. What she did share is none of the three opposition leaders from the Bloc, the NDP and the CPC, have gotten the clearance to read the report and none of them have read the report they keep shouting about in Parliament. "Release the names!" they shout. Well she read the report and there is no list of names. MAYBE THEY SHOULD SHUT THE FUCK UP AND READ THE REPORT FIRST. From there, she asks they behave like adults and not partisan hacks to deal with a very serious issue.
It is truly disturbing that for the last week, politicians who haven't read a report have been yelling about a list of MPs that doesn't exist and we only found out there is no list from the one person who read the report. This is infuriating. How much time have they wasted playing stupid partisan games at the expense of our democracy.
In any case, to start the column with May is meh and leap into the insidious goings on in nomination races and speculations these are foreign interference seems like sausage making to me in the absence of information. But we definitely need more transparency about our political parties and the goings on because there is plenty of stink. We do know the CPC's 2022 leadership race was interfered with by Modi because CSIS released this intel in 2022. This becomes even more alarming when you see Poilievre and his caucus - and conservative pundits in newspapers - defending Modi after the assassination on Canadian soil by Indian agents. US intelligence confirmed Modi had sent hit squads to North America to take out specific individuals. Poilievre's entire caucus - except for one MP - did not show up for an emergency debate on Modi's hit. That stinks to high heaven. After the hit, Poilievre stated that he will "repair relations with India" and accused Trudeau of ruining it by making accusations about hit squads. Wtf?
Our political leaders are clowns at this point. Poilievre - an autocrat with no plan except power - is the worst of them, with Singh not far behind. Trudeau is the reactionary clown who finds himself continuously having to fend off Poilievre, and his caucus of Marjorie Taylor Greenes. Parliament is a shit show, while we out here cope with very serious problems from affordability to climate change.
My expectation of our political leaders is get the frickin security clearance and read the report. IT'S THEIR OBLIGATION. From there we need transparency about foreign influence on our MPs and Senators - and corporations - and the agreements being signed with foreign countries like China and India. The Asia-Pacific foundation, for example, is basically an agency of China. The FIPA agreement signed by Harper in 2012 which favours China and erodes our sovereignty, should be scrapped. Get rid of it. He never got the OK from Canadians to do it and was overwhelmingly criticized even by conservatives like Diane Francis. Harper sucked up to China way more than naive Trudeau ever did but you'd never know the CPC engineered FIPA the way they talk about China today. See Michael Chong who supported FIPA now feigning outrage. The difference between the Liberals and Conservatives on China and other dictatorships is Liberals pretended they are harmless and Conservatives (reform cons) essentially admire them. But the root of the problem is western corporations pushed governments to embrace dictatorships in the 80s so they could offshore manufacturing and lower costs. This increased our dependency on them and created a situation where we compromised, turned a blind eye, etc. If we care about roots of problems, start there. Capitalism pushed western countries to accept dictatorships and the politicians who work for them went along with it.
May didn't get into the foreign trolls flooding social media who work in state troll farms in India, China and Russia but these certainly exist with their fake Canadian flags and handles like "Concerned Canadian" who emphatically is not. And even the domestic ones who immigrated here and spend their time promoting Putin propaganda like "Kat Kanada", an insidious full-time troll living in Nanaimo. How she got into this country is what I'd like to know. Every Russian troll is shilling for Poilievre because Poilievre is a Brexiteer who admires European far right parties who want the EU broken up, and who is very likely to erode funding for Ukraine. Putin has infiltrated the far right in Europe. He wants all western nations divided.