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The Canadian flag flies on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Who’s meddling in Canada’s election?
Canada’s foreign interference watchdog is warning that China, India, and Russia plan on meddling in the country’s federal election. The contest, which launched last weekend, has already been marked by a handful of stories about past covert foreign interventions and threats of new ones.
This week, the Globe and Mailreported allegations that India interfered in 2022 to help get Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre elected, though he was not aware of the efforts. They also broke news that former Liberal Party leadership candidate and member of Parliament Chandra Arya was banned from running for leader and reelection because of alleged interference tied, once again, to India.
Now, Canada’s election interference monitoring group is warning that China, India, and Russia will try to interfere in the current election.
Poilievre also accused Liberal leader Mark Carney of being cozy with Beijing due to a $276 million loan Brookfield Asset Management secured from the Bank of China when Carney was Chair of Brookfield’s board. Carney rejected those accusations and, on Wednesday, said that Canada should not pursue greater economic ties with China but should prioritize other Asian nations and Europe.
Other Canadian critics have complained that the US is interfering, citing Donald Trump consigliere Elon Musk’s public statements about the country. But officials say this doesn’t meet the bar for foreign interference. Neither, apparently, do the actions of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith,who recently admitted to Breitbartthat she pressed Trump administration officials to delay tariffs to help elect the Conservatives over the Liberals, since Poilievre would be “the best person” for the White House to deal with given that he would be “very much in sync with the new direction in America.”The Kremlin
Are Russia and China trying to recruit disgruntled US federal employees?
A Naval Criminal Investigative Service document said US intelligence had determined that foreign officers had been instructed to look for possible targets on LinkedIn, TikTok, RedNote, and Reddit, focusing on employees who indicate that they are “open to work.”
Shooting the messenger. Some in the US intelligence community have reportedly raised these concerns internally, but Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said the ones flagging the issue are the problem. She said internal discussions at the CIA about this are a “threat” and questioned the loyalty of those involved.
“They’re exposing themselves essentially by making this indirect threat — using their propaganda arm through CNN that they've used over and over and over again — to reveal their hand, that their loyalty is not at all to America. ... not to the American people or the Constitution. It is to themselves,” Gabbard said.
Commissioner Justice Marie-Josee Hogue speaks to reporters after the release of the final report of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Jan. 28, 2025.
Foreign interference report delivers mixed bag
“There are legitimate concerns about parliamentarians potentially having problematic relationships with foreign officials, exercising poor judgment, behaving naively, and perhaps displaying questionable ethics,” writes Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who nonetheless found no treason or conspiracy.
She did find, however, that foreign interference, including the spread of mis- and disinformation, is a “major risk to Canadian democracy” that must be addressed. She writes that “information manipulation” is, in fact, “the single biggest risk to” democracy in Canada.
The report includes a slew of recommendations (51 in fact) for combating foreign interference, including better information-sharing protocols, smoother cooperation across orders of government, that party leaders get top-secret security clearance soon after becoming leader – something Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has refused to do – and tighter rules for leadership elections to limit votes to Canadian citizens and permanent residents.Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then-US President Donald Trumpshake hands before a meeting at Hyderabad House in Delhi, India, on Feb. 25, 2020.
India hopes Trump will lean its way
Last month, the Trudeau government expelled Indian diplomats after revealing allegations of assassination plots that Canadian officials linked to the highest levels of the Indian government. India denies the allegations and complains bitterly about a lack of security cooperation in dealing with what it sees as threats from Canadian Sikhs who are seeking an independent homeland in India.
On Wednesday, Canadian police confirmed that last month they arrested a man India calls a terrorist on gun charges.
The hostility between Canadian Sikhs and Hindus turned violent in the suburban Toronto community of Brampton earlier this month, leading to an angry denunciation from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India is now hoping Modi’s friend Trump will put Trudeau in his place and resolve the impasse in India’s favor.
But there is an active US prosecution of an Indian intelligence official over a plot to kill Sikh activists in both Canada and the United States. Trump is unlikely to turn a blind eye to that, says Jamie Tronnes, executive director of the Center for North American Prosperity and Security.
“Anyone who is looking for a foothold to do foreign interference that involves violence on citizens of a country on that country’s soil should be deterred strongly by the United States, particularly under Trump,” she says. “He is strong on national security, and he is not going to tolerate murder-for-hire plots on American soil.”
On the other hand, Trump tends to be motivated by transactional concerns, and India has a lot of leverage in the global chess match between China and the United States.