The winner and runner-up in Steveston-Richmond East during the 2021 federal election were both in the same committee meeting room Friday at the House of Commons.
Conservative Kenny Chiu, who represented the riding from 2019 to 2021, travelled to Ottawa to appear as a witness before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, which counts his successor, Liberal Parm Bains, as a member.
Chiu lost in a race marred by a disinformation campaign on WeChat and in Chinese state media that falsely claimed his private member’s bill for a U.S.-style registry of foreign agents would make Chinese-Canadians second-class citizens. In February, The Globe and Mail quoted from a leaked report by Canada’s spy agency that said Chinese diplomat Tong Xiaoling meddled in favour of Bains.
“I’ve been mischaracterized as somebody who is anti-Chinese, and even hating Chinese, that I must not be allowed to be re-elected, myself and also then-Conservative leader, Erin O’Toole,” Chiu testified to the committee studying Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interference in federal elections. O’Toole, coincidentally, had just announced he would leave politics at the end of the spring session of Parliament.
Bloc Quebecois member Rene Villemure (Trois Rivieres) asked Chiu if he believed Bains had an advantage.
“Yes, that he is the beneficiary of the disinformation,” Chiu answered.
“Do you believe that it’s a conflict of interest that your opponent is here today?” Villemure asked.
Replied Chiu: “That is a question that I think it’s better answered by my opponent, who is sitting here in the meeting.”
Last September, a year after the election, Chiu candidly told a reporter that Bains was a “puppet these pro-CCP elements are using now.” He was reacting to a video that showed Bains addressing supporters of the Chinese Canadians Goto Vote Association in Steveston’s Garry Point Park before election day. Among them were two senior members of local organizations connected to the CCP’s United Front propaganda and influence program.
Bains, through a spokesperson, said he did not know the men.
When he had the floor, Bains did not ask Chiu a question. He indirectly addressed the 2021 election controversy in the preamble to a question for a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) officer about the international extent of foreign interference operations.
“As candidates, we’re all victims of misinformation and disinformation when we’re in an election,” Bains said. “There were campaigns against me that I was going to legalize hard drugs, and things of that nature.”
Bains pointed to his riding’s ethnic diversity, which not only includes immigrants from Mainland China, but Hong Kong, Philippines and South Asian countries.
“We actually have a five-kilometre corridor in the city. It’s called the Highway to Heaven, and it’s every religious institution, about 28 of them, all along this corridor,” Bains said. “So it’s a very, very mixed community that I’ve lived in my whole life.”
Later in the meeting, Liberal Greg Fergus (Hull-Aylmer), who is also parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, asked Chiu whether the real issue was Richmond voters preferring a left-leaning government instead of the Conservative Party.
Chiu refuted Fergus by pointing to a 3,070-vote drop in overall turnout and 4,412 fewer Conservative voters as evidence of passive voter suppression.
“My opponent, the one who actually took the riding, had increased the support by a mere 1,800 votes. That is a significant discrepancy,” Chiu said. “In other words, there are many Conservative supporters who actually stayed at home.”
Meanwhile, Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former chief of the CSIS Asia-Pacific unit, told the committee that successive Canadian governments, for more than 30 years, were warned of Chinese government infiltration and each chose to ignore the threat.
“Every government took decisions that are questionable about China and can only be explained by interference exercises from within,” Juneau-Katsuya testified. “Every government let their decision process [be] manipulated by two reasons: Partisanship and agents of influence succeeding in controlling the message. Every prime minister and-or their staff chose to ignore the seriousness of the threat. Not only the sitting government has been compromised, but all political parties also have been compromised at one point or another. The inaction of the federal government led to attack on many municipal and provincial governments. Ultimately, every government has been part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
Juneau-Katsuya suggested banning foreign citizens from nominating candidates and requiring every candidate to sign a sworn declaration that they are not acting on behalf of a foreign government or entity.
“This form will clearly warn of the possible criminal procedures in case of intentional deception,” he said. “Similar process must be established for all political staff and volunteers during the hiring process.”