After over a year of hearings and work, the public inquiry tabled its final report on Tuesday
OTTAWA — While foreign interference played no role in the outcome of the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, the government’s slow response to the threat remains troubling.
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That’s the conclusion reached by Commissioner Marie-Josee Hogue in her final report for the foreign interference commission on Tuesday — the end result of a 16-month long inquiry into allegations that foreign actors meddled in Canadian elections.
In her voluminous report, Hogue concluded that Canada’s democratic institutions “remained robust in the face of attempted foreign interference,” but the government often took too long to act — burdened with inefficient and ineffective policy that opened up Canada as a target for bad players.
“I have found no evidence that the overall result of any election has been swung by a foreign actor and have identified only a small number of individual ridings where foreign interference may have had some impact,” Hogue wrote in her final report.
Canadians, she noted, first learned of the issue via the media instead of the government.
“This should not have been the case,” Hogue said, urging more government transparency.
Tuesday’s report comes more than a year since the inquiry was launched, as concerns over the potential for foreign interference linger over the current Liberal leadership race.
“I am confident that the Liberal Party would have formed the government with or without foreign interference in 2019 and 2021,” Hogue wrote in her report, an assertion she says is shared by the Conservative Party.
“Party representatives acknowledged to the commission that foreign interference did not keep the Conservative Party out of power.”
Although isolated attempts to “develop problematic relationships” with Parliamentarians occurred, they “remain marginal and so far, appear to have been ineffective,” the report read.
Hogue also saw no evidence of “traitors” in Parliament.
“While I saw evidence of some concerning behaviour, the evidence does not show any MPs plotting with foreign states against Canada’s interests,” Hogue said.
While Canada eventually responded to the threat, she wrote, government reaction initially proved ineffective.
“The government reacted slowly in the face of situations that required more rapid action,” the report read.
Throughout the commission’s work and 38 days of public hearings — 18 held in camera, concerns were raised about transparency, as over three-quarters of the documents analyzed by Hogue were classified.
“National security confidentiality did not affect my ability to seek to the truth, even if it presented real challenges in maintaining open and transparent processes and reports,” the report read.
Hogue’s report included 51 recommendations, with many capable of being enacted without legislation.
51 recommendations
In her final report Tuesday to the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference, Commissioner Marie-Josee Hogue outlined 51 recommendations, ranging from changes to Canada’s intelligence gathering to increasing maximum penalties for rules-breakers.
Among these include measures to ensure only Canadian citizens or permanent residents be permitted to vote in nomination and leadership contests — a matter at the forefront of the ongoing Liberal leadership race to select a successor to outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Parties are also being asked to maintain records of who voted in such contests, and keep those records for seven years.
As well, portions of the Canada Elections Act concerning bribery and intimidation should be expanded to nomination and leadership races, as should rules concerning fraud — and election fraud rules should be expanded to apply outside of elections, and outside of Canada.
Also included are calls to create a whole-of-government foreign interference strategy — clarifying the roles of different departments or ministries, developing a wide-ranging communications strategy to make public efforts to combat foreign meddling, and developing protocols to ensure parliamentarians are immediately advised of imminent threats.
The report also recommends establishing a “single, highly visible and easily accessible” foreign interference reporting “hotline,” with provisions for timely follow-up.
As well, Hogue recommends Public Safety Canada publicly adopt a “duty to warn” policy, applied to “credible threats of serious harm” against any person within Canada.
It also recommends the ministry adopt a “duty to inform” policy for campaigns targeting specific parliamentarians, permitting officials to engage with House of Commons or Senate security staff to advise Parliamentarians of the threat — while the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force should engage directly with parties and candidates.
As for parties, the report recommends that all party leaders be encouraged to obtain top secret clearance and parties maintain at least two security-cleared individuals capable of engaging with security and intelligence agencies.