What have we actually learned about foreign election interference?

Speaker 1: You are listening to a Frequency podcast network production.

Jordan: Where’s the line between election influence and election interference? What did our prime minister know and when and what did he do about it? Our Canada’s elections safe and secure. How safe. How secure, exactly? These are all huge questions. Here’s one more. How much should we be told about all of that if telling us could compromise our efforts to prevent that interference or harm the ability of our intelligence services to operate in general? This is the paradox we’ve been confronting over the past few weeks. As an inquiry into foreign election interference has attempted to walk a tightrope between public transparency and effective intelligence gathering. The penultimate example of that came on Wednesday afternoon when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attempted to finesse both sides of the equation.

CLIP: So would you say that the content of this particular, these notes, these briefing notes, accurately conveys what you were told during that briefing?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Not particularly.

Jordan: Today, the inquiry will conclude with the Director of CSIS a who may well recall those conversations differently than the Prime Minister. If that happens, it will raise even more serious questions about who exactly is telling Canadians the truth and how much of it, no matter what happens though, the biggest question remains: we now know that foreign governments are trying to interfere in our elections in increasingly brazen ways. So what are we doing about it? I am Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Laura Stephenson is a professor of political science at Western University and the co-director of the consortium on electoral democracy. Hey Laura. Hi there. I have to ask you, as somebody who has paid attention to the scandal and this inquiry, I want to know what the questions that you had going into it were. What were you hoping you’d learn from this inquiry?

Laura Stephenson: Yeah, there’s a number of aspects that were kind of swimming around in my mind, and most importantly, I think it was actually the nature of the interference that I was curious about. I’d been paying a lot of attention to obviously the previous information that had come out and the directives about it not actually affecting the electoral outcome. Which parties had been affected or which candidates had been targeted, I guess more directly, but understanding a little bit more about the actual processes. What are the levers that foreign bodies are using to try and impact our elections and in turn our democracy? That was what I was most interested in. Of course, kind of focusing on how do we avoid this, right? How do we protect ourselves against this?

Jordan: And we’ll talk about the details in a minute, but we often speak on this podcast about transparency from government. So I’ll just ask you for your overall impression. Did your questions get answered in this process?

Laura Stephenson: Yes and no. I think this is an interesting point. We all want transparency. We all want to know what’s going on, how, why, how is this impacting things? And especially when it comes to our elections. I think this is the fundamentally important thing that we’re dealing with. And I’ve done work with Elections Canada and I know how much effort they put into upholding the integrity of our electoral process. And yet what is so fascinating about what has come out of these hearings is how that interest is kind of at odds with our intelligence agencies and how they might have these competing situations where as the public hearing, oh, the electoral outcome wasn’t affected is one thing, but we need to be able to trust that it’s a fundamental part of democracy and for any of these intelligence agencies to share their information or for their information once shared to be made public. If that puts at risk other elements of Canadian democracy or the Canadian state, this is uncharted territory. Right?

Jordan: Well, let’s talk about some of the details then, and maybe before we get to Prime Minister Trudeau’s testimony, I’ll follow up on your opening statement, which is just what did we learn about what that attempt to interfere or those attempts to interfere look like on the ground?

Laura Stephenson: What I have not heard is that there’s anything like what we might’ve seen in old movies. There’s no ballot stuffing. There’s no interference with the actual mechanisms of elections. Instead, what I’ve heard anyways, from the testimony and my reading of them, it was very fascinating to hear that there could have been busloads of international students that were going to nomination contests to cast support for individuals that were seen as China friendly. I’ll say that is the best term. But what is really interesting about that is that there actually nothing to prevent these people from doing that. There’s nothing in the rules of the nomination contest to say that the individuals weren’t allowed to be there. Now, that it was a concerted effort by a foreign body. That’s the problem.

Jordan: What do we know about that? Were they threatened into doing it? Were they coerced? Were they paid? Have we learned anything about how that happened in the course of this inquiry?

Laura Stephenson: Yeah, those are open questions to me. Is it suspicious? Yes, it may be suspicious, but is it known? How do we know know know that it in fact was foreign interference. I mean, that would take a lot of digging. What we did hear from different instances was that there were pressures going through different types of media sources and social media campaigns and things like that that would be pressuring diaspora communities into casting ballots. So these would be people who are eligible to vote. So these are Canadian citizens who would be allowed to make up their mind to vote however they chose. We don’t mandate how someone can make up their mind and they were being pressured by outside actors in ways to disadvantage certain candidates. We also heard there was misinformation that was appearing on social media that was asked to be taken down about Trudeau. And we do know that there have been attempts made to kind of regulate the kind of electoral information that gets put out there. We care about what would be called third party advertising, so non-party advertising. That’s been something that’s been a concern for a long time. So it makes sense that that’s gone over into the social media world. But at the same time, when it’s like unofficial channels, it would be the same as asking anybody on your block, Hey, what influenced your vote? Of course we don’t know is coercion, was there threats involved? All these things, which of could take it into a different level, but it’s kind of the amazing, I guess, vulnerability of the individual citizen decision that I think is what I take away the most from what I’ve been hearing.

Jordan: And it’s a question I guess of where that line is between you making up your own mind based on everything you’ve heard and seen, which for sure could include stuff from people who are obviously trying to influence your vote. And the other side of that line, which is where we talk about coercion and threats or bribery or whatever, but if you’re not talking to the people who cast that ballot, I don’t know how you would find that out.

Laura Stephenson: I think that you’ve kind of nailed it. How do we figure out what’s going on here? And then some of the other testimony that came out gave me even more pause because the question would be, well, why don’t we tell people what’s going on? Why don’t we try to correct misinformation? It’s like the disclaimers that we see on X versus things that get posted. But then what I was hearing people say is that actually then we’re putting our intelligence gathering at risk, so to make public what we are hearing, sometimes it’s not even substantiated, it’s not clear. There’s tons of evidence. It’s just intel. So the processes that we would take to try and correct that in terms of pursuing free and fair elections may in fact be hindered by where the intel’s coming from and what happens when you share that. Yeah, it’s a really complex environment that we are now trying to navigate and figure out how do we maintain the integrity of our elections as well as the integrity of our state. I’ll call it the bigger picture in the kind of international world. And also of course, whose interests get played out when. And so how do the political parties themselves play in and actually do we have transparency, independence and nonpartisanship going on as we are trying to navigate what’s happening where

Jordan: Over the course of the inquiry, what did we learn about how this information was handled and communicated to senior political staff or even the Prime minister and then where those decisions were made to inform the public or mostly to not inform the public?

Laura Stephenson: I’d have to say I need a better spreadsheet to keep track of every piece of information because it appears that some things were communicated and some weren’t. Most went to not the minister and then was maybe filtered up in some cases. And a lot of the decisions were made at the level of did this affect the outcome of the election or is this having concrete effects that they would have to push forward? And how credible is this information if we make it public? That’s a big thing. And so how much can we trust it? It was really fascinating to hear how the party dealt with the idea that potentially one of the nomination contests had been compromised. How do they figure out what to do? In which case, this is not immediately clear, but then we have O’Toole saying up to nine seats were lost because of this.

Jordan: Where would he get that kind of information from or where does he say he got it?

Laura Stephenson: Right. I mean, all of the parties do a lot of polling and on the ground work to try and figure out where they think they’re going to get seats. So likely what happened is they found nine seats, they thought they were going to win. And in those nine seats, this is not at the level of counting ballots, right? This isn’t a situation of how many hanging chads were there, what do we have to figure out instead? There was pressure that, and we think that pressure caused us to lose these many seats. But here’s the thing, unless you get into the mind of those voters, you don’t know.

Jordan: I guess one of the reasons I’m talking to you right now, because this is so confusing to wrap my head around and try to come to a determination of how much I trust the government who needs to win the next election to tell me what’s going on behind the scenes in terms of people trying to influence that very election.

Laura Stephenson: I mean, that’s a really key point I’ve been paying a lot attention to. What did Trudeau say he did and did not care about? Carina Gould also had some of her statements. What were they paying attention to and not paying attention to, and what did they feel it was their place to weigh in on and not, and to be fair, a lot of their information they received after the election, and this is where it gets tricky. I mean, I think that we want to have independent and nonpartisan bodies, and I would say Canada’s really lucky with the body like Elections Canada, who does oversee things in a very non-partisan way. But who makes the determination of whether something is in the foreign security realm, if it’s in the electoral integrity realm? That’s a really tricky question. And I mean, I would trust Elections Canada, I have to be honest, to be a non-partisan look, but I’m guessing they don’t have the same clearance to talk about foreign affairs that these other ministers do. And so maybe that’s a way forward to better integrate these offices

Jordan: To have it coming from an official non-partisan office.

Laura Stephenson: Yeah, I mean we saw that in previous things that weren’t about foreign interference, but they were more domestic, like the Robocall scandal and stuff like that. We have a lot of rules in place domestically to make sure all of our political actors are behaving correctly. So it’s just a question of maybe should those same offices also be playing a role here? And sometimes I have to be honest, it’s unclear to me that there was any clear partisan bias. I haven’t heard anything that really raised the alarm bells for me. Maybe it would if I looked even in greater detail, but regardless of whether something inappropriate occurred or didn’t, this point of transparency and of the citizen trust in the electoral process is so fundamentally important that even the impression that maybe foreign actors were allowed to continue with their behaviours because of partisan preferences or incentives that is very damning for the strength of Canadian democracy.

Jordan: You mentioned the Prime Minister. He was the quote headliner this week as the inquiry is almost wrapped up. What did you take away from how he communicated with Canadians, but also I guess with the inquirers about what he decided to Canadians and not tell Canadians? And what impression as somebody who cares about the health of our democracy and our elections, what impression did you take from that?

Laura Stephenson: So the impression that I took was that he prioritized our intelligence gathering efforts in the sense that he didn’t push further to go on the side of transparency about the electoral process. He was saying, since we don’t know for sure, I think he said that a number of times, this is intel, it’s not evidence. And so do we put our intelligence gathering kind of at risk for intel rather than hard facts. And so I think his choice came down on the side of if it wasn’t fully substantiated and I could point to the wrongdoing, then we proceeded

Jordan: Over the past few weeks, what have you taken away from the testimony about not the partisan side of who told the public what and when, but about the health of our electoral process?

Laura Stephenson: So this is the interesting part of it. Our electoral process as in the way we cast ballots, they get counted, et cetera. I think that is strong. The question, I mean, as we outlined just a couple of minutes ago, is about what are the pressures being applied on individuals who are working through what would appear to be legal channels, but with these outside influences, what can we even do about that? And I’m not sure what the answer is exactly on this because the media I listen to or the things I read or the opinions that I take, all of these things, there’s just everyone’s mind when it comes to voting and I study voting behaviour, it’s a black box. I make a good guess, but that’s all I can do. And everyone has their own specific combination of factors and how do you prevent these kinds of other influences is a real head scratcher. And certainly, I will say that it ties in with a lot of the great research that’s being done on misinformation and disinformation, and I do know that that might be one way to move forward was just more and more information that is able to be provided about what are the candidate stances, et cetera. But I was even trying to think, okay, if there’s intel and it says that a candidate is being targeted and this is the kind of information campaign that goes forward, that candidate is now going to be put in a difficult situation, right? Because on the one hand you could say, okay, can you just discount that information and correct it? Right? You can imagine someone doing that. On the other hand, that candidate wants to win, and so they have an incentive from whatever party to be really open about what’s happening to them. If you can say, alright, CSIS is going to talk to you and they’re going to tell you that you can’t tell anyone where you’re getting your intel from, but maybe this is what you should do in your campaign. Right? Yeah. There’s a lot of interesting elements to it that I am very fascinated to hear the next part of the inquiry, which I think they’re going to be trying to tackle, what can be done

Jordan: There is one more person, the director of CSIS to testify today on Friday. What are you looking for from that testimony and what happens if he goes out there and just contradicts everything the Prime Minister just said, does this become a huge mess?

Laura Stephenson: Well, it’s not a easy tidy thing right now. It’s kind of a mess.

Jordan: Yes, a bigger mess.

Laura Stephenson: Yeah. I think it would be a huge mess if that was to come up because I think then any faith in our government operating in a nonpartisan way would go out the window. So we should pay close attention to that. Also, which guidelines were followed. I think that’s something that is important because sometimes it’s the definitions of what counts as interference and what is the dividing line between giving people information and not giving people information. I think those are things that we should be paying close attention to. What does someone think is worthy of communicating with others in different offices and what isn’t,

Jordan: Right? And the difference between opinions that we’re sharing possibly to influence somebody and more direct things like bringing people in, chartering buses, making payments, et cetera.

Laura Stephenson: Exactly. I mean, I don’t know how much they would be ever willing to share about every piece of intel, but yeah, I do think that those are kinds of the pieces and parts, the payments thing is this one important element and what are the activities that are involved and what do we have to be aware of? Do we have to look to see who’s chartering buses around election times? Is that something we need to be looking at more closely? But I do think that this has got a lot of moving targets because society evolves and people are great at figuring out ways to get around detection and rules or even follow the rules in ways that might be more nefarious, and it’s not easy.

Jordan: So last question then you mentioned the next phase is about, okay, well what do we do about this? When and what should we watch for then? And also, how much might we even learn about that? Because I presume that our intelligence services don’t want to advertise what they’re actually doing to try to find this stuff.

Laura Stephenson: What I think what we’re going to see is a lot of information about the lines of communication, and I think that’s where there’s probably the best opportunity to clarify again, what counts as important information. Who does it need to be given to? When? How can we deal with obvious partisan conflict, but also partisan interest across the board in understanding how all of the candidates may or may not be affected? How can we bring individuals into the conversation? Sometimes it might be a need to know basis, but when does it count, as they should be told, basically, because some of the timeline issues are concerning. If you tell me after the fact, what am I supposed to do about it? And also, I guess on also what is the level of what someone would take to be evidence rather than rumor. These things are things that can be affected or adjusted by the government and of course by a cross partisan committee because these are about definitions and about terminology and where’s the line in the sand kind of thing. And I think that they could figure out how to agree on something there, because we know we do see alternation in power. So the liberals aren’t going to be in power forever, and the conservatives weren’t in power forever and might not be in the future too. So when that happens, they all have an interest in making sure that these rules kind of get it right, because they don’t know who’s going to be targeted by whom when.

Jordan: Laura, thank you so much for this. And I guess, yeah, we just need some real lines and not blurred ones.

Laura Stephenson: Thanks for having me on. It’s a really interesting conversation,

Jordan: Laura Stephenson of Western University and the Consortium on Electoral Democracy. That was The Big Story. For more, you can head to The Big Story podcast.ca. You can of course shoot us your suggestions or your feedback. Positive, negative, doesn’t matter. We read every single one. The way to get it to us is through email. Hello at The Big Story podcast.ca or phone (416) 935-5935. Joe Fish is the lead producer of The Big Story. Robyn Simon is also a producer with this show. Stefanie Phillips is our show runner. Mary Jubran is our digital editor. Our sound design this week was handled by Christian Prohom, Robyn Edgar, Ryan Clarke and Mark Angly. Diana Keay is our manager of business development. I am your host and your executive producer, Jordan Heath-Rawlings. Together we are the Frequency Podcast Network, a division of Rogers. Thanks for listening. We have In This Economy?! for you tomorrow, but on Sunday we have a special sneak preview of our next big project. It’s just a little one, but we’ve worked so hard on it. I’m really excited to bring it to you. It’ll be in the feed Sunday morning and we’ll talk Monday.