Prime minister should call a public inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian elections
In mid-March, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named former governor general David Johnston as a special rapporteur to decide whether an independent inquiry should be called into foreign interference in Canadian elections. Johnston will make his decision later this month. Since the appointment, a number of new stories have come out revealing troubling information about foreign […]
Political parties’ use of voter data ‘shrouded in secrecy,’ say critics, while government proposes self-regulatory approach
The issue of voter privacy will only grow larger with the rise of new technologies, particularly AI, say observers.
High-level party operatives, experts identify election interference attempts as ‘extremely disturbing,’ call for more communication between intelligence agencies, parties
National campaign manager for the Conservatives in 2021 Fred DeLorey says ‘during the campaign, we did hear the odd rumbling that something was going on’ in regards to election interference, but that ‘after the campaign was concluded, we noticed some results that felt off.’
DeLorey’s right: parties should work together to prevent any foreign interference in next election
Once all the panels report, our federal lawmakers should work together to prevent any foreign interference in any election, ever.
Truth loses out in Fox News settlement, and that’s apparently what having a spare $780-million in your jeans can do
Fox has gotten away with treating the most egregious breach of trust in media history as a mere cost of doing business.
Chinese-Canadian activists raise concerns over feds’ rushed foreign registry consultations
With many members of the community only receiving an invite four days in advance and a lack of transparency on who would be in attendance, activists are concerned consultations on the proposed foreign agent registry could be skewed.
Telford sticks to script as Tories say their questions were ‘skirted’ or ‘shut down’
The government’s messaging makes it hard for the prime minister to ‘pretend he didn’t know’ about concerns of foreign interference, which means the answer to the question ‘what did he do about it?’ becomes even more important, says pollster Greg Lyle.
Ontario’s proposed polling ban would leave voters ‘in a dark room,’ says Nanos
Polls may have a ‘negative impact on voter turnout,’ but banning them is ‘not a silver bullet,’ says a Samara Centre for Democracy spokesperson.
We may never be able to fully stop interference in our politics, so where do we draw the line?
Clear thresholds don’t yet exist to define which activities are acceptable and which are not. Frankly, we deserve clarity as to what defines foreign interference, otherwise we may never be able to stop it, writes Bert Chen.
Russia-Ukraine-China and Canadian threads
Recent allegations of Chinese interference in our democratic institutions have added to the complex interplay of ethnicity and politics in Canada. There is an echo here of Igor Gouzenko’s revelations of Soviet espionage in Canada in 1946, which led to the imprisonment of a Jewish Polish-born Communist MP, writes Nelson Wiseman.
