Feds eyeing new ways to publicly flag possible foreign interference during elections

By Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press on September 26, 2024.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Deputy Commissioner Michael Duheme, left to right, Communications Security Establishment Chief Caroline Xavier and Canadian Security Intelligence Service Deputy Director of Operations Michelle Tessier discuss where to sit before appearing at the Procedure and House Affairs committee on Parliament hill, in Ottawa, Thursday, March 2, 2023. Caroline Xavier, the head of CanadaÕ³ cyberspy agency, is slated to appear today at a federal inquiry into foreign interference. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA – A senior federal official says the government is mulling new ways to inform the public about possible foreign interference developments during an election campaign.

Under the current system, a panel of five top bureaucrats would issue a public warning if they believed an incident – or an accumulation of incidents – threatened Canada’s ability to have a free and fair election.

There was no such announcement concerning the 2019 or 2021 general elections.

Allen Sutherland, an assistant secretary to the federal cabinet, told a commission of inquiry today that officials are looking at how citizens might be told about developments that don’t quite reach the current threshold.

He said that would help inform people of things they ought to know more about, even if the incidents don’t rise to the level of threatening the overall integrity of an election.

Allegations of foreign interference in the last two general elections prompted calls for the public inquiry that is now underway.