Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole says he was surprised to learn from Canada’s spy agency that the Chinese government likely would continue to target him even after he left politics.
“It was surprising to me that they do consider this to be into the future,” he told members of a parliamentary committee Thursday.
O’Toole went public after officials from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service told him last spring that Beijing had targeted him for years as part of a “sophisticated misinformation and voter suppression campaign.”
The former Ontario MP, who retired from politics in June, told MPs studying China’s intimidation campaigns in Canadian politics that the CSIS officials kept using terms like “target of interest.”
O’Toole tells commons committee he’s an ‘ongoing’ target of foreign interference
Featured VideoFormer Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole told a commons committee he was surprised to learn from CSIS that he would be a ‘target of interest’ for foreign interference for an ‘undetermined time.’
“So I had to ask, ‘You’re using the present tense, I’m not the Conservative leader anymore and I’m not going to be an MP in a few months when the session comes to an end. Does this mean I’m … an ongoing target?'” he told MPs.
“And that’s when they clarified yes, in part because of my long concerns about certain conduct of the Communist Party in China.”
O’Toole, now leader of a strategic intelligence and risk management firm, said CSIS has not followed up with him since.
Election interference system ‘a colossal failure’: O’Toole
Throughout his testimony before the standing committee on procedure and House affairs, O’Toole criticized the system the federal government uses to flag interference attempts during federal elections.
The federal government launched the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol in 2019 to monitor and alert the public to credible threats to Canada’s elections. The team is a panel of five top public servants tasked with determining whether incidents of interference meet the threshold for warning the public.
According to a review of their work, the panel concluded there were interference attempts in the last election, but not at the level “that threatened Canada’s ability to have free and fair elections.”
Since that campaign, leaks to media outlets have suggested China tried to interfere in both the 2019 and 2021 elections.
“‘Colossal failure’ might be the best description of the process,” O’Toole said, offering his assessment of the protocol.
O’Toole said his party reported during the last election campaign that misinformation was spreading on social media —particularly the Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat.
The Liberal government has faced mounting pressure to take national security more seriously following allegations of political meddling by Beijing.
It agreed to hold a public inquiry into foreign election interference and tapped Justice Marie-Josée Hogue to lead it.
The Quebec Court of Appeal judge has been tasked with looking into interference by China, Russia, other foreign states and non-state actors in the 2019 and 2021 elections.
She is also expected to look at how intelligence flowed to decision-makers during the past two elections.
O’Toole said he thinks her mandate should be expanded to allow her to look at whether the panel’s threshold for warning the public should change.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
