The Conservatives’ national campaign director for the 2021 federal election urged MPs on Tuesday to amend legislation to put Canada in a better position to combat attempts at foreign interference in elections.
“We’re spending a lot of time trying to find out who knew what, when and where. I feel a lot of effort should be going into, as legislators, putting together legislation to plug these holes,” Fred DeLorey told the House of Commons procedure committee.
“We’re all under threat here. All parties could be impacted by this in the next election. It can come from different entities, different countries and I really wish we could see a more collaborative approach to really drill down on what the issues are and how we solve them.”
DeLorey made his comments before the committee investigating allegations of interference by China’s government in the past two elections and what the federal government knew about it.
DeLorey was one of four campaign managers testifying Tuesday about the briefings they received from intelligence officials regarding the 2019 and 2021 campaigns.
Jeremy Broadhurst, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party’s campaign director for the 2019 vote, said the briefings were sometimes frustrating.
“You are looking at raw data and asked to come to your own conclusions,” he said.
“There’s often, ‘Here’s what we know and here’s what we don’t know.’ That leaves gaps for people to decide what’s the calibre of the information you have.”
WATCH | ‘We’re all under threat’: former campaign manager on foreign interference
‘We’re all under threat’: former campaign manager on foreign interference
8 hours ago
Duration 0:39
Testifying before a parliamentary committee on foreign election interference, former national campaign manager for the Conservative Party Fred DeLorey calls for legislation and says ‘all parties could be impacted by this in the next election.’
On Tuesday, Conservative MPs on the committee raised a February story from Global News alleging that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service warned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about Toronto-area Liberal candidate Han Dong.
Broadhurst said he couldn’t comment on the nature of the briefings he received.
“The determinations of candidates are the bailiwick of parties,” he said. “I think I’ve pointed out that there have been inaccuracies in that public reporting.”
Azam Ishmael, who oversaw the Liberals’ most recent campaign in 2021, told MPs the Liberals have not “turned a blind eye” to allegations of foreign meddling in elections.
Dong has denied various Global News stories and is suing the media company.
Conservative campaign says results ‘felt off’
The Conservatives 2019 campaign manager, Hamish Marshall, said the briefings were “very, very vague and top-level.”
“We’re loathe to fire candidates and remove candidates,” he said. “It’s not something we enjoy doing. It’s something that’s difficult. It’s obviously extraordinarily disruptive during an election.
“The information that we would have to be presented [with] in order to take action on it, from a committee or something else, would have to be very, very detailed.”
DeLorey said the party heard the “odd rumbling” during the campaign about foreign interference — warnings that he described as “anecdotal at best.”
Internal CPC memo lists federal ridings believed to be ‘negatively impacted’ by outside interference
During a parliamentary committee hearing on foreign election interference, former national campaign manager for the Conservative Party Fred DeLorey read an internal memo about suspected foreign interference in the 2021 campaign.
“However, after the campaign was concluded, we noticed some results that felt off. And that’s when internal rumblings of foreign interference became much louder,” he said.
DeLorey said he then told his field operations teams to investigate the issue and meet with the local campaigns.
They determined that “there was a strong case to be made that there was a degree of influence exerted by an outside actor in the Chinese community during the 44th general election,” he said.
A panel of top civil servants concluded that there were attempts to interfere with the 2021 federal election but they did not affect the results.
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.
