Two leaked intelligence reports suggest that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may have known about allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian elections, despite insisting he did not. Prime Minister Trudeau has claimed that he was not briefed on allegations of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interference in federal elections but two memos from 2019 and last year suggest that senior government officials may have known of the allegations.
The 2019 document warned of the CCP funding “preferred candidates” around two months ahead of that year’s federal election and came from Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), broadcaster Global News reports.
The document states that the targeting of specific candidates began during the nomination process, adding that “foreign states clandestinely direct contributions to and support for the campaigns and political parties of preferred candidates.”
“A PRC [People’s Republic of China] Embassy interlocutor founded a group of community leaders called the ‘tea party’ to hand-pick candidates that it would support and ultimately publicly endorse,” the report added.