Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff Katie Telford before her hearing before a parliamentary committee in Ottawa, April 14, 2023. BLAIR GABLE/ Portal
The issue has dominated political life in Canada for several months. Allegations of Chinese interference in Canada’s democratic process were the focus of questions put by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, 45, on Friday (14th parliamentary committee charged with handling the issue.
Since November, Canada’s Global Television Network and English-language daily Globe and Mail have been multiplying revelations that Canada’s intelligence agency suspects Beijing of interfering in the last federal election: 2019 by creating a network of aid and funding likely to support 11 candidates favored by those deemed “Chinese-compatible” and seen in 2021 as less detrimental to their interests than a Conservative government coming to power in an attempt to secure a narrow victory for the outgoing Prime Minister’s Liberal Party.
“Serious Strategic Threat”
Since then, the Conservative Party has constantly held the government accountable for the information it had and the measures it took to protect itself from such foreign intrusion. Finally, not without difficulty, he reached the hearing of Justin Trudeau’s closest adviser, who has stood by his side since his victory in 2015, hoping to demonstrate at best the prime minister’s inertia, at worst the complacency in this government-viewed filing Canadian Security Intelligence Service as “the top strategic threat to Canada’s national security”.
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But the “rocket fire” strategy, a series of short and concise questions put to Katie Telford by Conservative MP and Bloc Québécois (Independent) MP, was not enough to shed all the light. Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff stressed national security requirements — “these issues are extremely sensitive, and the law puts limits on what I can say in public” — to disclose as little as possible. Interrogations of elected officials yielded only pithy comments and a repeated claim: “The 2019 and 2021 elections were held fairly and freely,” assured Katie Telford.
His evasive answers hardly convinced the opposition. “They couldn’t give us simple answers to simple questions. But as far as you have confirmed to us that the Prime Minister knew everything, we can assume that he knew and made a conscious choice to ignore our intelligence agency’s warnings,” concluded MP curator Rachael Thomas. The Liberal MPs denounced a “conspiracy theory” promoted by the Conservatives which “confirmed nothing in Katie Telford’s testimony”.
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