A former top public servant and a prominent national security researcher say Canada can look to Australia for ideas on better handling the threat of foreign interference.
Ottawa should "copy and paste" Australia's 2018 legislation that requires people lobbying on behalf of other countries to register with the government, said Michael Wernick, who was clerk of the Privy Council from 2016 to 2019.
In the normal course of relations, countries will criticize other nations or take decisions that might be damaging, but that is overt behaviour that could simply be called "aggressive diplomacy," Wark said. It could extend into the electoral arena if Beijing were to clandestinely encourage a community of Canadians to support candidates that might favour a more pro-China position, or undermine the legitimacy of candidates whose views China did not like.
Under a federal protocol concerning elections, there would be a public announcement if a panel of senior bureaucrats determined that an incident -- or an accumulation of incidents -- threatened Canada's ability to have a free and fair ballot. Agencies including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service have not displayed a willingness to be truly open and transparent about the threats the country faces, Wark said."So we get, we get dribs and drabs of reporting, but nothing really substantive and nothing systematic.
There is an "important distinction" between a foreign state's intentions and capabilities, "which I think has gone entirely missing in this current hullabaloo over Chinese election interference," Wark said.
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