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Canada’s inquiry into China’s election meddling begins with officer saying he dismissed warnings

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Chief Electoral Officer Stephane Perrault

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault was secretly warned by security agents of irregularities in the 2019 election but said because the ‘party’ controls the nomination process he did not do more to look into it.

The public inquiry into alleged meddling in Canada’s two most recent federal elections by agents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began last week with testimony public from Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault, who was secretly warned by security agents of irregularities in the 2019 election but said because the “party” controls the nomination process he did not do more to look into it.

“The Party is the only entity that controls the nomination process,” Perrault testified at the Commission last Thursday.

“I would have to inform the Commissioner of Elections and then she would have to make the determination as to what appropriate action would be undertaken, but I don’t have an enforcement role.”

The inquiry is being headed by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who had earlier said that she and her lawyers will remain “impartial” and will not be influenced by politics and began on January 29.

In January, Hogue said that she would “uncover the truth whatever it may be.”

“The role of a Commission of Inquiry is to investigate the facts in order to understand what happened in a given situation. Under its mandate, it carries out an objective search of the truth while identifying specific matters, draws conclusions and make recommendations to the government,” she said.

The inquiry last Thursday learned that security agents had secretly warned Perrault of irregularities that took place at a 2019 nomination meeting in a Toronto riding, Don Valley North.

Nando de Luca, Nando Commission counsel for the Conservative Party, asked Perrault to provide more details about the incident, asking him, “Am I correct those concerns related to the Liberal Party nomination contest?”

“I believe I am not authorized to speak beyond what is in this public statement,” Perrault replied.

“You were informed by the CSIS of one fact-specific matter. Is that correct?” Sheppard asked.

“That is correct,” Perrault replied.

  • Counsel Sheppard: “My understanding is you were informed by CSIS of a fact situation that could have involved foreign interference related to voting in the nomination contest in the riding of Don Valley North, Ontario. Is that correct?”
  • Perrault: “That is correct … ”
  • Counsel Sheppard: “You referred a matter to the Officer of the Commissioner of Canada Elections?”
  • Perrault: “Correct … ”
  • Counsel Sheppard: “Is there anything else you are able to say in a public setting about the information you received from CSIS that we just discussed?”
  • Perrault: “No.”

The Foreign Interference Commission, as it is known, “will examine and assess the interference by China, Russia, and other foreign states or non-state actors, including any potential impacts, in order to confirm the integrity of, and any impacts on, the 43rd and 44th general elections (2019 and 2021 elections) at the national and electoral district levels.”

The first set of hearings, or “Stage 1,” will take place from now until April 10 and include a host of witnesses that will include Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and many others who have not been named.

Also set to testify is former Liberal MP Han Dong and former Ontario cabinet minister Michael Chan, both of whom have been victims of alleged CCP interference.

The “Stage 2” part of the public inquiry will take place this fall and will look at the Trudeau government’s ability to both detect and fight foreign interference targeting Canada’s electoral processes.

The hearings are being held at the Library and Archives Canada building in Ottawa.

Chief Electoral Officer claims it was not his job to ‘certify’ integrity of election

During testimony, Perrault claimed that his agency had done a good job, saying, “I believe we have one of the most robust and complete political financing regimes in the world,” noting that this “does not make it perfect.”

He claimed that it was not his job to in effect police elections, saying that as Chief Electoral Officer “I am not called upon to certify the integrity of an election.”

“What I am called upon to do is account for it and provide evidence regarding my administration of the election for others, including participants who may wish to challenge,” he said.

Gib van Ert, counsel for the Conservative MP Michael Chong, who was the target of election interference from agents of the CCP, asked him, “But you’re concerned about the integrity of elections?”

“Of course,” Perrault replied.

“And so when you are considering the integrity, do I have it right that if you felt 330 of the local elections had integrity but eight lacked integrity, you wouldn’t say to yourself, ‘Well, close enough, we’ve come pretty close to 338,’” asked van Ert, adding, “You are having to hold yourself and your agency to a standard of 338?”

“I would report if I know of incidents that affect the integrity of an election,” Perrault said in reply, adding, “If I am aware of factual information that affects that, even if it is one electoral district, I would include that in my report to Parliament.”

Perrault had earlier told MPs that he saw no evidence of CCP interference but admitted that he did not look into this.

Perrault was the first to testify, earlier told MPs in 2022, “There may be offences that are committed that we find out after the fact and there may be investigations that are or are not underway that I would know about but with the information I have, I have no reason to believe the election was not a free and fair election.”

Perrault has said that he has “no specific intelligence or evidence in that regard” whether the 2019 and 2021 federal elections were disrupted by foreign actors.

When it comes to the CCP, many Canadians, especially pro-freedom Chinese Canadians, are concerned considering Trudeau’s past praise for China’s “basic dictatorship” and his labeling of the authoritarian nation as his favorite country other than his own.

The potential meddling in Canada’s elections by agents of the CCP has many Canadians worried as well.

The federal government under Trudeau has been slow in responding to allegations of CCP election meddling after announcing on September 7, 2023, that it would be launching a public inquiry led by Hogue.

The public inquiry comes after Trudeau launched a failed investigation into CCP allegations last year after much delay. That inquiry was not done in the public and was headed by “family friend” and former Governor General David Johnston, whom Trudeau appointed as “independent special rapporteur.”

Johnston quit as “special rapporteur” after a public outcry following his conclusion that there should not be a public inquiry into the matter. Conservative MPs demanded Johnston be replaced over his ties to both China and the Trudeau family.

To date, the evidence that parliamentary committees have uncovered shows that Canadian authorities were aware that agents of the CCP were targeting MPs from opposition parties but decided against taking any action.

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espionage

EXCLUSIVE: House Committee To Investigate Spike In Chinese Illegal Immigration Following DCNF Report

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By PHILIP LENCZYCKI

 

Dan Bishop, chair of the subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability, told the DCNF that a “wide-open border presents a ripe opportunity for the [Chinese Communist Party] to undermine our national security.”

A House committee is scheduled to examine the historic surge in Chinese illegal immigration next week, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

The House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability will hold a hearing on Thursday concerning the roughly 8,000% increase in Chinese illegal immigration the U.S. has experienced since March 2021, a committee spokesperson told the DCNF. The DCNF recently revealed an internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) email showing that the Biden administration dramatically simplified the vetting process for Chinese illegal immigrants in April 2023, which has increased the speed of Chinese illegal immigrants entering the country.

The CBP email directed Border Patrol agents to reduce the 40 questions they were required to ask Chinese illegal immigrants down to just five “basic questions” concerning their “Military Service,” “Universities,” “POB/Region,” “Employment” and “Political Party.”

North Carolina Republican Rep. Dan Bishop, chair of the subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability, told the DCNF that a “wide-open border presents a ripe opportunity for the [Chinese Communist Party] to undermine our national security.”

“This dramatic surge calls for intense scrutiny — especially as Border Patrol agents have been instructed to decrease vetting for Chinese nationals in order to process them into the country faster,” Bishop said. “As the CCP continues its quest for geopolitical dominance and threatens our sovereignty, we must examine the risks presented by releasing ever-increasing numbers of minimally-vetted Chinese nationals into our communities.”

U.S. authorities have encountered 24,376 Chinese nationals at the southwest border in fiscal year 2024 alone, according to the committee. In February 2024, the Republican National Committee adopted a resolution condemning the Biden administration’s immigration policies, citing the national security threat posed by “Chinese military-aged men” entering the country illegally, the DCNF reported.

Ammon Blair, a former Border Patrol agent and Army veteran, told the DCNF that “being a Border Patrol agent during the surge in Chinese illegal aliens felt like confronting a scene from ‘Red Dawn.’”

“Gradually, it appeared that our role was being coerced by current administration policies, from honorably defending our borders to paradoxically laying down a ‘Silk Road’ for our adversaries,” said Blair, who now works as senior fellow for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “This evolution in policy seems complicit in the CCP invasion and their embedded threats like cyber warfare, drug warfare with Mexican cartel proxies, and economic destabilization.”

The simplification of the vetting process for Chinese illegal immigrants and other Biden administration policies have “created pitch-perfect conditions” for “the infiltration of Chinese agents of espionage,” Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center For Immigration Studies, told the DCNF.

“Intelligence community assessments show that China intends to ramp up espionage and political suppression campaigns in the coming years inside the U.S. and will need an expanded labor force for the effort,” said Bensman, who is one of three experts scheduled to testify during Thursday’s hearing.

Bensman’s testimony will feature photos of identification cards and passports discarded by Chinese illegal immigrants just after crossing the U.S. southern border, a committee source told the DCNF.

Cory Gautereaux, a small business owner and veteran living near the San Diego border, collected those discarded materials and shared them with Bensman.

Gautereaux told the DCNF that he believes Chinese illegal immigration is a “serious national security threat.”

“If they are discarding their IDs and hiding their identity there is a reason,” Gautereaux said. “Since our elected leaders are reluctant to visit the border, I’ll be glad to physically deliver these items to Washington and testify to what I’ve seen.”

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Biden expands government’s power to spy on Americans without a warrant

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From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Legal experts have pointed out that under an updated version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), delivery personnel, cleaning contractors, and utility providers could all be forced to surveil Americans.

U.S. President Joe Biden has quietly signed legislation reauthorizing and expanding the government’s ability to spy on American communications without a warrant.

On April 20, Biden signed the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that allows the government to compel a broader range of businesses to collect the communications of U.S. citizens when they are in contact with foreigners, according to legal experts.

The newly passed, updated version of Section 702 accomplishes this by expanding the definition of “electronic communication service providers” who can receive FISA directives to tap communications by dropping the qualifier “communication” from electronic service providers. The new amendment, therefore, makes access merely to equipment on which communications are carried or stored enough to legally surveil Americans.

While the amendment lists types of businesses that cannot be considered Electronic Communication Service Providers (ECSPs), including public accommodations, dwellings, and restaurants, ZwillGenBlog points out that the law still allows the government to “compel the assistance of a wide range of additional entities and persons in conducting surveillance under FISA 702.”

“The breadth of the new definition is obvious from the fact that the drafters felt compelled to exclude such ordinary places such as senior centers, hotels, and coffee shops. But for these specific exceptions, the scope of the new definition would cover them — and scores of businesses that did not receive a specific exemption remain within its purview,” ZwillGenBlog explained.

The legal experts noted that among the entities that could be forced to surveil Americans under the amendment are “the owners and operators of facilities that house equipment used to store or carry data, such as data centers and buildings owned by commercial landlords,” as well as others who can access such equipment, including “delivery personnel, cleaning contractors, and utility providers.”

ZwillGenBlog also pointed out that “any U.S. business could have its communications” — if involving a foreigner — “tapped by a landlord with access to office wiring, or the data centers where their computers reside.”

Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois had tried and failed to pass an amendment that would require government officials to obtain a warrant before spying on American communications, according to the Associated Press (AP).

“If the government wants to spy on my private communications or the private communications of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, just as our Founding Fathers intended in writing the Constitution,” Durbin said.

Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed in 2008, the National Security Agency (NSA), operating inside the United States, is authorized to collect communications of foreigners overseas for foreign intelligence purposes without a warrant “because courts have held that foreigners have no Fourth Amendment rights,” according to Elizabeth Goitein.

“Although ostensibly targeted at foreigners, Section 702 surveillance inevitably sweeps in massive amounts of Americans’ communications,” Goitein further noted.

“Recognizing the impact on Americans’ privacy, Congress required the NSA to ‘minimize’ the sharing, retention, and use of this ‘incidentally’ collected U.S. person data. But the government and the FISA Court have embraced an interpretation of ‘minimize’ that is remarkably … maximal.”

“The NSA shares raw data with multiple other agencies — including the FBI and the CIA — and all of them retain the data for a functional minimum of five years. Moreover, the FBI routinely combs through it looking for Americans’ communications to use in purely domestic cases, even in situations where the FBI lacks a factual predicate to open a full investigation,” Goitein continued.

There are other means by which the U.S. government can spy on Americans. In 2022, Biden issued an executive order (EO) that allows the government to surveil Americans for broadly defined reasons including understanding “public health risks,” “political instability,” and the “threat” of climate change.

The EO was ostensibly written to “enhanc[e] safeguards” for “United States Signals Intelligence Activities,” which is intelligence gathering by the interception of signals, including communications, such as through cell phones, or those not used in communication. An accompanying fact sheet explains that the EO is meant to help “implement the U.S. commitments under the European Union-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (EU-U.S. DPF)” in an effort to “restore trust and stability” to transatlantic data flows.

Alongside permitting spying for the purposes of sizing up the capabilities of foreign entities, the EO permits signals intelligence collection for “understanding or assessing transnational threats that impact global security, including climate and other ecological change, public health risks, humanitarian threats, political instability, and geographic rivalry.”

The document’s lack of elaboration on such so-called “transnational threats” raises the question of the true scope of activity now officially subject to spying by the U.S. government, which is potentially massive.

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