China is the “foremost aggressor” when it comes to foreign interference in Western countries and “works within” their political systems “to corrupt” them, according to a senior official at Canada’s spy agency.
Adam Fisher, director general of intelligence assessments at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, on Thursday told a House of Commons committee investigation into foreign interference in elections that Russia and China “tend to be the two big players” – though they differ in their methods.
Moscow, Mr. Fisher said, tends to employ methods that erode confidence in Western political systems.
“Russia is more inclined towards disrupting and undermining our system of government through messaging that casts what is happening in some doubt.”
Beijing, on the other hand, prefers to work its way into Western political systems, he said.
It “is more interested in working within the system to corrupt it, compromising officials, elected officials and individuals at all levels of government, within industry, within civil society, using our open and free society for their nefarious purposes,” Mr. Fisher told the standing committee on procedure and House affairs.
“I would say without a doubt China is the foremost aggressor in this space.”
Mr. Fisher offered his testimony at a time when relations between Ottawa and Beijing remain in a deep freeze with no signs of warming up.
Dennis Molinaro, a former senior analyst and foreign interference expert at CSIS, said the West has been slower to wake up to the threat from China compared with Russia because Beijing wasn’t a Cold War enemy like Moscow was.
“China doesn’t have the same kind of Cold War history Russia has with the West, which is now understanding China as an adversary, but a bit late in that regard,” said Mr. Molinaro, now a professor in legal studies at Ontario Tech University.
Like Mr. Fisher, Mr. Molinaro said China is the greatest aggressor on foreign interference. He attributes this to Beijing having more resources and options in Western countries than Moscow, as well as putting more pressure on its diaspora communities.
Mr. Fisher told MPs that Beijing looks to “interfere domestically in all respects. That includes in certain elections and ridings.”
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Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole had alleged that foreign interference by China in the 2021 election campaign, using disinformation, cost the party eight or nine seats.
On Thursday, Conservative MP Michael Cooper raised the matter with federal officials appearing at the procedure and House affairs committee.
Tara Denham, director general at Global Affairs Canada’s Office of Human Rights, Freedoms and Inclusion, told MPs that “rapid response” monitoring during that election campaign detected the spread of misinformation. But, she said, Ottawa officials couldn’t verify if it was sponsored by a foreign state or not.
“We did see some of the activity, but in the reporting of the rapid response mechanism – and again, we’re looking for foreign threats – we were not able to verify that the behaviour was directed by state, or whether it was organic, or an intermingling of the two.”
Mr. Molinaro said legislation governing CSIS should be changed to enable the security service to share information on foreign interference more broadly than just with the federal government – for instance, with universities and municipalities.
And, Mr. Molinaro said, Canada should set up a foreign influence registry like Australia and the United States to shed light on individuals enlisted to impact the country’s political process on behalf of other states.
Canada-China relations have been severely strained since 2018, when Beijing locked up two Canadians after Ottawa arrested a Chinese tech executive on a U.S. request.
While this dispute was resolved last year, relations between the West and China have worsened over Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs, its quashing of dissent in Hong Kong and its menacing of Taiwan.
Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, who this week ordered three state-owned Chinese companies to sell their stake in Canadian firms over national security concerns, also recently talked about how the West needs an economic “decoupling” from China and other authoritarian states.