This piece appeared first in The Epoch Times Canada on January 8, 2025.
Well, the inevitable has happened. After months of speculation, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau emulated his father, took a walk in the snow (it may not have been actually snowing in Ottawa on Jan. 6 but it was extremely cold!), and announced his intention to resign once a replacement is selected. The worst-kept secret in the nation’s capital came to pass.
The prime minister’s departure leads naturally to a selection process for a new head of the party. And while the media is rife with speculation over the top candidates (Mark Carney? Chrystia Freeland? Anita Anand?), a much more important angle has been all but ignored. The Liberal Party has said that it has no plans to change its membership rules to shield its upcoming leadership race from meddling. What meddling, you may ask? Have a seat, the list is a long one.
We know, through leaked intelligence and the Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference, that Beijing has been at the forefront of efforts to sway candidate nomination meetings, in part by busing Chinese students to events and to ensure that those running for office are in China’s, and not Canada’s, interests. When added to the PRC’s establishment of “police stations” on our soil to monitor dissidents, as well as the outright harassment and threats to those it sees as undermining China’s self-created myth as a paradise on Earth, we are well aware of this menace to our democracy.
China is not alone. Russia, Iran, and others also do their utmost to advance their agendas among diasporas in Canada. The evidence behind these schemes has been well documented publicly—not to mention the intelligence passed on by national security agencies—and the government has no excuse for its lack of action.
In fairness, other parties also have leaky party selection processes, and we need a national solution to a national problem, but the Liberals seem to be the worst at sticking their heads in the sand (at least the Conservatives limit voting to citizens and permanent residents, those on the path to citizenship). Not only did the PM and his team ignore CSIS intelligence on these forms of interference, but he accused those merely demonstrating the extent of the problem of being racist. This approach underlines that the government, which claims to take national security “very seriously,” does nothing of the sort.
As Epoch Times reporter Noé Chartier wrote: “The Liberal Party will elect its new leader in the coming months with rules that, according to publicly released intelligence, had been exploited by Beijing in the past to support a favoured candidate in a riding nomination contest.” While then-Public Safety Minister Dominique Leblanc assured Canadians that he had “full confidence in the Liberal Party and the rules in place regarding nomination contests,” these words ring hollow.
The bottom line is that this party will continue to allow foreign nationals, i.e., non-citizens, to have a say in the choice of candidates for the House of Commons up to and including the prime minister. What other democracy allows this to happen?
The Liberals are making a mockery of the democratic process in Canada. It is unclear why they would want to undermine our independence and allow foreign states to have such levels of influence in what must be a made-in-Canada process. This inaction and sheer disregard for sovereignty must be stopped before the next election. Beijing must be dancing in the aisles at this ignorance and shortsightedness.
If nothing is done soon, I nevertheless hope the next government gives national security the time, attention, and priority it deserves.
“The China Syndrome” was a 1979 film starring Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas about a cover-up of safety hazards at a nuclear power plant (shades of Chernobyl?). It appears that truth is again imitating fiction in that we have a government keen to cover up hazards, these ones to the core of the voting process.
There is an old saying: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” The Liberal Party needs to clean up its act and close the loopholes to prevent foreign meddling.
About Phil Gurski
Phil worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specializing in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation. From 1983 to 2001 he was employed as a senior multilingual analyst at Communications Security Establishment (CSE – Canada’s signals intelligence agency), specialising in the Middle East. He also served as senior special advisor in the National Security Directorate at Public Safety Canada from 2013, focusing on community outreach and training on radicalisation to violence, until his retirement from the civil service in May 2015, and as consultant for the Ontario Provincial Police’s Anti-Terrorism Section (PATS) from May to October 2015.
He was the Director of Security and Intelligence at the SecDev Group from June 2018 to July 2019 and the Director of the National Security Programme at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute from 2020-2022. He has also taught on national security issues at George Brown College, the University of Ottawa and Georgian College. Mr. Gurski has presented on violent Islamist-inspired and other forms of terrorism and radicalisation across Canada and around the world and is actively sought by Canadian and international media on national security and intelligence issues. He has written hundreds of op-eds on these matters for several Canadian media since 2016
He writes at www.borealisthreatandrisk.com.
He is the author of The Threat from Within: Recognizing Al Qaeda-inspired Radicalization and Terrorism in the West (Rowman and Littlefield 2015) Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), The Lesser Jihads: Taking the Islamist fight to the world (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), An end to the ‘War on Terrorism (Rowman and Littlefield 2018), When Religion Kills: How Extremist Justify Violence Through Faith (Lynne Rienner 2019), The Peaceable Kingdom? A history of terrorism in Canada from Confederation to the present (self-published: 2021, republished by Double Dagger in 2022), and the forthcoming The Fenians: Brotherhood of fools or Canada’s first terrorist threat? (Double Dagger: 2025). He regularly blogs and podcasts (Canadian Intelligence Eh!) on terrorism and intelligence matters.
