China's foreign interference goes beyond elections, intelligence expert says

China's foreign interference extends beyond elections to other key areas of Canadian society, the public inquiry on foreign interference was told Monday.

Martin Green, a former top foreign intelligence assessment expert with the Privy Council, said a special report prepared for the Privy Council's Intelligence Assessment Secretariat in January 2022 concluded that China was going beyond merely trying to influence Canada.

"You can't look at foreign interference just solely through the lens of the electoral system," Green told the inquiry. "I think it's much bigger than that. You're seeing ... kind of hybrid tools being brought to bear.

"So in the case of a country like China, there is clearly a very sophisticated tool kit which involves foreign defence, national security and intelligence activities, there's economic coercion, there's military pressure, there's espionage. So there's a suite of tools that are brought to bear that we're seeing much more often."

Green said he consulted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's former national security adviser David Morrison about the special report. He said he later sent the report to Morrison's successor Jody Thomas, and raised the issue with her during a number of meetings.

Green said he couldn't explain why Thomas didn't share the report with Trudeau. The report was completed shortly before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and as truckers began staging a convoy protest in Ottawa against government pandemic measures, which went on to paralyze the nation's capital for three weeks.

The inquiry said Monday that, following negotiations with the government, it has been granted unprecedented access to cabinet documents.

"The extraordinary degree of access by the commission to both classified information and information subject to cabinet confidence is unprecedented and reflects the importance of the inquiry's work," said Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue.

"The government's willingness to disclose this information to the commission will assist me in developing recommendations that will help to preserve the integrity of Canada's electoral processes and democratic institutions and enhance Canadians' trust and confidence in their democracy."

The foreign interference inquiry was set up following media reports which accused China of interfering in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

In her initial report, made public in May, Hogue found that while it was possible that foreign interference occurred in a small number of ridings, she concluded it did not affect the overall election results.