Erin O’Toole: China targeted me in election, says 2021 rival to Canada’s Trudeau

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Canada’s spy agency told former Conservative party leader Erin O’Toole that China campaigned to discredit him and suppress votes ahead of the 2021 election he lost to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, O’Toole has said.

In a briefing on Friday, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (Csis) informed O’Toole about intelligence saying Beijing had targeted him in 2021, when he was Conservative leader and running to defeat Trudeau.

“The Csis briefing confirmed to me what I had long suspected – that my party, several of my parliamentary caucus members and myself were the target of a Chinese orchestrated campaign of disinformation and voter suppression in the run up to and during the 2021 general election,” O’Toole said in Canada’s House of Commons.

The prime minister has come under pressure from opposition parties to open a public inquiry into foreign election interference, even though a special rapporteur into allegations of Chinese election meddling recommended against one last week.

The opposition parties renewed calls for a public inquiry on Tuesday. O’Toole blamed the government for failing to pass on the intelligence about Chinese meddling to members of parliament.

“The [Chinese] communist government’s ideal outcome is to have its critics pull their punches and turn a blind eye,” O’Toole said, to create “a chilling effect on our parliamentary democracy”.

Members and senior advisers of the government “are being willfully blind to attacks on our parliamentary democracy”, O’Toole said.

Trudeau expelled a Chinese diplomat this month for allegedly seeking to target a Conservative politician’s family in Hong Kong in 2021, prompting a tit-for-tat response by Beijing.

Trudeau has acknowledged there has long been Chinese interference, but has said it did not undermine the integrity of the 2019 or 2021 election results.

Trudeau’s office had no immediate response to O’Toole’s statements. The Chinese embassy in Ottawa also had no immediate comment.

O’Toole announced this year that he will be leaving politics and the House of Commons on 23 June.