Thread by @waliedesq

In 2021, I was the @CPC_HQ campaign co-chair and was appointed by @erinotoole to be our party representative to Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats To Elections Taskforce. 🧵

https://twitter.com/RobertFife/status/1626554564471140352

Our party and leader took the Taskforce’s mission very seriously. Regardless of political party, the integrity of our democracy was the top priority.

I can confirm that after extensive security clearances and multiple meetings with our security establishment in Ottawa, these specific threats to our democracy were *never* raised, despite what is now clear evidence of tampering by China in the 2019 election.

What’s worse: our party was seeing clear signs of tampering in ridings with substantial Chinese diasporas. We made the conscious decision to work through the Task Force and appropriate security channels. Our concerns were never taken seriously.

After the election and before the new government was sworn in, we spent more time providing everything we had to the Task Force and appropriate security channels. We were met with shrugged shoulders and complete ambivalence. It was truly unreal.

In a final call, we told them that our security establishment had clearly failed our democracy. Political parties cannot formulate public policy under threat that they are going to lose ridings based on foreign influence because of a weak security establishment.

It was personal for me. Among other positions, I was proud of the @CPC_HQ position on the genocide of the Muslim Uyghur minority in China.

I hope all our political parties take some important lessons from this episode:our democracy is delicate and must be protected,our security establishment cannot be ambivalent to these threats,& we must proactively educate our electorate and political candidates on these threats.