Liberal national director on the hot seat over foreign interference

Three months after it was tabled in Parliament, the Liberal Party of Canada's national director says he still hasn't read a bombshell report that concluded one of his party's nomination races had been affected by foreign interference by China.

Testifying before the public inquiry into foreign interference Friday, Azam Ishmael initially told the inquiry he didn't think the Liberal Party had ever been a victim of foreign interference.

Under questioning by Sujit Choudhry, lawyer for NDP MP Jenny Kwan, Ishmael admitted he had never read the entire report prepared by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) that was made public in early June.

"Not the 92 pages, no," Ishmael responded.

Choudhry then took the inquiry through several paragraphs of the report related to the 2019 Liberal nomination race in the Toronto-area riding of Don Valley North won by Han Dong — paragraphs Ishmael admitted he had never read.

The report, which cited information from the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), described how the People's Republic of China (PRC) consulate in Toronto rented buses to bring 175 to 200 Chinese international students to the nomination meeting and reportedly told them they had to vote for Dong if they wanted to maintain their visas to study in Canada.

It said the consulate also broke the Liberal Party's rule that requires voters in a nomination process to live in the riding, by supplying students who lived outside the riding with fraudulent paper work.

"By successfully interfering in the nomination process of what can be considered a safe riding for the Liberal Party of Canada, the PRC was well-positioned to ensure its preferred candidate was elected to Parliament," said the report.

The report says CSIS briefed a Liberal Party representative with secret-level clearance several weeks after the nomination meeting, who then briefed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau the next day. "The Liberal Party of Canada allowed Mr. Dong to run in both the 2019 and 2021 federal elections," said the report.

While Ishmael, who became national director in 2017, said he has secret clearance and participated in the briefing, he told the inquiry that, until Choudhry questioned him, he hadn't heard that the buses had been paid for by the PRC, that the students had been told they could lose their visas if they didn't vote for Dong, or that a number of the students lived outside the riding.

Ishmael refused to take questions from reporters on his way out of the inquiry and referred all questions to the Liberal Party's communications office.

Ishmael's testimony Friday came as the foreign interference inquiry, headed by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, continues its second phase of hearings.

The 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 said 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.

In its second phase, the inquiry is focusing on how equipped the government is to combat foreign interference in elections and how that that capacity has evolved over time.

Over the past two days, the inquiry has examined how federal political parties guard against foreign actors who might try to interfere with donations and nomination contests.

After a hiatus Monday because of International Translators Day, the inquiry is scheduled to resume its hearings on Tuesday with witnesses from the House of Commons administration, the Senate and Canada's Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault.

The second phase of the inquiry's fact-finding hearings is expected to wrap up on Oct. 16 with testimony from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.