Canada ‘very concerned’ about foreign meddling, says Chrystia Freeland

Interference by foreign “malign actors” in the upcoming federal election in Canada “is very likely,” Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Friday.

“We’re, we are very concerned.  I think our judgement is interference is very likely,” Freeland told reporters Friday. “And we think there has probably already, there have probably already been efforts by maligned foreign actors to disrupt our democracy.”

Freeland’s comments on the sidelines of a G7 meeting in France are the latest warning from the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the treat by foreign actors such as Russia, China and others to meddle in the Oct. 21 federal election.

“What I think we’re seeing is something that is happening in many liberal democracies, which is the effort is not so much to secure a particular outcome in an election, the effort is to make our societies more polarized and to make us as citizens of democracies, more cynical about the very idea that democracy exists and that it can work,” speaking at a media freedom event on the sidelines of a G7 foreign ministers meeting in France.

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While Freeland did not specifically mention Russia in her comments, speaking to reporters in Toronto, Trudeau was more blunt.

“We have seen over the past number of years an increase in the interference or the implication of foreign actors in democratic processes,” Trudeau said. “We saw very clearly that countries like Russia are behind a lot of divisive campaigns, divisive social media.”

Best defence is aware citizenry, says Freeland

The top diplomats of the G7 nations – Canada, France, Japan, Germany, Britain, Italy and the U.S., as well as the European Union – are meeting in Dinard, Brittany, where they are expected later to agree on common norms that would seek to prevent foreign powers from destabilizing democratic nations.

Canada has already introduced a number of measures to prepare the country to fight foreign interference in the upcoming election, Freeland said.

“A very important one is just to be sure that Canadians are aware of the danger,” Freeland said. “One of the things we’ve learned, especially from talking to our friends in the Baltic States and in Ukraine is that probably the most important and most powerful defence is an aware citizenry.”

During Canada’s chairmanship of the G7 last year, Ottawa spearheaded the creation of “a rapid response mechanism to help all of us identify efforts to interfere in our democracies and to support one another where we see those efforts,” Freeland said.

Need for deterrence strategy

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said it was imperative for liberal democracies to tackle interference by Russia and others.

“We know that states like Russia have got a very active, planned, thought-through strategy to interfere in democratic processes in Western countries and [to sow] dissension and chaos wherever they can,” Hunt said.

“We are getting much better at fending off these attacks when they happen. What we don’t do at the moment is deter them from happening in the first place.”

He said the discussions at the G7 on Friday would be aimed at finding a deterrence strategy that imposed a high price for meddling with democratic processes.

Russia’s has strenuously denied interfering in elections in Western countries and has instead accused the West of interfering in Russian politics through direct funding of a number of international and local NGOs, civil society groups and media organizations.

The Russian embassy in Ottawa dismissed Freeland’s comments as “pure disinformation.”

Blaming Moscow for fake #meddling is pure disinformation

Given #RussiaGate fiasco in the US 🇺🇸, it’s ridiculous to play the same card in Canada 🇨🇦 to distract public attention from real issues#cndpoli pic.twitter.com/G35YfRGRv2

— Russia in Canada (@RussianEmbassyC) April 5, 2019

With files from Reuters