Conservatives lost up to nine seats in 2021 election: O’Toole

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OTTAWA — Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole said that Chinese foreign interference could have influenced up to nine ridings in the 2021 election and ultimately contributed to his ouster as leader of the party a few months later.

Speaking at the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference, O’Toole said his team knew they were going to lose on election night but were convinced that the Conservatives would still win up to 128 seats, but when the results came in, several ridings showed anomalies that could not be explained. They were the same ridings where China’s foreign interference had been anticipated.

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“That night, there was already clear indication that a number of ridings were vastly outside of our modelling window, and the ridings were the same ridings that we had been complaining about with respect to foreign interference,” he said.

The Conservatives ended up winning in 119 ridings — two fewer seats than the party won under former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer.

O’Toole said that while the smaller number of seats would not have impacted the minority Liberal government elected in 2021, a difference of two, three or even five seats could have allowed him more of a “moral justification” to remain as leader.

“When I fell two seats below the threshold met in 2019, that became a very compelling narrative,” he said, noting that a petition was launched within a day-and-a-half of the election results to remove him as leader, with an emphasis on the lower result.

O’Toole said he saw the vote in 2021 changing largely over vaccine politics but also because of the rise of the People’s Party of Canada.

But his team was hearing reports of misinformation in the Chinese community, such as how a future Conservative government would cancel the use of the popular Chinese social media platform WeChat or how they would require Chinese Canadians to limit their travels.

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O’Toole noted there were “many horrific reports” about former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu, in particular, to the point where Chiu was “fearful” for his own well-being and his family’s. Chiu lost his seat in the 2021 election after being a target of criticism on WeChat.

O’Toole said that no immediate action was taken by the party during the campaign because his team was reassured that any potential threats were being monitored by the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) task force.

But a top-secret briefing note from the task force dated less than one week before the election reported there was a co-ordinated operation aimed at discouraging voters from voting Conservative.

The briefing note detailed media accounts on Chinese social media platforms sharing a narrative that O’Toole wanted to “break diplomatic ties with China.”

O’Toole said that this information was never raised to his party’s attention and that any concerns of foreign interference were “always downplayed” by the SITE Task Force.

“So, our impression is that the SITE process was not as complete, not as professional and not as transparent as it should have been when there were reports like this, and CSIS generated intelligence warning of attempts to interfere,” he said.

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Knowing what he knows now, O’Toole said his party would have had a more sophisticated approach to WeChat and other social media platforms. It also would have used Mandarin and Cantonese advertising to counter the misinformation against the party.

“I wish I could have a do-over,” he said.

Chiu, NDP MP Jenny Kwan and Conservative MP Michael Chong will be testifying later Wednesday.

National Post
calevesque@postmedia.com

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