The judge overseeing Canada’s Foreign Interference Commission of Inquiry has decided two people can give evidence in secret about how the People’s Republic of China “co-opts and leverages some Chinese Canadian community associations and politicians of Chinese origin.”
Justice Marie-Josee Hogue made the decision in a written ruling dated Wednesday which is not posted on the commission’s website.
Her ruling, obtained by Global News, grants two witnesses — “Person B and Person C” — the right to testify by secret affidavits that will not be disclosed to the public or inquiry participants.
Hogue also issued a simultaneous order to seal their affidavits from the public for 99 years, after commission materials are deposited at the National Archives of Canada when the inquiry ends.
Only a summary of the Person B and Person C affidavits will be publicly released to protect the two persons from possible physical threats, intimidation and harassment, and loss of their jobs because of pressure by the People’s Republic of China or its proxies, Hogue’s ruling states.
Hogue issued the ruling in response to an application by the commission’s own lawyers, who were acting on behalf of the two witnesses.
“I am satisfied by the information contained in the application that the fears expressed by Person B and Person C are not only credible, but also compelling,” Hogue wrote.
The application that commission lawyers filed for the witnesses was also sealed for 99 years.
Hogue’s ruling revealed that commission staff have already completed preliminary interviews with Person B and Person C sometime earlier this year.
Hougue added: “The information that Person B and Person C have is primarily first-hand. Any public disclosure of this evidence would give rise to a very significant risk – if not inevitability – that the actual identity of Person B or Person C would become known to others who were involved in the events in question. This would include individuals who may be acting at the behest of the PRC.”
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Hogue said she considered potential alternatives to hearing the evidence of Person B
and Person C by way of non-public affidavit, like hiding their faces as they testified. But she considered it too risky that their identities might still be compromised.
“Put simply, given the nature of Person B and Person C’s evidence, any public testimony from either of these witnesses would inevitably reveal their identities to an informed observer,” she continued.
Commission counsel believed that Person B and Person C each had relevant evidence to give.
“Person B provided Commission Counsel with insight into how the People’s Republic of China (‘PRC’) co-opts and leverages some Chinese Canadian community associations and politicians of Chinese origin. The information provided by Person B was often first-hand, and other times based on second-hand information,” she wrote.
Person B expressed fear to the commission that they would suffer “serious repercussions” if their identity was revealed, alleging that the PRC and its United Front Work Department (UFWD) has infiltrated some Chinese Canadian community associations. They were not named or identified.
Person B also explained that if it was discovered that they were the source of this information, they expected to lose their job, be excluded from their community and suffer PRC retribution.
Person C also provided the commission with “first-hand information about foreign interference activities by the PRC,” Hogue added in her ruling, saying they expressed similar fears.
The Trudeau Liberal government launched the inquiry in September 2023.
In her preliminary report, released in May of 2024, Hogue reported that while foreign interference did not change the outcome of the 2019 and 2021 general elections, it nevertheless was present and “tainted the process” by eroding Canadians’ confidence in democratic institutions.
“I am reassured that our electoral system is, all in all, robust and that foreign interference did not impact which party formed the government in 2019 and 2021,” Hogue wrote.
“I say ‘all in all’ because … I nevertheless believe that foreign interference is a real phenomenon that we must reckon with. Interference occurred in the last two general elections, and indeed continues to occur frequently.”
She did suggest that interference may have played a role in who won the nomination to be the Liberal candidate in 2019 in Toronto’s Don Valley North riding, a safe Liberal constituency, thus it might have influenced who was actually elected to Parliament.
Since Hogue’s preliminary report in May, Canada’s national security committee of parliamentarians has publicly suggested that politicians have “wittingly” gone along with foreign interference schemes.
The Trudeau government has also stood behind claims that the Indian government under Narendra Modi had a role in the assassination of a Sikh activist in British Columbia in 2023.
Over weeks in September and October, Hogue’s commission heard testimony on these issues among other evidence about foreign governments covertly influencing Canadian politics.
Trudeau himself testified he is aware of multiple federal politicians – Liberal, Conservative and otherwise – who intelligence indicates have worked with foreign governments or were in danger of foreign interference schemes.
“Because I am prime minister and privy to all these informations, I have the names of a number of parliamentarians, former parliamentarians and/or candidates in the Conservative Party of Canada who are engaged or are at high risk of or for whom there is clear intelligence around foreign interference,” Trudeau told the commission’s lawyers.
After this latest round of testimony, Hogue’s final report is expected by the end of the year.