Liberal MP says he won his riding 'fair and square' after rival tells committee he was undermined by Beijing

Liberal MP Parm Bains said he won his B.C. riding in the last election "fair and square" after his former opponent told a parliamentary committee foreign interference by Beijing played a role in his victory.

Bains sits on the Commons ethics committee and was sitting across the table when former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu told MPs on the committee Friday he believed Bains was the "beneficiary" of a disinformation campaign he suspects was tied to the Chinese Communist Party during the 2021 election campaign.

"I would say it played a role in my defeat," Chiu told the committee.

CBC News asked Bains if he thought foreign interference played a part in the election outcome in his riding.

"No, not at all," he replied while walking away from the cameras. In his first public comment on the matter, Bains insisted his win in Steveston-Richmond East in 2021 was "fair and square."

His comment came after a two-hour committee hearing on foreign interference during which Chiu sat alongside national security experts and shared his personal experience. The federal government has been under intense public scrutiny for weeks over its handling of Beijing's attempts to meddle in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

Chiu has spoken out about his belief that the Chinese Communist Party targeted him during his 2021 campaign in retaliation for putting forward a private member's bill to introduce a foreign agent registry that Beijing opposed.

Chiu told MPs he went to CSIS during the campaign to report a "significant amount of disinformation" spreading on the popular messaging apps WeChat and WhatsApp targeting him and the Conservative Party.

"I've been mischaracterized as someone who's anti-Chinese," Chiu said of the posts. "Even hating Chinese. That I must not be allowed to be re-elected."

The messages, Chiu said, also targeted the Conservative leader at the time, Erin O'Toole, by suggesting that he would ban WeChat if he became prime minister, jeopardizing the diaspora's ability to connect with family in China and do business.

Bains told the committee anyone running for public office can be targeted.

"As candidates, we're all victims of misinformation or disinformation when we're in an election," Bains told MPs. "There was a campaign against me [claiming] that I was going to legalize hard drugs and things of that nature."

Bains also pushed back against claims that his riding was targeted due to a large Chinese-Canadian community living there. Bains told MPs he's lived there his "entire life" and called it a "very mixed community." He pointed to a five-kilometre corridor in the city with 28 different religious institutions, popularly known as the "highway to heaven."

The local newspaper in Richmond questioned Bains decision to sit beside the People's Republic of China's Consul General Yang Shu in November 2022 at a Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations event.