More foreign interference action coming after inquiry report, India arrests: LeBlanc
Global News
Canada's public safety minister says legislation will be introduced "very soon" that will strengthen measures used to combat foreign interference.
Canada’s public safety minister says legislation will be introduced “very soon” that will strengthen measures used to combat foreign interference, but adds he’s confident in the safeguards already in place and the agencies overseeing them.
Friday saw the issue of foreign interference revived into public view on multiple fronts. The commissioner overseeing an inquiry into foreign attempts to meddle in Canada’s last two elections released an interim report that found those attempts undermined the rights of Canadian voters because they “tainted the process” and eroded public trust, even though they did not change the overall results.
Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue stressed Ottawa needs to “work hard” to restore that trust by both informing Canadians of the threat of foreign interference and taking “real and concrete steps” to detect and deter it.
Hours after that report was released, RCMP announced it had arrested three Indian nationals charged with murder and conspiracy in the 2023 killing of B.C. Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, whom India had declared was a “terrorist.” The federal government has said there are “credible allegations of a potential link” between Nijjar’s death and agents of the Indian government.
Global News reported Nijjar was warned by Canadian Security and Intelligence Service officers that “professional assassins” were after him, and that India had tried to get the RCMP to arrest Nijjar on allegations that were deemed to be not credible.
Asked if he was still confident in Canada’s security and intelligence services after they failed to prevent Nijjar’s death, and in the wake of Hogue’s interim report, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said he was. He also defended the actions the government has taken so far to strengthen those agencies’ ability to combat foreign threats.
“We think we have put in place a series of measures that have been effective,” he told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired Sunday on The West Block. “Can they be strengthened? Can they evolve based on the recommendations of the Hogue report? Of course they can.”
LeBlanc pushed back on suggestions that Hogue had accused the Liberals of not doing enough on the issue, but said the government will in fact be taking further action.