No Russian meddling in Canadian elections, despite warnings otherwise

During question period, Mr. Bryan May, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence, said:

"Mr. Speaker, throughout the 2021 federal election, the security and intelligence threats to elections, or SITE, task force actively monitored the situation for signs of foreign interference. The SITE task force consists of representatives from the Communications Security Establishment or CSE, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Global Affairs Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and works together to raise awareness, monitor and report on threats and to provide advice to protect democratic processes."

"CSE’s Canadian centre for cybersecurity also worked with Elections Canada to help secure election systems and infrastructure. A panel of non-partisan senior civil servants administered the critical election incident public protocol, which includes a mandate during the election caretaker period to inform the public if an incident, or series of incidents, occurred that threatened Canada’s ability to hold a free and fair election.

"During election 2021, the Government of Canada did not detect foreign or domestic interference that would have warranted the panel undertaking public communications to warn of the presence of such interference. The threshold for making an announcement is the emergence of exceptional circumstances that could impair our ability to have a free and fair election, whether based on a single incident or an accumulation of incidents. As was the case in 2019, no public announcement has been made," May concluded.

In July, it was reported by Reuters that foreign interference in Canada's 2021 election was likely.

According to Canada's electronic signals spy agency, foreign state-sponsored actors "will try to interfere in the next Canadian federal election but not on the scale of the campaign mounted against the United States," they reported in July.

The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) said that the risk of foreign mischief had increased due to COVID-19.

"State-sponsored actors with links to Russia, China, and Iran have conducted most of the observed cyber threat activity against democratic processes worldwide," a CSE report said.

"We judge it very likely that Canadian voters will encounter some form of foreign cyber interference...ahead of, and during, the next federal election. It is unlikely to be at the scale seen in the United States," the report said, according to Reuters.