Canada intel agency says India, China intend to meddle in poll

China and India are likely to try to interfere in the Canadian general election on April 28, while Russia and Pakistan have the potential to do so, the country’s spy service said on Monday.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service made its comments at a time when Ottawa’s relations with both India and China are chilly. Beijing and New Delhi have denied previous allegations of interference.

Canada was slow in responding to efforts by China and India to interfere in the 2019 and 2021 elections but their outcomes were unaffected by the meddling, an official probe concluded in a final report released in January.

Vanessa Lloyd, deputy director of operations at CSIS, told a press conference that hostile state actors were increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence to meddle in elections.

“The PRC (People’s Republic of China) is highly likely to use AI enabled tools to attempt to interfere with Canada’s democratic process in this current election,” she said.

The Indian diplomatic mission in Ottawa was not immediately available for comment.

Russia and Pakistan could potentially conduct foreign interference activities against Canada, Lloyd added.

“It’s often very difficult to establish a direct link between foreign interference activities and election results ...

Nevertheless, threat activities can erode public trust in the integrity of Canada’s democratic processes and institutions,” she said.

Meanwhile, quoting unnamed sources, The Globe and Mail alleged Tuesday that agents of India and their proxies meddled in the 2022 election of Pierre Poilievre, a Conservative Party leader.

Quoting a source with “top-secret clearance”, it said that the CSIS learned that Indian agents were involved in raising money and organising within the South Asian community for Poilievre during the leadership race, which he won.

The relations between India and Canada plummetted to a new low after former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau alleged in September 2023 that India was behind the killing of Khalistani leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar.