Failure to communicate: what week two of the foreign interference inquiry revealed

Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue's mandate for the foreign interference inquiry is sprawling — but one of her key tasks is to examine and assess the flow of information related to alleged meddling in the previous two federal elections.

Testimony and documents published during week two of the inquiry's public hearings suggest Canada's approach to safeguarding those elections was plagued by failures to communicate important information.

From a top bureaucrat tasked with safeguarding the integrity of those elections, from political parties and from candidates who allegedly were targeted, a common question emerged: Why were we not informed?

Parties kept in the dark

The inquiry, led by Quebec judge Marie-Josee Hogue, expects to hear testimony from more than 40 people, including community members, political party representatives and federal election officials.

Former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole, who led the party during the 2021 federal election, received a classified briefing on foreign interference activities by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in May of 2023.

When he was asked by senior counsel for the Foreign Interference Commission during a public hearing of the foreign interference inquiry earlier this week if he found that briefing useful, O'Toole said he would have appreciated getting the briefing «a few years earlier.»

O'Toole said the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force (SITE) — the federal body tasked with safeguarding Canadian elections — told a member of his election team at the beginning of the campaign that there were no real problems in the 2019 election campaign and SITE didn't expect any serious problems in the 2021 campaign.

«We were kind of lulled into a sense of