Intelligence watchdog calls out panel for failing to sound alarm on election interference

One of the core policies the Liberals introduced to protect Canada's elections has been criticized again for failing to alert Canadians to foreign interference it observed in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

In a recent report, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA), one of Canada's intelligence watchdog bodies, criticized the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol (CEIPP) Panel, calling it «not adequately designed.»

Launched ahead of the 2019 election, the panel was presented by the federal government at the time as a key tool to defend elections from the type of foreign interference seen in the 2016 U.S. election and the Brexit vote.

The panel, made up of five senior public servants, received intelligence briefings from the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) task force. The task force is composed of representatives of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the RCMP, Global Affairs Canada and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada's cyberspy agency.

The panel was tasked with altering the public if it felt foreign interference threatened the integrity of a federal election. The panel made no such announcements during the 2021 and 2019 election campaigns.

NSIRA was tasked last year with investigating how information about Chinese interference flowed between intelligence agencies and the federal government. It also looked at how the panel and task force functioned during the election.

The review agency's report, tabled late Monday in the House of Commons, pointed to «deficiencies» in the system.

The report said SITE and the panel were set up mainly to respond to online disinformation campaigns, despite the Canadian intelligence community's belief that