The federal body established to protect Canada’s electoral process will be monitoring the Liberal Party of Canada’s leadership campaign for possible foreign interference as the race to replace Justin Trudeau gets underway.
The Security and Intelligence Threats to Election Task Force (SITE) was established in 2019 and includes representatives of CSIS, the RCMP, Global Affairs Canada and the Communications Security Establishment, the country’s signals intelligence agency.
Since May 2023, SITE has been active for the 10 byelections that have occurred and tasked with producing public reports about observations of any foreign interference directed at these votes, and Nathalie Drouin, deputy clerk of the Privy Council, said it would do so again.
The announcement comes amid concerns that foreign interference could come into play as the Liberals look to name their first leader since 2013 when Trudeau took the reins.
Dennis Molinaro, a professor at Ontario Tech University and former security analyst with the federal government, told Global News last week that leadership races were “extremely vulnerable” to interference attempts, especially given that rules for the races are set by the political parties themselves.
He said the party’s old way of electing a leader was “terrible” since it left the door open to foreign agents; before the new rules were announced last week, one did not need to be a citizen or permanent resident of Canada to be able to vote.
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The new rules require Canadian citizenship or permanent residence and for a voter to be at least 14 years old, as well as to not have publicly declared an intention to be a candidate for election nor a member of any other federal political party.
Molinaro said the new rules are welcome but “insufficient” unless there’s a verifiable way to check and confirm citizenship.
According to Drouin, who is also the national security and intelligence advisor to the prime minister, SITE would provide updates to the deputy ministers’ committee on intelligence action, which will ensure any threats to electoral integrity are addressed swiftly and effectively.
Briefings on foreign interference and best practices for protection, such as increased cybersecurity and “rigorous screening of donations and memberships” will be offered to all leadership candidates.
Under a protocol introduced in 2019 for general elections, there would be a public announcement if a panel of bureaucrats determined that an incident — or accumulation of incidents — threatened the ability to have a free and fair vote.
After reports of people registering fraudulently to vote in the Liberal leadership race, a party spokesperson said they would act to remove such registrations.
“The Liberal Party of Canada is aware of these ridiculous, fraudulent registration attempts. The national Party Secretary has the ability to remove registrants from our lists, and will be removing these fraudulent profiles well in advance of any leadership vote,” Parker Lund, spokesperson for the Liberals, said in a post on X on Thursday.
The Liberal leadership vote will be the first major party leadership race since the establishment of the foreign interference commission’s inquiry and has raised questions in recent days about whether the process could be vulnerable to foreign interference.
That new Liberal leader will become prime minister for as long as the party remains the current government, and would lead the party into the next election.
Drouin notes the measures being put in place for the Liberal leadership race will also be available for any future leadership contests for all political parties recognized by the House of Commons.
—with files from Global News’ Uday Rana and The Canadian Press
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
