Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre has refuted a media report alleging India organized support for his successful Tory leadership bid in 2022, saying he won the contest “fair and square.”
The Globe and Mail reported on Tuesday that Indian agents and their proxies allegedly interfered in Poilievre’s election to become the Conservative Party leader in 2022.
“Let’s be honest, I won the leadership fair and square, even my political competitors like Mr. Patrick Brown have publicly testified under oath that that was the case,” Poilievre said during an election campaign stop in Vaughan, Ont., on Tuesday.
The Globe report cited an anonymous source, who it said had top-secret clearance, as saying that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) became aware of Indian agents being involved in raising campaign funds and organizing within the South Asian community for Poilievre during the leadership race.
However, CSIS did not share the information with Poilievre, the report said, since he does not have the required security clearance to access intelligence documents on foreign interference in Canada.
In response to a reporter’s question about the allegation, Poilievre quoted a line from the Globe article, which read: “CSIS also did not have evidence that Mr. Poilievre or members of his inner circle were aware of the alleged actions.”
Poilievre also referenced the foreign interference inquiry commission led by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue that heard testimony from CSIS witnesses noting they had no reason to believe the impacted Conservative candidates would have been aware of alleged support from the Indian government.
The Hogue report that was released earlier this year concluded that while foreign interference remains a threat, a few isolated incidents did not compromise the integrity of the two recent federal elections.
For months, Poilievre has refused to obtain top-secret clearance so CSIS officials could share intelligence on foreign interference with him.
Poilievre has long argued that receiving classified intelligence would prevent him from holding the government to account on foreign interference. But ex-national security officials who spoke to Global News are skeptical of that position.
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Poilievre said he’s already been cleared when he was a cabinet minister — he became a cabinet minister in February 2015, and security clearances are required “before an employee may access classified information, assets or work sites.”
“What I will not do is commit to the oath of secrecy that the Liberals want to impose on me,” he said Tuesday.
“They don’t want me to be able to speak about these matters, so they’ll bring me into a dark room and they’ll say, we’re going to give you a little bit of breadcrumbs of Intel, and then we’ll tell you you can’t talk about any of this stuff anymore.”
According to the government, a secret level security clearance is good for 10 years.
A top-secret level security clearance is good for five years.
Speaking to reporters earlier in Halifax, Liberal Party Leader Mark Carney said Poilievre “has to answer” for the allegation as reported by the Globe and “the lack of integrity in the Conservative leadership race.”
“I find it beyond baffling, I find it downright irresponsible that the leader of the opposition, day after day, month after month, year after year, refuses to obtain his security clearance,” Carney said Tuesday.
“As a normal course in peacetime, in times of tranquil, that’s unacceptable then, but at this point in our history when we face the greatest threats that we’ve faced in generations for most of our lifetimes, he has to answer for that.”
Carney said on March 14 that he had received his security clearance.
New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh said Poilievre’s failure to get security clearance disqualifies him as a candidate to become the prime minister, saying he’s “not someone that we can trust to stand up to foreign interference.”
“This new information confirms that he is not someone that takes the threats against our country seriously and it is not someone that we can trust to be the prime minister,” Singh said during a campaign stop in Toronto on Tuesday.
“If you care about the country, if you care about democracy, you would get security clearance and find out as much as possible to protect our country, but he (Poilievre) chose not to and the only reason he chose not to is because he wanted to put his party and his partisan interests ahead of the country.”
Singh added that he has gotten security clearance and will continue to get intelligence updates to defend Canada’s democracy.
Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-François Blanchet called Poilievre “irresponsible” for not taking the necessary steps to get intelligence briefings.
Speaking in Neuville, Que., Blanchet said the latest report that follows previous reporting by the Globe and Global News that also alleged Chinese interference in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections “must mean something” about the Liberals and Conservatives.
“They are careless about national security and about intrusion of foreign powers into the affairs of their own parties,” Blanchet said.
“The behavior of both the Liberals and the Conservatives regarding foreign intrusions is like leaving for vacations leaving the garage door open. Anybody gets in and does whatever they want.”
— With files from Global News’ Alex Boutilier
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