Jesse Kline: Liberals want to let non-Canadians choose our next prime minister

It's amazing that the party still doesn't take foreign interference seriously

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Published Jan 07, 2025  •  4 minute read

Justin Trudeau makes a speech after winning the Liberal leadership in 2013. Photo by JOHN MAJOR/QMI AGENCY

Allegations of foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections fundamentally shook the trust that many Canadians have in the democratic process. The fact that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seemed to have no problem attempting to sweep the whole thing under the rug instead of forming a bipartisan coalition to weed out election meddling certainly didn’t help.

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Now that Trudeau has announced his resignation and a leadership contest to replace him, the Liberal party has an opportunity to start fixing the problem by ensuring that the leadership race is as robust and secure as possible. Unfortunately, Liberal sources have already told CBC News they have no intention of changing the rules for the upcoming race, specifically rules that permit non-citizens to vote in it.

If so, Canadians will have no reason to trust that their next prime minister, for however long he or she may hold the office, will not be beholden to Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, should one of them decide to interfere.

This is a significant concern. The national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians uncovered “two specific instances” of alleged Chinese interference in Conservative leadership races. In the spring, the committee’s Liberal chair, MP David McGuinty, warned that, “Nomination processes and leadership races are particularly vulnerable to foreign interference.”

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The initial report of the Foreign Interference Commission also cautioned that, “The eligibility criteria for voting in nomination contests do not seem very stringent, and the control measures in place do not seem very robust,” with Justice Marie-Josee Hogue calling such contests the “gateway” to foreign interference.

In one example, her commission found “strong indications” that a bus was chartered to take international students to vote in the 2019 Liberal nomination race in the Toronto riding of Don Valley North, which was won by Han Dong. In 2023, Dong was forced to sit as an independent, after a Global News report, citing intelligence sources, alleged he had become a “witting affiliate” of China’s foreign interference campaign.

Ordinary elections are limited to Canadian citizens over the age of 18, but under current rules, people, including non-citizens, as young as 14 may register as Liberals and the party’s constitution only stipulates that anyone voting in a leadership contest must be “a registered Liberal for the 41 days immediately preceding the day of the leadership vote” who “ordinarily resides in Canada.”

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This would seem to exclude Canadian citizens living abroad, but a busload of Chinese students or Hamas sympathizers would be fair game. According to Statistics Canada, there are currently over three-million non-permanent residents living in Canada — all of whom could potentially be eligible to elect our next prime minister.

As of 2021, the top source countries of non-permanent residents include India (28.5 per cent) and China (10.5 per cent), both of which have been accused of foreign interference in the past, along with Iran (3.1 per cent).

Worse still, in the last Liberal leadership contest, electors weren’t even required to purchase a party membership. All they needed were a couple pieces of ID, which could include a student identification card and a transit pass, along with a pledge to “support the purposes of the party.”

And what exactly are the “purposes of the party” other than winning elections? Based on the track record of the Trudeau Liberals, one could easily make the case that cozying up to China’s Communists, unjustly singling out Israel at the United Nations or tacitly supporting antisemitic rioters who attack Jewish businesses and places of worship is well within its purview.

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If the rules are not tightened up, it’s not a stretch to suggest that an adversary like China may try to charter another bus full of students to influence the upcoming leadership contest, or that the highly vocal pro-Hamas crowd will start signing up new members and rally behind a candidate who’s even more anti-Israel than Trudeau.

While it is the right of citizens of a democracy to choose a party leader who represents their views, however abhorrent they may be, there is no reason to allow foreigners who are not eligible to participate in Canadian elections to influence such a monumental decision — especially given that the winning candidate will automatically become our next prime minister.

This is a responsibility the Liberal party doesn’t seem to be taking seriously. On Monday, its director of communications, Parker Lund, doubled down on the party’s lax voting requirements, gloating to CBC that the Liberals were “the first major federal party to invite grassroots supporters to join at no cost, and expanding participation in our movement, both with respect to age and citizenship status.

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“Our open and inclusive process ensures we hear from more people in the communities we engage with and helps foster civic engagement with those who may one day have the privilege to vote in a federal election.”

All fine and dandy. Except many of the people who could be included under the current rules don’t have the privilege of casting a ballot in a federal election, and this is not a vote for something frivolous like the Teen Choice Awards or the leader of the Green party. Plus, we have far too many documented instances of foreign powers trying to interfere in our democracy.

It is up to the Liberals to show leadership on this issue by strengthening eligibility requirements for voting in its leadership race and ensuring that Canadians have faith in the outcome of this democratic process. Just because their current leader came across looking like a Manchurian candidate by not taking allegations of foreign interference seriously, doesn’t mean the party has to help another one get elected.

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