Foreign interference: LeBlanc on foreign agent registry possibility

Democratic Institutions Minister Dominic LeBlanc says he plans to table legislation this week to help the federal government address foreign interference, but he wouldn’t say whether the proposal will include a foreign agent registry.

LeBlanc — who also serves as the minister of public safety and intergovernmental affairs — said he’s put a bill aimed at combatting foreign interference on notice, paving way for it to be tabled in the House of Commons in the coming days.

There have long been calls for the federal government to implement such a registry — an online searchable database of agents working for foreign governments, similar to the systems in place in Australia and the United States — but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said it is a “complex” file.

In an interview on CTV’s Question Period airing Sunday, when asked by host Vassy Kapelos whether one of the tools the government is proposing to counter foreign interference is a registry, LeBlanc said he wouldn’t discuss the details of the legislation before it’s tabled.

“I want to be respectful of Parliament,” he said. “There are rules around discussing legislation before it’s introduced in Parliament.”

Last fall, members of the House ethics committee released an 82-page report at the conclusion of their monthslong study on foreign interference, and in it called on the government to act on their nearly two dozen recommendations, including putting in place a foreign agent registry “as soon as possible.”

And last September, LeBlanc told Kapelos in an interview on CTV News Channel’s Power Play that his government “hope(d) to proceed quickly” on legislation to implement such a registry.

LeBlanc’s most recent interview comes on the heels of commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue releasing the first of two expected reports in the foreign interference inquiry.

Hogue’s interim report, released Friday, with the final report set for the end of this year, concludes there was foreign interference in both the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, which may have affected two ridings, but the overall election outcomes were not impacted.