Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Senator Gold, in recent days, National Security and Intelligence Advisor Jody Thomas, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Infrastructure and Communities Dominic LeBlanc and other senior officials have confirmed that they are not aware of any alleged interference by China with respect to 11 candidates in the 2019 election. Even so, there is a witch hunt going on for the names of the 11 candidates as well as the identities of an unspecified number of campaign workers and political staffers who are also alleged to have been funded by the Chinese government.

It is no surprise that Chinese Canadians are among those who are most likely to be put under a cloud. What is the government doing to draw a line under this kind of irresponsible speculation?

Senator Woo: The source of this allegation is a story by Global News that had no named sources and no subsequent validation by any other news outlet. Yet, the story has been repeated ad nauseam by other media and by members of both this chamber and the other place. If the story is, indeed, bogus, it has done serious damage to our democracy. Indeed, this reporting should be understood as a kind of election denialism.

Why is the government not calling out this egregious example of disinformation?