A House of Commons committee is summoning national security agencies and Liberal cabinet ministers to testify about China's alleged influence over the last federal election.
The move comes after a report last week in the Globe and Mail that said China worked in the 2021 election to defeat Conservative candidates considered unfriendly to Beijing and to help ensure a Liberal minority government.
Most of the witnesses the committee intends to hear from have already participated in its study of allegations of foreign interference in the 2019 election.
Michael Pal, an associate law professor at the University of Ottawa, says academic sources, journalists and Canada's national security agencies have suggested that foreign interference happens in every federal election now.
But he says its effect remains unclear.
Pal says the problem should be handled in a non-partisan way to prevent any public doubt about the integrity of the electoral process.