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And, that is despite — or perhaps because of — sweeping legislative changes made last year aimed at reducing foreign interference and a ban on foreign donations passed earlier this year.

Half of the established democracies that held elections last year experienced cyber-interference at triple the rate of three years ago. The report also mentions several instances when Canada was targeted in the past.

What’s “improbable,” CSE said, is that Canada will experience interference on the scale of Russian activity in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

No surprise there. Russia doesn’t care as much about Canada as the United States.

What is surprising is that there is no mention of China.

In late December, CSE issued a special bulletin a few weeks after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was detained in Vancouver pending extradition to the United States on fraud charges.

“It is almost certain that actors likely associated with the People’s Republic of China ministry of state security are responsible for the compromise of several managed service providers beginning as early as 2016,” it said.

MSPs are companies like Bell, Rogers, Telus and IBM Canada — some of the same companies that already use Huawei equipment and have expressed interest in buying its 5G network gear.

Australian academic and ethicist Clive Hamilton questions the focus of the CSE report and says it is “disappointing” that it looks at election interference through a Russian lens.