In both elections, China got the outcome it wanted — the reelection of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with a minority government — but intelligence officials have said there is no evidence that Beijing’s efforts had an impact on the result.

The document was prepared for the prime minister’s office after Canadian news outlets reported last year on leaked intelligence documents that alleged that China sought to interfere in the elections. Now those claims are at the center of a public inquiry in Ottawa.

Trudeau, who long resisted pressure from opposition parties to launch a public inquiry, will testify before Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Marie-Josée Hogue on Wednesday.

The inquiry began public hearings in January and will wrap up in the fall. It will involve testimony from dozens of witnesses, including election officials, members of diaspora groups, the country’s top spy and Trudeau’s closest advisers.

Intelligence officials have cautioned that reports that have been introduced as evidence in the inquiry might contain information that is uncorroborated and based on a single source. The reports represent a snapshot in time, they’ve warned, and subsequent information might have since emerged to invalidate the findings.

Hogue will release an interim report in May and a final report in December. Here’s what to know.

What was China allegedly up to?

A secret 2021 intelligence report introduced as evidence identified China as “the most significant” foreign interference actor, one that acts in a “sophisticated, pervasive and persistent” manner to target politicians at all levels of government.

China, the report said, uses proxies, state entities, Chinese officials in Canada, its diaspora, Chinese-language news outlets and “inducements or coercive means” to achieve its aim: ensuring the election of candidates “perceived to further or at least not actively oppose” Beijing’s interests.

Some targets are unaware of China’s interest in them, the report said. Others “willingly cooperate.”

A top-secret intelligence report from 2021 said there were several articles in Chinese-language news outlets and on WeChat that contained false claims about Conservative Party candidates ahead of that year’s election to dissuade Chinese Canadians from voting for them.

While there wasn’t “clear evidence” that the Chinese government directed the campaign, the report said there were “indicators of potential coordination” between Chinese-language news outlets in Canada and those of the Chinese Communist Party.

Erin O’Toole, leader of the Conservative Party during that election, testified that he believes the party lost as many as nine seats because of the campaign. It was “nowhere enough to change the results of the election,” he said, but meant “democratic rights were being trampled upon.”

The inquiry has also focused on a Liberal Party nomination race in 2019 for a Toronto-area electoral district. A 2020 intelligence report said Chinese government officials “likely manipulated” that contest, which was won by Han Dong. He was later elected in that year’s federal race.

Dong testified that he had sought the support of international students from China studying at a private high school. They were bused in to vote for him in the nomination race, but he said he did not know who chartered the bus.

In fact, he only remembered having sought their support after his wife reminded him of it shortly before his testimony. It is not against the rules for international students to vote in a Liberal Party nomination race as long as they live in that electoral district.

But an unclassified intelligence summary said that there were indications that a known proxy agent of the Chinese government provided students who didn’t live in the district with falsified documents and that the Chinese Consulate threatened to revoke their student visas or punish their family members in China if they didn’t vote for Dong.

The summary says that some of the information was reported to intelligence officials before the election but was “not firmly substantiated,” while other information came to light after the vote.

Dong quit the Liberal caucus last year and sits as an independent.

China has long denied interfering in Canada’s elections.

Were other actors interfering too?

Intelligence reports introduced as evidence in the inquiry named India as a country that “actively” engages in foreign interference here, working through Indian officials in Canada and seeking to leverage its large diaspora community “to shape political outcomes in its favor.”

An unclassified intelligence summary said that India focused on a small number of ridings in the 2021 election and that a proxy agent might have clandestinely provided illicit funding to pro-India candidates — possibly without their knowledge.

India, intelligence reports said, is focused on suppressing support for a separatist movement that seeks to carve from India an independent Sikh state called Khalistan and seeks to oppose the reelection of candidates perceived to possess pro-Khalistani views.

The Indian high commission in Canada did not respond to a request for comment, but the country’s External Affairs Ministry has previously dismissed claims that it has sought to interfere in Canada’s internal affairs as “baseless.”

Trudeau in September said in Parliament that there were “credible allegations” that agents of the Indian government were behind the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia last year. India has denied the allegations.

Pakistan is also named in the documents, though it is identified as a “limited” actor. Its aims are similar to those of India and China: to clandestinely support candidates with positions favorable to their interests.

A top-secret report from 2020 said that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service undertook a “threat reduction measure” to reduce the government of Pakistan’s attempts to interfere in Canada’s democratic processes that had a “tangible effect.”

The high commission of Pakistan in Canada did not respond to a request for comment.

Russia possesses “robust” foreign interference capacity, according to a July 2021 intelligence report introduced as evidence in the inquiry, but lacked the intent to interfere because Canada’s main federal political parties are largely united in their stance toward Moscow. The Kremlin saw no benefit in supporting one party over the others.

Was the public alerted to alleged election meddling?

No. In 2019, the federal government created a panel of senior civil servants and tasked it with notifying candidates if they have been the target of interference and to alert the public about threats to election integrity.

Members of the panel told the commission that they made no such announcements because none of the intelligence they reviewed met the threshold for notification. They maintained that the overall results of the votes weren’t compromised.

The bureaucrats said that sometimes the intelligence they were provided was based on a single source, uncorroborated or of limited reliability. It was also not clear, they said, whether misinformation or disinformation online was spreading organically or linked to a foreign actor.

“The possibility that a proxy may have done something is not enough,” testified François Daigle, a deputy minister of justice and member of the panel. “We would need reliable information that we could test to know there’s actually something nefarious going on here and we have to correct the record.”

Nathalie Drouin, a former deputy minister of justice who served on the panel, said intervention could do “more harm than good.”

“It had the potential to create confusion and also to be seen as interfering in a democratic exercise,” testified Drouin, now Trudeau’s national security and intelligence adviser. “We want also to make sure that we were not being seen as taking a position — a partisan position — in any debate.”