PM tells foreign interference probe government's hands are tied on intelligence leaks to media
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the Foreign Interference Commission on Wednesday that intelli‐ gence leaks to the media can't be refuted without declassifying secret infor‐ mation.
The prime minister told the commission looking into foreign meddling in Canadian elections that revealing se‐ cret information to refute leaks would put some secu‐ rity officials at risk.
"Why these leaks were of such deep concern was that we couldn't actually correct the record without … sharing with adversaries some of the information or the methods that we use to keep Canadi‐ ans safe," he said.
Commissioner MarieJosée Hogue's inquiry is in‐ vestigating claims that China and others meddled in Canada's past two elections. She is also assessing the flow of information within govern‐ ment related to alleged med‐ dling in the previous two fed‐ eral elections.
The inquiry was triggered by a series of media reports, citing unnamed sources and leaked documents, and re‐ peated calls from the opposi‐ tion.
WATCH | Elections were 'decided by Canadians' de‐ spite interference attemp‐ ts, Trudeau says:
One of those media re‐ ports claimed that in 2019, security officials told senior officials in the Prime Minis‐ ter's Office (PMO) that then Liberal candidate Han Dong "was part of a Chinese for‐ eign interference network" and that the party should "rescind Dong's candidacy."
The 2019 allegations in‐ volved international students being bused to the federal riding of Don Valley North, Dong's riding, to vote in the Liberal nomination contest.
Trudeau said he was briefed about concerns that CSIS had about Dong's nomi‐ nation contest, but said the evidence wasn't sufficient to remove Dong as a candidate.
"The decision to remove someone [as a candidate] needed a high threshold, a threshold that incidentally I have met and seen in many other cases," he said.
"But in this case I didn't
feel there was sufficiently credible information that would justify this very signifi‐ cant step."
Prior to Trudeau's testi‐ mony, former public safety minister Bill Blair, now the defence minister, said he was not concerned about claims that China interfered in the Toronto Liberal nomination race because Canada's spy agency could not back them up.
"Intelligence isn't neces‐ sarily factual evidence of what took place," Blair told the foreign interference in‐ quiry Wednesday.
Before his public testimo‐ ny, Blair spoke to commis‐ sion lawyers in both classi‐ fied and unclassified settings. Summaries of those discus‐ sions were made public Wednesday.
Blair, who served as pub‐ lic safety minister from 20192021, said he was briefed by the Canadian Security Intelli‐ gence Service (CSIS) after the 2019 election on alleged for‐ eign interference-related ir‐ regularities after he was shuffled into the new cabinet role.
According to those sum‐ maries, Blair said he was "not concerned about the intelli‐ gence at the time."
When asked why, Blair told the inquiry CSIS "indi‐ cated to me that they did not at that time have other cor‐ roborating evidence in any way to substantiate that."
According to the sum‐ mary, Blair also told commis‐ sion lawyers he had faith in CSIS and believed that if the service had believed Dong to be under the influence of the People's Republic of China, "it would have taken the appro‐ priate actions."
He also told the inquiry CSIS did not indicate that Dong had any knowledge of the irregularities.
Dong left the Liberal cau‐ cus last year following anoth‐ er media report alleging he advised a senior Chinese diplomat in February 2021 that Beijing should hold off on freeing Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. He de‐ nies those allegations and has filed a $15 million defamation lawsuit against Global News and its parent company Corus Entertain‐ ment.
Trudeau's testimony about the media leaks echoes that of his deputy chief of staff Brian Clow.
On Tuesday, Clow ad‐ dressed the allegations about Kovrig and Spavor. He said he learned of the accusations only after media contacted the Prime Minister's Office about them.
"We had a number of dis‐ cussions about how we could get the truth out about this document so that it could be known that Han Dong did not actually advocate for the de‐ lay of the release of the two Michaels," he said.
Clow said the PMO had classified information that would refute the claim and senior staff to the prime min‐ ister discussed whether they could declassify it. Ultimately, Clow said, they decided they could not make it public at the time, despite his strong feeling that the allegations were "wrong."
Last week, the inquiry viewed a document that showed CSIS director David Vigneault had issued a burn notice for an intelligence as‐ sessment about possible for‐ eign interference in the Don Valley nomination race
The commission's lawyers wrote that Vigneault told them he "has no recollection" of why the document was re‐ called, but was confident that he only would have agreed to do so "because there was an issue with it."
"He had never and would never recall a document be‐ cause it was too sensitive," the document says.
Gould says she was briefed about low-level Chi‐ nese interference
The inquiry heard earlier in the day from former de‐ mocratic institutions minister Karina Gould, who said Canada's spy agency told her after the 2019 federal elec‐ tion that it had observed lowlevel foreign interference ac‐ tivities by China but that the vote was not compromised.
Gould, who held the port‐ folio from early 2017 to No‐ vember 2019, said CSIS told her Beijing's interference ac‐ tivities in the lead-up to that October vote were similar to what had been seen in the past.
"Probably in every elec‐ tion that Canada has ever had, there have been at‐ tempts at foreign interfer‐ ence, just like in probably every election in a democracy around the world - probably since ancient Greece - there have been attempts at for‐ eign interference," she said Wednesday.
"Whether they are suc‐ cessful or not is another question."
The minister was ques‐ tioned about her role in cre‐ ating and setting the parame‐ ters for what's been called the "panel of five" - a team of five bureaucrats tasked with reviewing possible threats to the federal election.
Hogue already has heard that China and other state actors attempted to meddle in the 2019 and 2021 elec‐ tions, but that the panel did‐ n't feel those attempts reached the high threshold to make a public alert.
Gould defends threshold for public alert
Gould, who now serves as the government's House leader and is on maternity leave, defended that high threshold under cross-exami‐ nation.
"The very act of making a decision to announce some‐ thing publicly could be seen as interference itself," she said.
Gould said she was not briefed on the Don Valley North concerns during or af‐ ter the election. She also said she was not made aware that security-cleared Liberal Party representatives were briefed in late September 2019 about the allegations of for‐ eign interference by China in the Toronto-area nomination contest.
Gould said she wasn't briefed during the 2019 elec‐ tion about foreign interfer‐ ence because that's how she designed the process, adding she had a vested interest in the outcome of the election and it would have been inap‐ propriate to receive those in‐ telligence briefings.
'They just wanted us to have the information'
Testifying Tuesday, Jeremy Broadhurst - the Liberals' na‐ tional campaign director for the 2019 federal election disputed claims that CSIS warned the party to drop Dong has a candidate.
"They weren't making a recommendation that the party should do anything," he said. "They weren't advising that the prime minister take any specific actions. They just wanted us to have the infor‐ mation that they had at that time."
Longtime cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc, who over‐ saw democratic institutions before taking on the role of public safety minister last summer, told the inquiry Wednesday he was not al‐ ways briefed with granular details and learned of some specific allegations when they were published by cer‐ tain media outlets.
Trudeau's high-profile ap‐ pearance was originally sup‐ posed to mark the end of this stage of the inquiry, but the commissioner agreed to re‐ call Vigneault to respond to questions about certain doc‐ uments by video conference on Friday.
Hogue's interim report is due in early May.
The inquiry will then shift to broader policy issues. A fi‐ nal report is expected by the end of the year.