The Peace Tower on Parliament Hill is pictured from the West Gate in Ottawa on Monday, May 6, 2024.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Update: The federal government will not release the names of parliamentarians who were accused in a national-security watchdog report of knowingly working with foreign states to meddle in Canadian democracy, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said on June 6. Read more here.
Canadian intelligence services have gathered information indicating some federal politicians are collaborating with foreign governments to advance their own interests, a new report says.
The security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians tabled a report Monday saying that it has been told some Canadian politicians are working with India and China in what may be illegal behaviour.
“Unfortunately, the committee has also seen troubling intelligence that some Parliamentarians are, in the words of the intelligence services, ‘semi-witting or witting’ participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in our politics,” the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) said in a report. It did not indicate whether these people are MPs or senators or both.
The body declined to name the politicians and Liberal MP David McGuinty, who chairs the committee, said it’s up to the RCMP to investigate wrongdoing.
The report is the latest to detail shortcomings in how the government addresses foreign efforts to meddle in Canadian democracy. Last week, a review tabled by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, an independent body, described an “unacceptable state of affairs” in which the country’s spy agency and the public safety department fail to track who has read and received key reports. Extensive testimony at parliamentary hearings and the public inquiry into foreign interference have also laid bare failures to respond to concerns around foreign interference.
In Monday’s report, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians said that while Canada’s intelligence community increased its reporting to Ottawa on the threat of foreign interference, agencies and departments such as the Privy Council Office, Global Affairs and Public Safety “did not adequately consider” the intelligence reporting or assessments supplied to them.
The committee is urging Ottawa to consider extending the jurisdiction of Elections Canada to include party nomination contests and party leadership conventions. It’s also calling for a package of reforms to overhaul Canadian law to fight interference including a foreign-influence registry and amendments to the Criminal Code and Security of Information Act.
It said the instances of federal politicians collaborating with foreign states may be illegal but they are unlikely to lead to criminal charges because of a “long-standing issue of protecting classified information and methods in judicial processes.”
A guide to foreign interference and China’s suspected influence in Canada
Examples, the committee said, include parliamentarians “communicating frequently with foreign missions before or during a political campaign to obtain support from community groups or businesses which the diplomatic missions promise to quietly mobilize in a candidate’s favour.”
Some parliamentarians, it said, are “accepting knowingly, or through willful blindness, funds or benefits from foreign missions or their proxies which have been layered or otherwise disguised to conceal their source.”
The committee said it has received intelligence indicating some federal politicians are “providing foreign diplomatic officials with privileged information on the work or opinions of fellow Parliamentarians, knowing that such information will be used by those officials to inappropriately pressure Parliamentarians to change their positions.”
Further, it said some parliamentarians are “responding to the requests or direction of foreign officials to improperly influence Parliamentary colleagues or Parliamentary business to the advantage of a foreign state” or “providing information learned in confidence from the government to a known intelligence officer of a foreign state.”
Mr. McGuinty said the MPs and senators who sit on the intelligence oversight body wanted to be very clear they consider the behaviour of what they characterized as a “few parliamentarians” to be “deeply unethical” and “counter to, and in breach of the oaths and affirmations that parliamentarians take to conduct themselves in the best interests of Canada when they’re sworn in.”
Asked why he didn’t name the parliamentarians, Mr. McGuinty said the committee went as far as it could given the constraints put upon the committee in its enabling legislation. The committee is not able to divulge information contained in cabinet confidences, continuing intelligence activities or investigations that might lead to a prosecution, among other constraints.
The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians is not a committee of Parliament but was created by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to provide more oversight on security matters. It’s currently composed of three Liberal MPs, two Conservatives, one New Democrat, one Bloc Québécois and three senators.
In its findings Monday, the committee said countries such as China and India are targeting Canada’s democratic processes with “sophisticated and pervasive” interference, but Ottawa has been slow to respond.
“This slow response to a known threat was a serious failure and one from which Canada may feel the consequences for years to come.”
The report was ordered by Mr. Trudeau last year after reports by The Globe and Mail and Global TV on Chinese foreign-interference and disinformation campaigns, drawing on confidential national-security sources and leaked secret documents. At the time, the Prime Minister’s Office said the committee was “well placed” to examine foreign-interference attempts.
The report was censored before release to remove details that the government believed contained “injurious or privileged information.”
But the summaries of what was removed also revealed new details of alleged foreign interference.
A summary of details redacted at one point says what was removed referred to a former “Member of Parliament maintaining a relationship with a foreign intelligence officer.” In another instance, where the committee’s report was censored, the summary of what was removed says it detailed “two specific instances where PRC officials allegedly interfered in the leadership races of the Conservative Party of Canada.” PRC stands for People’s Republic of China.
In a third case, where some details were removed from the committee report, it notes that some elected Canadian officials began wittingly assisting foreign actors soon after their election. The next few sentences are redacted but the summary of what was removed says it “described examples of members of Parliament who worked to influence their colleagues on India’s behalf and proactively provided confidential information to Indian officials.”
The report also talks about an unidentified former MP who maintained a relationship with a foreign intelligence officer and “proactively provided the intelligence officer with information provided in confidence.”
In a fifth instance the notes explaining what was censored say removed sentences talked of “India likely reimbursing a proxy who had provided funds to candidates of two federal parties” and how CSIS had assessed that “none of the candidates were aware the funds were from India,” and “that meetings between newly elected members of Parliament who had received funding and Indian officials were to take place.”
The committee said the Canadian government was aware as far back as 2018 that reforms it had implemented that year to safeguard elections were insufficient to address foreign interference in democratic processes and institutions.
The body said significant differences persist in the Canadian government on how to interpret the “gravity and prevalence” of the threat of foreign interference, including at what point action is needed.
This committee report was originally submitted to the Prime Minister in March, many weeks before the government tabled Bill C-70. That legislation would accomplish many of these reforms but it remains unclear whether this bill will pass before Parliament rises for the summer.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc welcomed the report but said the government disagreed with the committee’s interpretation of some of the intelligence. He said the government also felt the committee had not acknowledged the full breadth of outreach it had conducted with parliamentarians to inform them of the threat posed by foreign interference.
Asked whether the allegations of parliamentarians working with foreign governments should be investigated, Mr. LeBlanc said he’s confident authorities are doing their jobs. “I’m not going to comment on a specific allegation like that,” he told The Globe and Mail in an interview. “But I have a lot of confidence in CSIS and the RCMP and other security agencies to do the work that they have to.”