Canada's Minister of National Defence Bill Blair walks to the House of Commons foyer to speak with journalists before Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Sept. 16.Blair Gable/Reuters
It took at least six weeks for Bill Blair, then-public safety minister, to sign an electronic and entry warrant to monitor former Ontario cabinet minister Michael Chan in the lead-up to the 2021 federal election, according to documents tabled at the foreign-interference inquiry.
Sworn testimony made public Friday suggests that the delay was eight weeks or more.
The public inquiry was looking into a report last year by The Globe and Mail that Mr. Blair took about four months to sign off on the surveillance of Mr. Chan, an influential Liberal Party powerbroker in the Greater Toronto Area.
The lag led to operational frustration from Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers, since it normally takes 10 days to get ministerial sign off.
A national-security source told The Globe then that the delay left little time for CSIS to get the final approval of a federal judge to plant bugs in Mr. Chan’s cars, home, office, computers and mobile phones before the 2021 campaign got under way.
The Globe did not identify the source because they risked prosecution under the Security of Information Act.
Mr. Blair has denied that his office delayed approving the warrant. He told the inquiry in April that he signed the Chan warrant some three hours after it landed on his desk.
Former CSIS director David Vigneault, who left the spy agency in July, and his former second-in-command Cindy Tessier, were interviewed by commission counsel this summer about the delay in authorizing the warrant. The transcripts of those discussions were tabled at the Hogue inquiry Friday.
Although the name of the target is not mentioned in the documents, Gib van Ert, a lawyer for Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong, told the inquiry Friday that Mr. Blair had agreed in earlier testimony that Mr. Chan, now deputy mayor of Markham, was the target of that warrant.
The inquiry heard Friday that the warrant sat in Mr. Blair’s office for 54 days from mid-March to May 11, 2021.
Ms. Tessier told the commission in the summer that “CSIS regional office, headquarters, the operational employees were very frustrated with what they perceived as a delay in obtaining the minister’s approval for the warrant.” She said there appeared to be no reason for the delay as Public Safety did not come back with questions about the warrant.
Ms. Tessier said CSIS provided a briefing on the warrant to Mr. Blair’s chief of staff, Zita Astravas, two weeks after the spy agency applied to the minister’s office for the electronic eavesdropping authority.
But she also testified that she had earlier given Ms. Astravas a head’s up that CSIS planned to submit a warrant on Mr. Chan.
Asked by Mr. van Ert when that notice took place, Ms. Tessier said: “I don’t recall if it was days or weeks.”
“How could it have been in his [Mr. Blair’s] office for all that time, with his chief of staff knowing about it, for 54 days and more – and not sharing that with him? Do you have any explanation?” Mr. van Ert asked Ms. Tessier. She replied: “I can’t explain that.”
Ms. Tessier testified that she wasn’t “under the impression that the warrant would be stalled” and that it was her interpretation of what Ms. Astravas was telling her “that the warrant was moving ahead.”
Ms. Astravas declined comment Friday, saying in an e-mail that “it would be unlawful for me to comment on, confirm or deny specific warrants or cases.”
Approximately five weeks after the warrant was sent to Mr. Blair’s office, Mr. Vigneault said he raised the issue directly with the minister “who did not demonstrate or express any hesitation in signing the warrant when it was presented to him approximately one week later. “
Mr. Vigneault testified that he “knew there were delays but no issue had been brought to his attention from Ms. Astravas, the minister’s office or his own team. For this reason, he was comfortable letting things play out.”
The former spy chief’s recollection was “that Mr. Blair was convinced by the information” that laid out the need for the warrant.
Ms. Tessier said she did not recall whether CSIS informed the Prime Minister’s Office that the target of the warrant was Mr. Chan and she did not know whether Ms. Astravas had briefed the PMO.
The national-security source said in The Globe report last year that some within the spy agency suspected the hesitancy was because of Mr. Chan’s role as a major organizer and fundraiser for the Liberal Party. Speculation within CSIS was that there was discussions at the “political level” about going after Mr. Chan, according to the source.
Mr. Chan has for years been a national-security target of CSIS because of alleged links to China’s Toronto consulate and association with proxies of Beijing. The Globe reported in 2015 that Mr. Chan had been the subject of CSIS security briefings in Ontario. He was in the Ontario Liberal cabinets of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne from 2007 to 2018.
China now more ‘audacious and sophisticated’ in foreign-interference operations, Hogue inquiry told
At the time in 2015, Ms. Astravas worked for Ms. Wynne when she was Premier. Ms. Astravas described Mr. Chan as “a man of sterling character“ who had the full confidence of the premier.
Mr. Chan has been linked by CSIS to Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei, who was expelled from Canada in May, 2023, after The Globe revealed that he had been behind plans to intimidate Conservative MP Michael Chong and family members in Hong Kong.
CSIS regarded Mr. Chan as a national-security target and sought a section 21 warrant under the CSIS Act in early 2021, the source said. The spy agency wanted to intercept Mr. Chan’s electronic communications and gain entry to his home and offices in what was expected to be a federal election year. Mr. Chan had already been under physical surveillance for years, the source said.
Mr. Chan told The Globe in May, 2023 that he was “neither aware of, or informed of any such surveillance,” saying he is a victim of “shadowy allegations and absurd conspiracy theories” from national-security leakers.
“CSIS has never discussed their concerns with me but continues to unjustifiably harass, intimidate, threaten and frighten my friends and acquaintances,” he said.
Mr. Vigneault told the Hogue inquiry during the summer that he was very surprised that a key report on China’s targeting of elected officials was never provided to Mr. Trudeau. “This was a very illustrative piece of intelligence analysis that should have been read by the Prime Minister.”