‘Unacceptable state of affairs’: Watchdog slams handling of foreign interference intel

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A review of Canada’s approach to Chinese foreign interference by the civilian body responsible for overseeing federal intelligence agencies describes 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.

It also describes an environment of tension and disagreement within Canada’s spy agency, as well as a spy agency at odds with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national security adviser as to what types of information should reach the government’s highest levels.

The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) is an independent body that reports to Parliament. It oversees the federal government’s national security and intelligence activities, including Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Communications Security Establishment, responsible for foreign signals intelligence, and the security functions of the RCMP.

The agency reviewed all intelligence on People’s Republic of China (PRC) foreign interference in federal democratic institutions and processes from 2018 to 2023, with a specific focus on the flow of intelligence within the government.

The report’s recommendations underscore the serious cracks in the intelligence system. The agency said the role of the Prime Minister’s security adviser should be defined in legislation and it calls for an overhaul of how intelligence on political interference is shared and defined.

The findings provide a new perspective on how the government’s top officials responded to concerns related to Chinese interference, adding to the extensive testimony from many of those current and former executives at parliamentary hearings and the public inquiry into foreign interference.

The report paints a picture of a government system in which key information sometimes gets missed amid internal confusion involving the many organizations that hold various responsibilities to identify issues and alert key decision makers.

The report raises concern with the role of the National Security and Intelligence Adviser to the Prime Minister, finding that in 2021, a disagreement between the adviser and CSIS resulted in Mr. Trudeau not receiving information from the spy agency.

The report says that analysts with the Privy Council Office and CSIS produced reports meant to serve as synthesizing overviews of PRC foreign interference activities, but which the National Security and Intelligence Adviser to the Prime Minister (NSIA) saw as recounting standard diplomatic activity.

“This disagreement played a role in those intelligence products not reaching the political executive, including the Prime Minister. The gap between CSIS’s point of view and that of the NSIA is significant, because the question is so fundamental. CSIS collected, analyzed, and reported intelligence about activities that it considered to be significant threats to national security; one of the primary consumers of that reporting (and the de facto conduit of intelligence to the Prime Minister) disagreed with that assessment,” the report states.

The report says the security and intelligence community “is of the consensus view that political foreign intelligence is a significant threat to Canada,” and that China is “a major perpetrator of this threat at all levels of government.”

Nonetheless, the agency said its review found there “were significant disagreements” between the components of the community as to whether, when and how to share what they knew.

Further, the report describes disagreements within CSIS over intelligence collected about PRC foreign interference across several electoral ridings in the 2021 election.

The report says there were multiple pieces of intelligence, on different activities, collected at different times, from different sources, all subject to different caveats and considerations.

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“Decisions regarding whether, when, and how to disseminate this intelligence were the subject of disagreement, uncertainty, and lack of communication within CSIS. This disconnect was largely between intelligence officers collecting intelligence in the region, and those responsible for disseminating that intelligence at National Headquarters,” the report states.

“Put simply, intelligence officers did not understand why some of the intelligence they collected was either not disseminated at all or disseminated following what they perceived to be atypical delays,” it said.

By contrast, officials at CSIS headquarters “often had reasons for not disseminating (or delaying) intelligence – typically tied to the unique nature of political foreign interference – that were not communicated or, in the absence of standard criteria or rationale, appeared arbitrary.”

The report references various case studies that were analyzed by the agency but does not describe the situations with a level of detail that would identify most of the specific issues that were reviewed.

The watchdog agency was created through legislation approved by Parliament in 2019. The new agency replaced two previous review entities, the Security Intelligence Review Committee that was responsible for CSIS and the Office of the CSE Commissioner, which reviewed CSE’s activities.

The agency recommends in the report that “as a basic accountability mechanism, CSIS and Public Safety rigorously track and document who has received and, as appropriate, read intelligence products.”

It also calls for enhanced “intelligence literacy” among regular consumers of intelligence work and a common understanding of what constitutes political foreign interference.

Another policy recommendation calls for the role and responsibilities of the Prime Minister’s national security adviser to be described in law.

“While the NSIA plays a coordinating role within the security and intelligence community, the bounds of this role are not formally delineated. As such, the extent of their influence in decisions regarding the distribution of CSIS intelligence products is unclear,” the report states.

The report does not identify the security adviser by name. In 2021, the position was held by Vincent Rigby until July of that year before David Morrison assumed the role in an acting capacity. Jody Thomas was NSIA from January, 2022, until January of this year, when Nathalie Drouin was named to the position.

The report tabled Monday is a revised version of a classified report provided to the Prime Minister on March 5. The public version of the report indicates that some sections have been redacted.

Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs, said in a statement that the government welcomes the report.

“The Government of Canada will be further examining and reviewing the recommendations from the report as part of the government’s commitment to safeguarding the integrity of Canada’s democratic process and ensuring that Canadians can trust in the fairness and legitimacy of our elections,” he said.

Mr. LeBlanc said the government is also looking forward to receiving recommendations from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and the final report from the Public Inquiry on Foreign Interference.

“We will continue to ensure that people in Canada can have confidence in our democratic institutions,” he said.

The Globe and Mail reported last week that Ottawa is facing pushback from Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, the head of a public inquiry into foreign interference, for citing cabinet confidentiality in redacting records provided to the public inquiry investigating interference by China and other hostile states in the 2019 and 2021 elections.

The Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois have forced a meeting of a House of Commons committee to look into the matter.

With reports from Robert Fife and Steven Chase