Trudeau says he has names of Conservative politicians engaged in or at high risk of foreign interference

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he has received highly classified intelligence that Conservative Party politicians and members engaged in or were susceptible to foreign interference by unnamed hostile states.

He divulged this during testimony Wednesday at the public inquiry into foreign interference.

After being pressed by a lawyer for the Conservatives, Mr. Trudeau also acknowledged that he has received secret intelligence about Liberals and members of other political parties who were also compromised by, or engaged in, foreign interference.

Mr. Trudeau levelled the allegation against the Conservatives during the final day of fact-finding hearings at the inquiry. He also accused party leader Pierre Poilievre of being irresponsible by refusing to obtain a top-secret security clearance that he said would enable his rival to hear details of alleged activities of Conservative Party members.

“I have the names of a number of parliamentarians, former parliamentarians and/or candidates in the Conservative Party of Canada, who are engaged, or at high risk” of foreign interference, the Prime Minister told the inquiry, adding that he has asked CSIS to inform Mr. Poilievre so he can be “warned and armed” and protect his party.

Mr. Trudeau said Mr. Poilievre cannot gain access to this classified information unless he undergoes a screening process and obtains the top-secret security clearance, something the Conservative Leader has refused to do because he says it would hamper his ability to speak out and criticize the government.

Mr. Poilievre responded to the Prime Minister’s allegations Wednesday by demanding that Mr. Trudeau release the names of all MPs in every party who have collaborated with foreign states.

He said his chief of staff Ian Todd earlier this year obtained top-secret security clearance, but no one provided names to Mr. Todd in subsequent security briefings. And the Conservative Leader noted he himself was briefed by the government on Oct. 14 about Indian foreign interference – a briefing that did not require him to be sworn to secrecy.

“At no time has the government told me or my chief of staff of any current or former Conservative parliamentarian or candidate knowingly participating in foreign interference,” he said in a statement. “If Justin Trudeau has evidence to the contrary, he should share it with the public. Now that he has blurted it out in general terms at a commission of inquiry – he should release the facts. But he won’t – because he is making it up.”

Mr. Poilievre accused Mr. Trudeau of making these allegations at the inquiry to distract attention from attempts by some MPs to oust him as leader, and allegations “he knowingly allowed Beijing to interfere and help him win two elections.”

Under questioning from Conservative Party lawyer Nando De Luca, the Prime Minister acknowledged he also has been given the names of Liberal politicians and members of other political parties who either engaged or could be compromised by foreign interference. He did not say how he has dealt with those Liberals.

Asked why Mr. Todd was not informed in the intelligence briefings about the names of Conservatives, Mr. Trudeau said: “Conservative Party members didn’t select Mr. Todd about decisions about who could run for the Conservative Party. They expect Mr. Poilievre to make those decisions.”

Mr. De Luca also pressed Mr. Trudeau to explain why CSIS didn’t use threat-reduction measures, including defensive briefings, to warn parliamentarians or party members who are at risk of compromise: “It is very possible that a number of those parliamentarians will have had visits from CSIS,” Mr. Trudeau responded.

In a pre-interview transcript tabled at the inquiry, Mr. Trudeau told commission counsel that his National Security and Intelligence Adviser Nathalie Drouin showed him “explosive” intelligence about a political party.

Although he did not name the party in the pre-interview, Mr. Trudeau asked the inquiry for guidance on how the Prime Minister, who is also leader of the Liberal Party, should handle this type of situation. He also told the inquiry that he would never use intelligence to go after political opponents.

In his testimony Wednesday, Mr. Trudeau said Mr. Poilievre has failed to show political leadership over as serious an issue as foreign interference.

“The decision of the leader of the Conservative Party to not receive the necessary clearance to get those names and to protect the integrity of his party is bewildering to me and entirely lacks common sense,” he said. “It also means there is nobody is there to stand up for those individuals if the intelligence is shoddy or incomplete or just allegations from a single source.”

It is unclear if the intelligence that the Prime Minister is referring to concerning federal politicians are those mentioned in a report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) that said some parliamentarians have either wittingly or unwittingly aided other countries in conducting foreign interference here. The public version of the report did not identify these people.

Leaders of other parties including the NDP, Bloc Québécois and Green Party have agreed to security clearances to review the NSICOP report. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May told reporters no names were mentioned in the copy of the report she saw.

Mr. Trudeau also pointed to the NSICOP report that alleged there was foreign interference in the 2022 leadership contest where Mr. Poilievre was elected. NSICOP did not identify whether this interference involved Mr. Poilievre or other candidates.

“The fact that there seems to be absolutely no curiosity or openness in trying to figure out what happened or whether someone was compromised or whether a foreign country impacted those leadership races is simply irresponsible,” Mr. Trudeau said.

PMO staff say nobody told them about CSIS request to surveil Liberal powerbroker in 2021

He did take issue with the report’s findings but mischaracterized NSICOP as having declared that some parliamentarians committed treason – a conclusion that was not in the report. “They talked about traitors in Parliament when that is not the assessment that our intelligence agencies put forward, but it is salacious and it sells newspapers and it worries Canadians so it got put to the fore.”

Mr. Trudeau also appeared unconcerned about the 54-day delay before then-public safety minister Bill Blair authorized a surveillance warrant against Liberal Party powerbroker Michael Chan in the lead-up to the 2021 election. The inquiry has heard Mr. Blair’s chief of staff, Zita Astravas, who had also worked in the Prime Minister’s Office, held up the warrant for nearly eight weeks. She had raised questions about who might be picked up in CSIS’s intercepted conversations with Mr. Chan.

Mr. Trudeau said he knew nothing about the Chan warrant but said he had “full confidence” in Ms. Astravas and Mr. Blair, now Defence Minister.

Mr. Trudeau testified earlier in the day that he is no longer kept out of the intelligence loop when it comes to issues of national security.

The public inquiry, headed by Justice Marie-Josèe Hogue, has heard testimony that classified intelligence documents about China targeting parliamentarians and Beijing’s foreign-influence activities never reached Mr. Trudeau’s desk.

While he played down the significance of those documents, he stressed that he now receives substantial weekly intelligence briefings.

“We have settled on a new model where, about once a week, usually on Monday mornings, I receive a package of secure information with a national-security official in the room,” he said. “I go through summaries and, in some cases, a certain amount of more detailed raw material or at least primary analysis.”

The Prime Minister said he also gets weekly briefings with national-security officials in a secure room to “talk through some of the more germane or difficult or contentious or urgent intelligence that is being worked on or received at any given moment.”

He said he wasn’t perturbed that he was not sent a document in 2021 that showed how China was targeting parliamentarians. The CSIS paper mentioned that China had targeted Conservative MPs Michael Chong and Kenny Chiu, although their names were not provided to Mr. Trudeau’s office or his national-security adviser in briefing materials.

“Having read the targeting paper in detail now, there are some interesting factoids or tidbits in there that I said, ‘Oh, okay, that is interesting,’” Mr. Trudeau said. “None of them significantly altered, at all, my perception of China’s behaviour, China’s focus, China’s engagement, influence and, in some cases, interference, in Canada, to any significant degree.”

A separate 2022 document prepared by the Privy Council on China’s interference operations was not shared with him either, but Mr. Trudeau said that is because it needed reworking, according to Jody Thomas, his national-security adviser at the time.

“I don’t feel that there was anything in there that I didn’t already understand and know about how China was engaging across different fields in Canada,” he said.

The Prime Minister also brushed off questions about why he was never shown three memos that sought his approval to allow CSIS to provide unclassified briefings to parliamentarians.

Although he could not explain why all three memos did not reach him, he said then-CSIS director David Vigneault did not need his approval to brief MPs and senators. He said the onset of the pandemic disrupted the first memo’s arrival. “In the third case, it actually didn’t get to my office. In the second case, no, I don’t know why.”

Mr. Trudeau said he only learned about China’s targeting of Mr. Chong and his family in Hong Kong after what he called “criminal leaks” from national-security sources to The Globe and Mail in May, 2023. The story led CSIS to provide a classified briefing to Mr. Chong and to the expulsion of a Chinese diplomat who was gathering information on the Conservative Party’s foreign affairs critic.