Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the Foreign Interference Commission on Wednesday that he has highly classified intelligence that names Conservative Party politicians and members who are susceptible to foreign interference. Mr. Trudeau also accused Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre of being irresponsible for refusing to undergo a national-security clearance to deal with the activities of his party members.
The Globe and Mail
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he has received highly classified intelligence that Conservative Party politicians and members have been susceptible to foreign interference by an unnamed hostile state.
Mr. Trudeau levelled the allegation at the public inquiry into foreign interference Wednesday and accused Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre of being irresponsible for refusing to undergo a national-security clearance to deal with the activities of his party members.
“I have names of a number of parliamentarians, former parliamentarians and/or candidates in the Conservative Party of Canada who are engaged in or at high risk” of foreign interference, he said, adding that he has directed CSIS to inform Mr. Poilievre so he can make decisions about members of his own party.
The Prime Minister said Mr. Poilievre’s decision to refuse a national-security clearance means “nobody in his party” knows the names of the individuals and can take action.
“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 there to stand up for those individuals if the intelligence is shoddy or incomplete or just allegations from a single source.”
Mr. Trudeau also pointed to a report by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians that said there was foreign interference in the leadership convention where Mr. Poilievre was elected.
“The fact that there is 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.
Mr. Poilievre responded to the Prime Minister’s allegations by demanding he release the names of all MPs that have collaborated with foreign interference.
He said in a statement that his Chief of Staff Ian Todd has a security clearance but no one raised these concerns about Conservative Party members in intelligence briefings.
“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.
“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 the allegations to distract attention from the Liberal caucus revolt “and revelations he knowingly allowed Beijing to interfere and help him win two elections.”
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 intelligence about a political party that he described as “explosive.”
Although he did not name the party, 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.
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 into foreign interference 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 in a final appearance before the inquiry Wednesday, he went out of his way to note that he now receives substantial weekly intelligence briefings.
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“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.”
Mr. Trudeau said the new system is working well and enables him to ask questions of the national-security officials to ensure threats to the country are being taken seriously.
“I tend to prefer those in-person briefings, but having that baseline of a weekly session with a vast range of information is very useful,” he said.
He said he wasn’t perturbed that he was not sent a document in 2021 that showed how China was targeting parliamentarians. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service 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 a “criminal leak” 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.