The Decibel - Canadian parliamentarians accused of helping foreign agents

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

A national watchdog report says some parliamentarians in Canada are ‘semi-witting’ or ‘witting’ participants in foreign efforts to interfere in our politics. The report from NSICOP says that the parliamentarians (whom are not named) may have collaborated with foreign actors to advance their own interests. This is the latest information around concerns of foreign interference in Canada since The Globe first started reporting on this over a year ago.The Globe’s senior parliamentary reporter, Steven Chase is on the show to explain the latest report and what this means for and what might be done about fighting foreign interference in Canada.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

Since February 2023, there have been three reports looking into foreign interference in Canada. And now, we're learning that some of our politicians could have been involved in it. A new report says there are concerns some parliamentarians may have collaborated with foreign actors to advance their own interests. Today, The Globe's senior parliamentary reporter, Stephen Chase, is back on the show to explain what we've learned. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Steve, thank you so much for being here again. Oh, glad to be here. Let's start with this report specifically. Where did it come from? It's a report by a watchdog group that is composed of MPs from all parties, as well as senators.

And so it's an all-party panel that's, its job is to provide civilian oversight into intelligence security matters. And last year, after the Globe and Mail and other media were reporting on leaked information about Chinese foreign interference, this body, which we call in short NSICOP, for National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, started its work. And it took it more than a year, or about a year. And so this is a result of a year of work on behalf of this all-party panel. A year of work. I think I read it was 4,000 documents, 33,000 pages, so a lot of information. At a high level, Steve, what exactly does the report say is going on? Well, one of the new items in here, the things we learned is that parliamentarians,

there are a number of parliamentarians, we don't know if these are MPs or senators or a combination of such, are, in the words of the report, wittingly or semi-wittingly collaborating with foreign states to conduct foreign interference in Canada. Incidentally, that's the first time I've ever heard the use of the phrase semi-wittingly. It's not a common one, yeah. But I mean, this seems like a big deal, right? Like how significant is that revelation? I think it's really significant because it alerts Canadians, as well as MPs and senators, that in their midst are people working for other countries. So the person you're sitting

beside in caucus, or the person you might have voted for is in fact, you know, some kind of Manchurian candidate feeding information or taking money from other countries. Yeah. Well, let's get into some of the stuff that we actually learned then, the specifics from the report. What did the report say these parliamentarians are doing? Do we have some, I guess, examples here? We do. They gave us some high level examples, and then they gave us some more detailed examples. They said that they are communicating with foreign missions. So, parliamentarians are communicating with foreign diplomats before or during political campaigns in order to obtain support from community groups

or businesses, which these foreign diplomats promise will be mobilized in the candidate's favor. It's said that they are knowingly, or through what it calls willful blindness, accepting money or benefits from foreign governments or proxies of these governments, which have been layered or otherwise disguised to conceal their source. It said that they're providing foreign diplomatic officials with privileged information on the work or opinions of other parliamentarians, knowing this information will be used by those foreign officials to pressure parliamentarians to change their positions. Wow. And in fact, it's doing the bidding.

These people are doing the bidding of foreign officials to improperly influence colleagues or the business of parliament to the advantage of a foreign state, including providing information learned in confidence to intelligence officers of a foreign state. I mean, all of these things that you're saying, Steve, these are huge revelations. confidence to intelligence officers of a foreign state. I mean, all of these things that you're saying, Steve, these are huge revelations. These are very concerning revelations as well. I know there were also some redactions in the report because of intelligence and national security concerns, but the report does include summaries of what was redacted.

What did we learn from those summaries about what intelligence agencies believe that these parliamentarians were up to? There are snippets through the report of more detail on some of this collaboration with foreign governments. And when they censored it, they at least did us the courtesy of explaining or giving a summary of what they censored. So in one case, the summary of what was redacted says, member of parliament maintaining a relationship with a foreign intelligence officer. Or it says, elected Canadian officials were wittingly assisting foreign actors or foreign governments soon after their election. Or members of parliament working to influence their colleagues on India's behalf and proactively providing confidential information to Indian officials or foreign governments reimbursing people that had provided funds to candidates and federal parties. So those are some of the examples. There were, in fact, also further revelations about things

we'd already learned about through Globe and Mail reporting and other reports earlier. Can you give me some information on that? What were those? There was a really interesting section of the report that dealt with the Globe and Mail's bombshell report in May 2023, where we learned from national security sources that Chinese diplomats had been targeting Michael Chong, the conservative foreign affairs critic, targeting him, trying to find leverage they could use against him because of his activism, because of him sponsoring a motion in the commons, which passed, declaring China's conduct working as part of this effort to sort of find leverage by targeting Michael Chong's Hong Kong relatives. And, of course, soon after we reported this, the government expelled Zhou Wei. This was the first expulsion of of the information being published in the Globe and Mail.

In fact, we'd exposed something that had been known, but no action had been taken. Wow. Steve, let's let's linger on the language used in this report for a second here, because we talked about the term, you know, these parliamentarians were witting or semi-witting participants in this. What does that really mean, though? Like, you know, witting means they were aware of something. But does the report say anything about how deliberate these actions were? I think that the point of what they're saying is that people knew or should have known or hid it from themselves. Willful blindness is a phrase that's also used. And the idea is that, you know, you are deliberately, you know, lying to yourself about what you're doing. And you touched a little bit on this, but let's deal with it directly. What exactly is the benefit for the parliamentarians here? Like, why would they get involved with a foreign actor in these

ways? We don't know all the information, but for instance, there could be a quid pro quo where a foreign government can mobilize members of the diaspora from its country in this country in the writings of the individuals to help them get elected. So there may be electoral benefits. We don't know whether there's no information

because we have so little information about this on whether they're being paid, whether there are other kind of benefits and so on. But electoral benefits are one of the key, one of the obvious sort of, you know, payoffs for doing this. You use the term quid pro quo there. And I'm going to actually read out a section of the report here that uses that term exactly, because I think this is something interesting we should talk about. It's a pretty remarkable quote that says CSIS believes that the People's Republic of China, quote, believes that its relationship with some members of parliament rests on a quid pro quo, that any members engagement with the PRC will result in the PRC mobilizing its network in the members favor,

unquote. Steve, what should we make of that? Well, what we should make of it is that something that the government told us was not a story a year ago has turned out to be a burning problem for Canada. When the Globe and Mail and other newspapers and media outlets began publishing information from national security whistleblowers in 2023, the government dismissed all this. The government said there was nothing to see here, that this was exaggerated, that this was half-truths. And in fact, this report is just the latest example or latest evidence that, in fact, we have a real problem here in

this country. And we've been referring to parliamentarians here. We know it could be MPs or senators. Do we know how many people are involved? No, all they say is, at one point, they say a few in this article. The government does know who these individuals are. On Thursday, we learned that the liberals say they won't be releasing the names. What have the liberals said, though, about why they actually won't do that and release the names of the parliamentarians that are accused here? They haven't given us a lot of detail. They've said that it would not be responsible for the government to do this. The leader of the opposition knows very well that no government, including the government of which

he was a member, is going to discuss particularities of intelligence information publicly. So he knows better than that. So their understanding is we don't just provide details of intelligence briefings to the public. That's really not borne out by evidence, though. Last September, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood up in the House and, based on intelligence, accused the Indian government of killing a Canadian citizen in Surrey. So when the government wants to, it has no compunctions about using intelligence and delivering that intelligence to Canadians. Isn't there some kind of, I don't know, like a public right to know here, Steve? Like if these people are still acting politicians, shouldn't we as Canadians have a sense of who they are?

This gets back to sort of the secrecy problems with the Canadian government that, of course, the Globe has covered in detail in Secret Canada, one of our projects, is that there is an incredible fetish for secrecy in the Canadian government. And the problem here is that we have a report produced by an all-party committee. It's not some kind of partisan initiative that says there are traitors in our midst. There are parliamentarians who are betraying Canada to foreign governments. And so that has really put a far more, I think, alarming stamp on the foreign interference issue. And it's also raised suspicion about parliamentarians. Now, you know, the cloud hangs over parliamentarians in the meantime. So I do think it presents the government with a bit of a dilemma.

If you do nothing, it helps add to the narrative that parliamentarians are corrupt and can't be trusted. We'll be right back after this message. So, Steve, just broadly speaking, how have the Liberals responded to the report? It's interesting because last year, in March 2023, after the Globe and Mail published, you know, about already about a dozen stories about the kind of foreign interference taking place in Canada using national security sources and classified documents that we weren't supposed to have. The government has said that this should all be handled by bodies like NSICOP and not by a public inquiry. Because bodies like NSICOP, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians that just delivered this report, were well placed to handle this. When this report came out, though, the government didn't seem as happy with what ANZACOP had done. They felt that they had misinterpreted the intelligence

and they disagreed with some of the findings. So it was an interesting, it was a bit of an interesting gap between the government and a committee that it's championed. And in fact, which is chaired by a Liberal MP, David McGinty, who is the brother of former Ontario Premier Dalton McGinty.

Interesting. And have we heard from the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Public Safety Minister? Has anyone, I guess, directly said anything about this report in response? This government has been dragged, you know, kicking and screaming into this file by media reports. It's not been a willing participant. So at one point, the deputy prime minister told Canadians that there would be an internal follow-up in the Liberal Party, some kind of internal caucus review on this. But then the next day, I guess presumably after talking to the prime minister, she was completely mum on the file and gave us no more indication or information on that. We have confidence in our law enforcement bodies to do their job.

What the government has said generally is that it will be up to law enforcement agencies to investigate anything they see fit in this. However, I should explain to listeners that there's been very little evidence that law enforcement agencies have managed to make much of this, or that they're being given the, there's any little indication they'll be given all the information they need to build cases and so on. So we are left with nothing but a lot of verbiage from the government. Yeah. Yeah. Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said, essentially, law enforcement

are doing their job and then kind of left it at that. So this is this is what you're referring to here, Steve. We've been talking about the government. What about the opposition party? What about the conservatives? How have they responded? They have made the case and they've challenged the government to name the parliamentarians in the House of Commons. Simple question. Will the prime minister release the names of these parliamentarians? Canadians have a right to know who and what is the information. Who are they?

Why don't they release the names of MPs who are working against Canada? They said, this is serious, the idea there are traitors in our midst and you should identify these people. And of course, as people familiar with Parliament and the House of Commons will know, if you stand up in the House of Commons, whatever you say is protected by parliamentary immunity. So, for instance, a minister couldn't be sued by a parliamentarian for naming them in relation to this in the House.

So they said, name the names. And, in fact, Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, has said that people should be kicked out of parliament if they are found to be in violation. And the Bloc Québécois has said that it also would expect that people would have to bear consequences for this. Steve, what happens now then? We mentioned the potential role of law enforcement agencies. Are there investigations happening? Could we potentially see charges? Potentially. So the RCMP has said that they are investigating a number of cases related to foreign interference. They put out a statement the other day. They would not confirm whether

they're investigating any parliamentarian. And they reiterated something they said in April, which is that they also are investigating cases of election-related interference related to the 2019 and 2021 elections, which, of course, is where the body of reporting, which came out last year, focused on, which was electoral interference by China, in particular in the 2019 and 2021 elections.

Why were we not seeing more action on this, though? Because some of the things you laid out, Steve, they sound pretty bad. Some of this activity is pretty bad. Why isn't there a stronger move towards charges? One of the problems that Enzikop said is that the problems with prosecuting these people is that the judicial system requiresing these people is that the judicial system requires that all the evidence against somebody be made available to the accused. And intelligence agencies are often reluctant to divulge the intelligence that would be

required to support that evidence because it might expose sources and methods and it might compromise their ongoing investigation. So that is one of the reasons why NSACOP itself noted that these people might never be prosecuted. One bright light, though, is that, as I mentioned earlier, the government introduced legislation in May that we believe was based on this report, because the report was originally delivered to the government in March. The government introduced Bill C-70 in May, which contains a raft of changes to sort of combat foreign interference. The question, of course, is whether they will put effort and expedite the bill. This bill would, for instance, create a foreign influence registry. It would change the Criminal

Code and Security of Information Act to give CESAs more tools to fight foreign interference. It's modeled on something that's already been adopted in Australia and is being adopted in the United Kingdom. And, of course, has been on the books in the U.S. for quite a while. Okay, so that's something. Looks like we've got some legislation that might address some of these things. What else does the report say should be done here? Steve, how do we move forward from here? Yeah, there's another interesting sort of theme to this report.

And it has been mentioned before, but it doesn't get a lot of attention, in part because the political class of all major parties is content to ignore it. And that is the dirty business of Canadian nomination races. Time and time again, in a series of reports we've had over the last year, has identified that nomination races, the process by which parties pick candidates to run in ridings, are Wild West affairs that are totally vulnerable to foreign interference, in part because if you can get a candidate that's favorable to your country in a riding, in many ridings, they don't change hands. And in fact, you've done all you need in terms of securing influence to that riding. Yeah, if you've got a riding that's steadily conservative or liberal,

then you can kind of, you know, try to get your candidate to the nomination, and then you're almost guaranteed to be elected, or that candidate is almost guaranteed to be elected. So time and time again, over the last year, and reports on foreign interference, people have said there's a problem with nomination races, they should be regulated. And again, the ENSACOP report says the same thing. No political party seems interested in doing this. We asked all three major parties, as well as the bloc the other day, would they agree to this recommendation? And nobody would salute it. I'd like to see more engagement on it, but the political parties do not seem interested in this.

So before I let you go here, Steve, we've talked about a lot today that we learned from this report, but what are you going to be watching for next? I'm going to be watching for whether Bill C-70, this suite of tools that has been proposed to fight for interference, actually gets passed before the House rises for the summer. The House is due to set until June 21st. The Conservatives have signaled that they will do everything they can to help expedite the passage of this bill. We've already had marathon hearings this week to sort of scrutinize the bill. And I will be looking to see whether it gets passed before the summer break, because it would give the government of Canada its first new tools to fight for interference.

I guess the first new tools in decades. Steve, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Oh, you're welcome. Glad to be here. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Welms. Our interns are Aja Sauter and Kelsey Arnett. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer. And Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.