The Decibel - Foreign interference inquiry finds ‘problematic’ conduct

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

After an 18-month long public inquiry, the final report on foreign interference in Canada has been released. Justice Marie-Josée Hogue’s seven-volume report weighs in on allegations of parliamentarians participating in foreign interference, outlines concerning examples of when foreign states have tried to influence our elections and gives 51 recommendations on what to do about it. Steven Chase is the Globe’s senior parliamentary reporter. His reporting over the years with colleague Robert Fife uncovered allegations of foreign interference before the inquiry even started. Today on the show, he breaks down the key findings of the public inquiry and what the report says should be done to counter further attempts to interfere with Canadian democracy. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

On Tuesday, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue delivered her final report on a very real threat facing Canada. Foreign interference. States have been trying to interfere with each other since the dawn of time. What is new, however, are the means being deployed by these states, the extent to which the phenomenon seems to be taking hold, and the fact that it is being talked about publicly. Over the last 18 months, she's led a public inquiry that heard from over 150 witnesses, including the Prime Minister, his Chief of Staff, and several cabinet ministers.

And from the testimonies and documents she reviewed, Justice Hoag found some issues that she called problematic, but ultimately concluded that Our democratic institutions have remained robust in the face of attempted foreign interference. This report laid out 51 recommendations for how to protect Canada from foreign interference. But that doesn't mean the work is done. But what I have read and heard convinces me that society as a whole must contribute to defending these institutions if we want to ensure their survival. The inquiry was largely prompted by reporting over the last few years from Globe journalists

Steve Chase and Robert Fife. Today, Steve is on the show to go through Justice Hoag's major findings, the instances of foreign interference that we learned about, and recommendations for what the government can do to prevent meddling by foreign actors in the future. I'm Maynika Ramenwilms and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Steve, thanks so much for taking the time to be here. Glad to be here. Steve, before we dig into the major findings and recommendations from this report, can

you just remind us about the importance of this? What makes this report so significant? So for a long time, for months upon months, the Justin Trudeau's government had rejected the idea of a public inquiry suggesting that it would be expensive and would yield nothing useful and the three opposition parties has fought that and all three had declared that we need to see an inquiry and so this is the fruits of that inquiry this is the fruits of the most exhaustive investigation of foreign interference in Canadian history. And what would you say would be the major takeaway from this final report?

The major takeaway is that Justice Oge, who is a distinguished judge, telling Canadians that foreign interference is an ongoing threat, is probably going to get worse in the future, and that every level of government has to get ready to deal with it. And then making a series of recommendations on what should be done, but also taking stock of how much has the government's actually put into place since the Globe and Mail and other media began reporting on leaks regarding foreign interference in Canada. Yeah. And we are going to talk about both those elements that you mentioned, but I just want to note that this public inquiry, of course, came about in kind of some controversy, right?

People might remember how before this inquiry, there was a different process led by former Governor General David Johnston, who ended up having to resign. But now that this report is out, Steve, I guess I wonder, are there any criticisms of it? Well, I guess one of the things that a critic might say is that the Commission largely took its cue from public servants. And by that I mean their witness list was about 75% or 80% the very people who were supposed to stop foreign interference and, no surprise, think they did a good job. I would say another criticism would be that the timeline was very short. She was

under duress to deliver conclusions before the next election, which we all knew would be likely this spring. And so there was a rushed feeling to it. In fact, she told us in her conclusions that I couldn't really deal with transnational repression, which is a major item in her conclusions that I couldn't really deal with transnational repression, which is a major item in foreign interference because it wasn't in my mandate, which is another way of saying I didn't have time to deal with it

because to be clear, we did have hearings on the dynamic where authoritarian regimes try to bully and harass and intimidate people who have fled those regimes, such as China and now live in Canada. That's an interesting point too. One of the pieces of information that Justice Marisha Zahogue did examine in this final report was a different report by a parliamentary committee called ENSECOP.

So I want to talk about this, Steve, because I think this is some of the headlines that people might be seeing here. The findings of this committee were released in June of last year and they caused alarm, I think, because they said that parliamentarians had been, quote, witting or semi-witting participants, end quote, in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in our politics. So what did Justice Hogue have to say about that report? She discounted one of the major findings of that report. She said that, these are my words, not hers, parliamentarians were doing things that were grubby or underhanded, but that they didn't amount to treason in Canada. Although a few situations involving

attempts to curry favor or develop problematic relationship with the parliamentarian have come to light, such phenomena remain marginal and so far appear to have been largely ineffective. While I saw evidence of some concerning behavior, the evidence does not show any MPs plotting with foreign states against Canada's interests. That kind of calmed down the alarm that that report raised then, because that report did seem to kind of say there is a big issue here. And she then seemed to say, well, maybe not as much. Is that fair? She did say that.

That was very much her conclusion. Although I would argue as somebody who's covered this and also covered the NSACOP report that I think we had a bit of mis-framing going on here. The NSACOP is the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliament and these aren't faceless bureaucrats. These are MPs and senators. So these are people who were either elected or appointed and are accountable in various ways to Canadians and they're the ones who made those conclusions. In fact, the lead on who were either elected or appointed and are accountable in various ways to Canadians, and they're the ones who made those conclusions.

In fact, the lead on the NCICOP report, the lead MP was David McGinty, who guess what is now public safety minister. He found there were some parliamentarians who were collaborating with foreign powers to further their own interests, taking money, reporting on internal deliberations to foreign powers and so on. And so what Hoag did is say, well, they weren't traitors. But actually, the NCACOF report never once used that word. And we've got to reflect on that because treason in the criminal code is a very specific and

narrow definition. It's about those seeking to violently overthrow the government or aiding people doing that or passing on military secrets to foreign powers and so on. So yes they weren't traitors but she says very clearly in here there are legitimate concerns about parliamentarians potentially having problematic relationships with foreign officials exercising poor judgment behaving naively and perhaps displaying questionable ethics and I should remind people that she never has not released the names of these people. They will forever be protected by secrecy in this country.

Can I just clarify on that point because this was an interesting point that we were talking about a few months ago. Were there actually names of parliamentarians in that NCOP report that's not released to the public or not? She says there were none and that's something that I had believed for a long time because as you know the Globe received quite a number of intelligence reports and every time they dealt with federal politicians they would not call them you know by the name Joe Smith or something they would say cabinet minister and then give descriptive information that would allow you to guess who it was. So I guess help me

understand this because this was a huge issue of if the government should release these names or should they not and the consequences of that. How did all this come out that we thought there were names and there weren't actually any names listed? Because there was some reporting that there were names and this was citing unnamed officials. Okay. I guess I wonder, Steve, how did Justice Ho come to such a different conclusion than the NCICOP, than this parliamentary committee

when it came to these issues? Well, again, I would argue it's a matter of degrees. And I think that the NCICOP's findings have been mischaracterized. Initially, by the government, their testimony last fall, where they said, well, nobody here committed treason. Well, that's not what NCICop said. They said that people were taking money, providing, passing on confidentiality to foreign powers, trying

to influence debates and so on on behalf of foreign powers. We're not saying that they were trying to commit violent insurrection. Justice Hogue also said that some of Ensikop's findings contained inaccuracies and were more definitive than could be supported by the underlying intelligence. All right, let's move on to another aspect of this report. Justice Hoag included some pretty specific examples of possible foreign interference in Canada. Can you walk me through one or two of those instances, Steve? Justice Hoag's report highlighted six instances of suspected foreign interference, some of which had never been passed on to the Prime Minister, by the way.

There was a case where a foreign government, unidentified, took several actions, including interference to reduce the election chances of a specific Liberal Party candidate because it was suspected the candidate's policies were contrary to the state's interests. These actions, quote, likely had a negative impact on the individual's political career. Then there's an example of how a foreign government official was suspected of foreign interference directed at the Liberal Party. The Government of India was suspected of using proxy agents to provide clandestine financial support to candidates from three political parties in a federal election.

What's interesting about these examples is that the Hoag inquiry had asked the federal government, give us examples of foreign interference that you're aware of. And these six came back. One of them, of course, was the nomination race, the liberal nomination race in Don Valley that ultimately nominated Han Dong, which we knew about. But their Hoag report says that the prime minister told them he was astonished that he had not been informed of these events, especially since some of them involved his party.

Let me quickly ask you about Handong because you brought it up and we've talked about him before. He was of course a former Liberal MP currently sitting as an independent. Did we learn anything additional about his situation here? Sure. People might recall that Han Dong left the Liberal Caucus in March 2023 after a global news story reported that surveillance had found that he had talked to the Chinese consulate in Toronto and allegedly

suggested to the Chinese consulate that the PRC or the People's Republic of China should hold off releasing Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. People may recall they were detained by China for nearly three years. So Global News had reported that he had allegedly told the consulate they should hold off releasing them. We should note that Mr. Dong has forcibly denied he said this.

Now Justice Ogg said the classified information she has read quote corroborates Mr. Dong's denial. The MP, as far as she's concerned, did not suggest that the PRC should extend their detention. So that's a bit of a win for Mr. Dong, who of course is suing over that story. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

Steve, let's move on now to look at another big issue from this inquiry, which is the government's handling of national security information. Did Justice Hoag have recommendations on how to prevent CSIS intelligence reports on foreign interference from getting lost in the shuffle? Yeah, she suggested that CSIS should start flagging intelligence reports that feel senior decision makers must read and summarizing its findings in precise, non-technical language. One of the dynamics in this entire inquiry was how little Mr. Trudeau read and how little was put on his desk. And that eventually, I think, started the inquiry down the path of asking why and how could this be improved.

And so that follows from that. And what about what the government should do when it determines that a member of parliament is being targeted? Like, this is what we saw what happened with conservative MP Michael Trong, right? Did she have any recommendations around that kind of thing? She proposed that the Department of Public Safety should create a duty to warn policy which covered credible threats of serious harm that could be attributable to a foreign entity and that MPs and senators should be warned when they are

being targeted by cyber threats or disinformation that's potentially coming from foreign states. And when we're talking about conservative MP Michael Trong, Steve, do we learn anything new about his situation from this report? As people may recall, the Globe and Mail broke the story in May 2023 that in fact he was being targeted by the Chinese government, him and his relatives in Hong Kong because the Chinese government was looking for leverage over the MP who had become a trenching critic of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. And in fact, what we also learned is that Michael Chong had never been notified of this. So two years later when the Globe reported this, that was the first time Michael Chong knew that the Chinese government was targeting him, trying to gain leverage over him. And Justice Hoag had

something quite strong to say about that. She said, in my view, when there is specific information indicating the state is planning to undertake punitive measures against an individual or those strong to say about that. She said, in my view, when there is specific information indicating the state is planning to undertake punitive measures against an individual or those connected to them, it is important to ensure that the individual is informed. So basically she's rebutting the government's insistence that they didn't need to tell Michael Chong. What about, I guess, the public's right to know, the Canadian public's right to know some of these things, Steve? Like, did she say anything about how much the Canadian government should really be communicating these threats with the public?

Yeah, the commissioner reserves some of her toughest language for the government and its conduct here. She said it was unacceptable that the Canadians had to learn things from the media before they learned them from the government. She said this should not have been the case. I found that the government has been, overall overall a poor communicator when it comes to foreign interference. And she said the government should create a declassification system to start releasing information on foreign interference, where it is in the public interest, and where it would not unduly prejudice national security.

And I should mention at this point that Krista Freeland, who is one of the candidates for Liberal leadership, just put out a statement a few minutes ago saying that she would declassify all intelligence on foreign interference over the last 10 years. During her press conference, Justice Oake identified disinformation as the biggest threat facing Canada. Do we know why she thinks this is such a major problem? Yeah, she in fact said it threatens the very existence of our democracy and she said it's all the more nefarious because the means available to counter it are quite limited and difficult to implement. And on that note, one of her 51 recommendations in fact is to create a national agency to monitor disinformation and misinformation.

So Steve, we've talked about a number of Justice Hoag's recommendations here. Have politicians of Justin Trudeau, Pierre Polyev, and others, have they committed to actually adopting these recommendations? No, nobody has. A Democratic institutions minister, Ruby Sahota, promised to carefully review the final report's findings and recommendations. As for Pierre Polyeva, the conservative leader, same thing, no immediate commitment to implementing the recommendations, but rather a commitment to carefully review them.

I guess I wonder anyways, how quickly could they be adopted because parliament is currently prorogued. That means no new legislation can get through. That must be a huge issue here in actually getting any of this enacted. Yeah, it's a bad time to make these recommendations. The current government's about to ride off into the sunset. The next government, we know,

may not last more than a few weeks. And then the government that follows is yet to be determined. I do want to remind people, though, some legislative changes have been made to try and combat foreign interference. I'm thinking back to you know last summer actually Steve can you just remind us what those were? Yeah in fact C-70 was a bill that was passed with I think record speed last

June and this bill created a foreign influence registry, a foreign agent registry where people who are working for foreign powers will be required to register or face fines. And it also gave more powers to CISIS to speak more plainly and openly about threats to people outside of the federal government. And there was a host of other changes. So that was a legislative package that the government had basically been sitting on for a long time, which was suddenly expedited after all those stories, meteor leaks and so on, about foreign interference. So there's that. Plus there's actually, in the report, Justice Oge had also taken stock of all these things that had happened internally.

The national security advisor position has been better defined and strengthened. The government created a counter foreign interference coordinator for public safety. There was a National Security Council created. There was a national security strategy that's under development. There is now a much tighter method for sharing interference to the Prime Minister and so on. So there's a number of things that have been taking place across government quietly as public servants have sort of rushed to to fix things. So yes there's the package of C-70, there's the things that have taken place internally, and then there's 51 recommendations that Justice Ogbade. Steve, can you just remind us what would it mean to have a foreign agent registry?

So a foreign agent registry or a foreign influence registry is something that several of our allies have. The Americans have had it for decades. The Australians just implemented one. The British are implementing one. It basically means that if you are working on behalf of a foreign state to influence government policy, to influence public opinion, you need to register this with the federal government. And you can, of course, in the case of the American one, look up who's paid to work on behalf of what country for what reason. And if you don't do that, then you will face fines and you will face other punitive actions. And so it's a disincentive for people to conduct

foreign interference clandestinely. And if people don't want to have to register for something, they'd have to ask themselves whether it's something that they should be doing. So just lastly, before I let you go here, Steve, we've talked about a lot of different things here. In the past, you've reported that Canada is considered a high reward, low risk kind of target for people conducting foreign interference. So I guess I wonder, now that we've had this inquiry and the policies our government has put in place so far, has any of that changed the situation for us?

I would say that once a foreign agent registry is in place, we will have taken the first step towards making this more of a high-cost jurisdiction for foreign interference. But a lot of the work is still to be done. One of the biggest, I guess, consequences to come out of the media reporting and the subsequent controversy was just a general rise of awareness of a new subject that used to be considered a fringe issue, but it was now on everyone's lips and that every government department is supposed to be responding to and every politician has been sensitized to. So I think we're starting down

that path. The question is what the next government does to implement these recommendations. Steve, thank you so much. Appreciate you taking the time on such a busy day. You're welcome. That's it for today. I'm Maynika Ramon-Wilms. This episode was mixed by Ali Graham. Our producers are Madeleine

White, Bihal Stein and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.