The Decibel - Trudeau orders probes into Chinese interference of elections

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

After weeks of resisting pressure from all sides, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ordered two probes into Chinese election interference. This follows The Globe and Mail reporting on secret and top secret CSIS documents alleging a sophisticated strategy by China to disrupt the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.But criticism is still mounting on Trudeau around how transparent and public these probes will actually be. The Globe’s Ottawa bureau chief Bob Fife is back to tell us why Trudeau is changing his stance and how likely these probes are to shed light on the extent of China’s interference.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

For nearly two weeks, there's been a growing list of people calling for the government to launch a public inquiry into foreign interference by China in the 2021 federal election. Federal officer, John Pierre Kingsley, who served in that position for 17 years. Morris Rosenberg, who just recently did a report on the 2021 election, a former deputy minister of justice, but also the former CEO of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. And of all people, Gerald Butts, who used to be the principal secretary to Mr. Trudeau. Bob Fyfe is the Globe's Ottawa bureau chief. He broke the news of the CSIS documents that revealed China's strategy, along with senior parliamentary reporter Stephen Chase. Since then, a report from an independent panel found that foreign interference didn't affect the 2021 federal election. But there's still a lot of unanswered questions. On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

made an announcement that could shed light on the matter. However, it's not what critics have been asking for. In the coming days, we will appoint an eminent Canadian to the position of independent special rapporteur who will have a wide mandate to make expert recommendations on protecting and enhancing Canadians' faith in our democracy. So today, we're talking to Bob again to get into the special rapporteur, the two probes this person will review, and why it could lead to a much bigger public inquiry. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Bob, it's good to see you again. It's been a busy couple of weeks for you. It has. Always a pleasure to talk to you. So on Monday this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that there will be two probes into foreign interference. So let's just start by establishing here, how are these probes different from a public inquiry? They're all held in secret. Canadians can't find out anything that's going on in these committees. And when they make their recommendations, we may not even see all of the recommendations or all of what they report on because the prime minister's office can redact what they don't want the public to see. So if we're talking about

sunshine and transparency, which is what you would normally get in a public inquiry, you're not going to get it from these two panels. This is a story that has left the Ottawa bubble and has gone onto Main Street. This is a story where talk radio has picked it up, people are talking about it, and members of parliament or liberal members of parliament are feeling the heat when they go into their constituency. They spent two weeks in their constituency. And you bet they came back to tell the prime minister, I don't like the sound of this from Canadians that we've been talking to. All right. So these are not public inquiries, but we have two probes here. The first is the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, also known as NSICOP. And look at the full range of Chinese interference in the 2019 and 2020 election campaigns.

They will be able to call the CSIS director and other security experts to ask them about their concerns about Chinese interference and how extensive it was. And then they'll issue a report with recommendations. And the other National Intelligence Security Review Agency will look at how effective CSIS and the RCMP and the Communications Security Establishment, which is our ultra-secret signals intelligence and cyber intelligence agency, how they cooperated and what did they do to try to intervene or stop or investigate Chinese interference. Completely different mandates. And then when those reports are done, whoever this special rapporteur is will look at the both reports and then make recommendations to the prime minister

on what he thinks should be done, whether that's a public inquiry, who knows. And do we know who's actually part of these probes? Oh, yes, we do. It's all public knowledge. The National Security Intelligence Review Agency is headed by Marie Deschamps, who's a former Supreme Court justice. There's five members on that body. The parliamentary committee is headed by Liberal MP David McGinty. There are four Liberals,

one Bloc Quebecois, one NDP, two Conservatives, and several Senators. Okay, so a bunch of MPs from different parties and then Senators as well there. But none of those members are allowed to publicly discuss anything that they hear in that committee. They've signed an oath of secrecy. Very stiff penalties if you reveal these kind of secrets. How much independence do these two probes have, Bob? Will the government be able to review the findings before they're actually released? Yes. In both cases, the government reviews them. And in the case of the McGinty Committee, the prime minister's office through the Privy Council can redact information and has redacted information that's released to the public. I've seen the reports. A lot of it's a good idea. I should say it's a wonderful idea that we have a group of parliamentarians who are able to see national security secrets and to be able to review how our agencies handle issues of national security. And like the United States, these committees do not report to parliament. They report to the prime minister's office.

In Great Britain, the committees that oversees the national security reports to parliament. That means that they have a lot more freedom to be able to warn Canadians if there is, for example, something that they see very wrong about what the government is doing, they are able to issue a warning because they're not under the thumb of the prime minister's office. That's the big difference. And when this was first set up, the government – and credit to Mr. Trudeau for setting it up. But people had argued at the time, we've had this committee for a while. Let's grow up now. Let's have this committee report to parliament, not to the prime minister's office. And I think we'd have a lot more faith if that was the case.

Why is it set up this way then? Why does it go to the prime minister? Well, I'll tell you why. Because in Parliament, there's an attitude that members of Parliament cannot be trusted with government secrets. Fortunately, they did set up this committee, but to keep control of it, it had to report – hand in the report to the prime minister's office, which – and officials inside the Privy Council would then redact what they do not think the public should be shown. I guess I have to wonder, though.

We are talking about national security information, top secret documents. We're talking about these probes being behind closed doors, but doesn't it kind of make sense that some of these things are not public because of the nature of what we're talking about here? Absolutely correct. Most of this stuff cannot be shown in the public. But there are areas that the public can be told about and should be told about. So what you're saying is with a public inquiry, there could be some stuff that is kept a little bit more private. The judge would have access to it. It would be behind closed doors still, but more things would actually be available to the public than is the case now.

Yeah, I think at the end of the day, we have a long tradition in this country of trusting judicial inquiries. The judge would be able to put out a report and say, you know, overall, here's what my findings are. There are issues, of course, I cannot reveal because it involves counterintelligence. But here is the extent and why we should be worried or not worried, for that matter. We don't know what a judge would say. And then to make recommendations to make sure that this stuff doesn't happen in the future, or at least to really try to lessen the impact of this kind of interference. We'll be back after this message. Sounds like the big difference between these probes and a public inquiry is the secrecy or the fact that it's just not public. What about any other differences, Bob?

Isn't there – with a public inquiry, you have more legal power to compel things, don't you? Yes. What happens with a public inquiry under the Inquirerers Act, and usually it would be a judge, the judge would be able to see counterintelligence documents, obviously would have to be seen in secret, and he would have the subpoena powers under the Inquirers Act to be able to subpoena any cabinet minister, any national security official, anybody that he felt was necessary to learn about the extent of Chinese interference in Canada's democracy. Obviously, a big chunk of that would have to be held behind closed doors, but there would also be public hearings so that, you know,

Chinese Canadians who have suffered from Beijing's influence operations, academics, security experts who know about Chinese interference operations, how it operates and how they try to influence election campaigns. And perhaps it'd be even a wider scale on the whole narrative of how China tries to interfere in Canadian society. And when we talk about the full legal power that would be there with a public inquiry, in terms of what's actually been established now, these two probes, would the committee and the agency with those probes have the same kind of power? No, they don't have the same kind of power because they're split off and they do different things. The NSCOP, they can ask for secret documents and get secret documents, but they don't have subpoena power like a judge would have to compel testimony from, say, witnesses who do not want to testify. And in terms of the panel of experts that deal with national security agencies, their job is to oversee how these agencies are run. As we've mentioned a little bit here, Bob, the findings of both of these probes will be sent

to a special rapporteur who has yet to be named. But Bob, what is a special rapporteur and what kind of power do they have? Well, we don't know because we haven't been given the terms of reference of the special rapporteur. The special rapporteur will have the clearances and the power to look at everything that Canada is doing and has done and make recommendations on what we need to do further, including, if necessary, a formal inquiry or commission or whatever they determine is the right thing to do. I don't know who they're going to get. I sure hope it's somebody who is a really highly respected person who is nonpartisan because, you know, the government's credibility is really at risk here.

What do we expect to get from this special rapporteur? Like after these probes are done, it's been handed to this person, what are they going to deliver? Well, they will look at the two reports and then guess they will issue their own findings based on those two reports and then make recommendations to the prime minister on what should be done to deal with interference in Canadian election campaigns. And this is where this recommendation could include a public inquiry. That could be the recommendation. Yes, that's right. Which kind of means it looks like kind of a real stalling tactic, right? Because if we go through all this and then this impartial person says we actually need

a public inquiry, we've really wasted a lot of valuable time. Because, you know, we could have an election either later this year or next year. Do we have a sense of when those results might actually come out? No idea. I think from the government's perspective, it would be the longer it takes, the better for them. And will the public be able to see those recommendations? I'm not sure whether they'll see how much they will see of the two reports. It'll depend on what the special rapporteur decides to release.

So on Thursday last week on the House Affairs Committee in Parliament, opposition parties worked together to pass a motion calling for an independent probe into foreign interference. So there was some pressure there politically to do something. Is this move to create these probes just something to appease the opposition? Is this political in a way? It's completely political because he didn't want to do any, Prime Minister didn't want to do anything on this. He's doing this now not to so much satisfy the Liberal Party or the opposition party. He's doing this now because he is being politically hurt and he's trying to send a message to Canadians who tend not to pay that much of attention

to a lot of things that go on in politics that, okay, we hear you. We're really going to try to do something. And he's hoping that will satisfy the Canadian public. Mr. Polyev is not going to allow that to happen, nor will the NDP or the Bloc Quebecois. They were out on Tuesday saying that, you know, we need a public inquiry. These panels are not going to get to the bottom of what has been going on with Chinese interference. We put forward, New Democrats put forward a motion in committee, which was passed, and that motion is to have a public inquiry. We believe this should be

non-partisan, it should be transparent and public, and we continue to push for that. That is our position. Transparency and sunlight, they say, is the real answer to this. And Mr. Pauli even went so far to suggest that prime minister is acting in the interest of China rather than the country's interest. It is actually incredible that we have this uprising at our intelligence body. This has never happened before. They must be very worried about how the prime minister is working against the interests of his own country and his own people. They've been warning him for years about this. And what has he done? He's covered it up, even encouraged it to continue. And so they

are so concerned about how the prime minister is acting against Canada's interests and in favor of a foreign dictatorship's interests that they are actually releasing this information publicly. And what is true? It's an extreme, extreme accusation there. Yeah. Just before I let you go, Bob, last time you were on the show, we spoke about the CSIS documents that you and Steve Chase reported on. And we talked about the importance of transparency and fostering public confidence, really, in democracy. So from everyone that you've talked to about this, Bob, do they think that these closed-door probes are actually going to accomplish that? Well, I don't think they will accomplish it because Canadians need to see for their own eyes what is going on.

They need to hear a lot of the testimony. You know, the documents that we've seen, I don't know why that stuff couldn't be now released since we've all written about it. I mean it's not – what's the secret? I know they would have to take out some of the qualifications or where they obtained the information from to act in the way that he has acted, I don't really see the reason why that couldn't be revealed since I've already reported it. Bob, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wellms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin.

David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.