The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: China & Canada’s Parliament

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates.  The following is a sample of the Munk Debates’ weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus. On this week’s edition of the Friday Focus podcast, Janice and Rudyard spend the show talking about the Canadian story that made international news this week in the form of media reports that Canada’s intelligence agency had information that it shared with the government that a sitting member of the national legislature was the target of a foreign intimidation campaign by the Chinese government. Who knew what, when, and why is the Chinese diplomat identified in intelligence reports still working out of the Toronto consulate? What does it mean for Canada’s national security going forward when members of its premier intelligence agency are leaking to the press and are in outright breach with the government and its handling of Chinese interference in Canadian democracy? Where does Canada-China relations go from here? Janice and Rudyard unpack it all for Munk members. To access full-length editions of the Friday Focus podcast, consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by The Monk Debates to access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk Debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website in just a simple clicks. Triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website. Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your

generous contribution. Hello, Monk members. Rudyard Griffiths here, the executive director of the Monk Debates. Welcome to this, the regular Friday Focus podcast on the 5th of May, 23, as I am each and every episode of Friday Focus podcast, joined by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, internationally renowned scholar, and author Janice, great to be in conversation with you today. Great to be here with you, Rudyard, to talk about a story that started in Canada but has gone international. That does not happen all that often. And we're not talking the Maple Leafs, are we?

No, we are not. But just to digress, Jess, because I know our listeners follow your passion for baseball. So are you a switch hitter? Do you go over to hockey when the Leafs are in the playoffs? Or are you like me? And people say to me, there's a game on tonight? I know that's horrible. I know it's very uncanadian, but I am completely clueless.

I don't, is this the finals? I know it's not the Stanley Cup, but I'm really confused. Well, let me tell you when the playoffs start, I'm there. And we are in the second round, which is we have not been for 20 years. Let's just mark this moment, but we lost the first two games. So our back is already to the mall. And you miss the greatest third period ever that didn't produce a goal last night. Wow.

The curse is intact, Janice. Maybe that's why I don't watch because I just know it's never going to happen. but we're never making it through the Stanley Cup. I did text my son at the end of it last night and say, fans in this city are condemned forever. Which is not true with baseball or basketball. But look, let's talk, as you said, about the, it's not always that a story in Canada gets international coverage,

but that has happened this week with the next, leg in this ongoing saga of revelations coming out in our newspapers fed by Canada's security service, CIS, leaking stories primarily to the Globe and Mail, which reported on Monday that an MP, and full disclosure here, Michael Chong is a longstanding and close friend of mine. This federal MP was subject to an intimidation campaign run out of the Toronto consulate by a Chinese accredited diplomat, probably an intelligence agent, but we'll call them a diplomat for now. And this individual, in a sense, had been picked up on some form of CESIS, NSA, Five Eyes.

We don't know, some kind of intelligence trawl with evidence that they were planning, intending, orchestrating an intimidation campaign against this MP's family members, extended family members in the PRC, specifically in Hong Kong. This exploded Monday and a big scramble in the news in Ottawa. And then the prime minister came out on Tuesday with a statement to something of the effect. I think language here is important. he said to the national media, we asked, we asked CIS, was this information something that was briefed up out of the agency?

Quote, it was not. Quote, CESIS made a determination that it was something that didn't need to be raised to a higher level. That seemed to put this whole story to bed, unfortunate bureaucratic incompetency or something, but then end of week yesterday Thursday, Michael Chong gets up in our federal parliament in the House of Commons and says, I've just been phoned by the national security visor to the prime minister, and she has told me that this information not only got out of CISIS, but went into a variety of mainline ministries related to public security and safety, and into the Privy Council itself,

which is the bureaucracy associated with the PMO and the prime minister. So Janice, I just, how do we reconcile these two things? I end this week with a feeling a bit of despair here at the state of Ottawa, the state of this conversation, the extent to which we're really in a pickle here when it comes to our national security. Yet, I don't know, is somebody, could I say generously is contradicting themselves? and that somebody sounds like the prime minister right now. It might be our most important monk debate ever.

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They're going to share their thoughts on how AI will transform our workplace, our society, our democracy. We'll cover it all the risks, the rewards of AI at this critical monk debate. For more information, go to our website, triple W monk debates.com. We do have tickets set aside for monk members, so grab yours now before this event sells out. We'll see you in Toronto on June 22nd for the Monk debate on artificial intelligence. You know, I love the details of these kinds of stories because you dig in, you dig in, you dig in.

And it's only by paying attention to every word, Richard, as you just did, that the story comes to be a little clearer. So let me start by saying I actually don't think anybody is deliberately lying here. What Jody Thomas, the national security and intelligence advisor, told Michael Chong, says Michael, who by the way is a terrific person and this should not happen to him or any MP in this country or frankly anybody in this country. So I think it's a disgrace that it's happening. But what Michael says Jody Thomas told him is the material was briefed to. it reached the desk of the national security advisor in the Privy Council office.

That's a funny word. It reached the desk. There was an acting. There was an interim at that point, Reddard, who may not have known the ropes well enough to understand that this had to go further. That person was in place for six weeks or something while the previous, while the regular national, Security Advisor was away on holiday. It got there. It got to global affairs, but where in global affairs? Did it get to the deputy? I don't know, nor does anybody else. And it got, and it didn't get to the minister of public safety. So we have an issue here that goes beyond who's telling the truth.

We don't have clear guidelines that says when, and it's really interesting whether it should only be MPs, federal MPs, or anybody in government, or anybody at any level of government in this country, that the most senior political officials need to know about it. And it's clear that the prime minister did not know about it, because it would have had to have gone to the PMO. No, but fair enough, chance. But just to go back to the prime minister's words, we asked, was this something that was briefed up out of CIS. It was not. That's what he said, those three words. It was not. Cesis made the determination that it was something that didn't need to be raised to a quote higher level. So I, you know,

I guess the thing that fascinates me here just to get into the weeds a bit is like, who's briefing the prime minister? Like on Tuesday, wouldn't you have had the benefit of the national security advisor telling him, well, Mr. Prime Minister, you know, This type of information, 99% of the time, as reported by, in the global mail by Richard Fadden, the former head of CESIS, is reported out, reported up, briefed up. So, I mean, what, I mean, this, why this constant, Janus, I don't know, casual, casual relationship with the facts when it comes to China. government and I get it they're under a lot of political pressure they feel under

attack these CESIS leaks are probably incredibly demoralizing and destabilizing but in something that's this serious national security why wouldn't you wait and speak the facts as opposed to speaking what is politically expedient in the moment on Tuesday and then looks like a contradiction or something worse by Thursday. It's an own goal, Janice. It's a complete own goal, Regan. It is an own goal, Regan. And what the Prime Minister should have said on Tuesday was, I was not briefed because it doesn't look like he was, frankly. I didn't know about

this. I've arranged for Michael Chong to get, I personally arranged, which he did, for Michael Chong to get a briefing. And I've asked my national security advisor to go and look at what happened in this process. And as soon as I get in any information, I'll be back to you. Right? That's what he should have said, Frank. But they didn't. He didn't. And you're right.

Those words prove to be inaccurate. There's no question. But there's a bigger issue here, Roger, and you just touched on it. And I'm frankly alarmed about this. The relationship between CIS and the executive in this country, the prime minister's office, is broken. It is broken. It is irretrievably broken.

That is very significant for this country. I can say openly that I think that the leaker, whatever this, leaker or leakers, because it looks like they're more than one because memos from the PMO were released, PCO, whatever if they think they're acting in the national interest, it is not their job to determine the national interest. they take an oath and they owe service to the crown in this country. Yeah, but Janice, let's be fair to these people because you know as well as I do that in statute, in legislation, it says in fact that they are exempted from that oath if they believe that there is something that is happening that is against the interest of the

state. S-T-A-T-E. So they have, some might say, a responsibility here. in the face of seeing a government over seven plus years that has consistently downplayed, obfuscitated, ignored the threat of Chinese interference into our elections, our democratic processes, the intimidation of Chinese Canadian citizens and diaspora. I don't think it's as simple as just saying, CIS has, you know, these leakers have no business here.

back to your desks, the veil of secrecy and the power of the PMO asserts itself from now, you know, to time memorial. I'm going to disagree with you very strongly. Let's take this last episode, okay, Richard, which you and I find absolutely abhorrent, both of us, absolutely. And what was done to Michael and his family. And we actually don't know what was done. Allegedly, what was picked up was a request for information about his family.

with a view to quote targeting that, whatever that means. So we're still in very vague territory, and I think they're looking for the information right now. But let's take a look here. If you're in CIS and you brief a national security and intelligence supervisor, you don't get anywhere with that person. It doesn't get to the prime minister,

or the prime minister dismisses the complaint, which there's evidence that he did at least once. there's a new national security, an intelligence advisor. Why leak before going to Jody Thomas with this? They didn't try to go to her. They went to the Globe and Mail. That by any stretch of the imagination. Because Jody Thomas has been sitting on this file

since she became National Security Advisor and arguably on a whole bunch of issues, she's decided to carry the prime minister's water on this. She is an appointee, a political, appointee of the prime minister, Janice. Yeah, the prime minister selects who his national security advisor is. Yes, from the civil service. From the civil servant, she's a senior and respected civil servant who's been the deputy minister of defense who's been in insecurity all her life. And she did not know about this file. That's what's really interesting. The previous national

security, when he handed over to her, did not brief her about this. She found out by reading the globe. Why did that happen? Well, and some would say, Janice, there are things called ministerial responsibility, executive leadership responsibility, and that these principles, you know, they used to matter. And it used to matter for a minister of public safety. In some cases, maybe it even would matter for a prime minister to simply say, I didn't know, but boy, this really was a big screw up, maybe you could say for the prime minister, you understand that, he's got a lot of files on his desk. Maybe he choose. Maybe he'd choose. is not to be briefed on certain things because of the turmoil around the Trudeau Foundation,

the extent to which allegations of MPs who were compromised by the PRC being allowed to run in nominations despite the party and the Prime Minister being warned against the alleged compromising of these candidates. So, I mean, there's a lot of stuff here, Janice, but, you know, I don't think anybody will resign. will accept responsibility for what you rightly say is a beyond a serious lapse in in national security. This is a screw up. And and in typical Ottawa fashion, everyone is passing the hot potato. And nobody today, so far, has accepted responsibility of it. And the diplomat who for two plus years has sat in the country organizing foreign interference campaigns and intimidation campaigns

against Canadian citizens and members of the diaspora community abroad is still accredited by the government of Canada to operate out of the consulate in Toronto. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the Friday Focus podcast to get full-length editions of each and every episode of this program. Simply go to our website, www.com. Click on the Friday Focus tab in our navigation on the top right of the site. Make a donation as little as $25 a year of 50 cents an episode.

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