Analysis of 2021 Chinese interference blocked with Trudeau’s security adviser – National

A 2021 analysis of China foreign interference The operations intended to spark discussions between senior government officials were not transmitted to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or cabinet ministers, the Hogue commission learned Monday.

The report, produced by the Privy Council Office (PCO) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and delivered in January 2022, remained stuck for months in President Trudeau’s office. Jody Thomas, then national security adviser.

The inquiry into foreign interference, overseen by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, has heard repeatedly about the challenges of ensuring vital intelligence reaches senior decision-makers.

As the nerve center of government, the BCP has a division called the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat, tasked with helping the prime minister and his national security adviser digest information from various sources.

The 2021 analysis attempted to combine what CSIS knew about Chinese operations in Canada, gleaned from around 100 separate intelligence reports, with trends observed in Beijing’s interventions abroad.

National security sources told Global News the report was passed to Trudeau and some cabinet ministers, allegations the government has largely denied.

Martin Green, a former senior intelligence official within the BCP, recommended to Thomas that the report be widely disseminated – to senior civil servants and ministers, as well as within the security and intelligence community.

This does not appear to have happened. Green testified Monday that he delivered the report to Thomas in January 2022 and raised the issue repeatedly over several months, but the report does not appear to have received final approval or reached the prime minister’s office.

Green noted in January 2022 that there were significant national security concerns – such as Russia’s looming invasion of Ukraine and the so-called Freedom Convoy descending on the Canadian capital – that may have relegated the issue of foreign interference in the background.

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“We were facing some pretty dramatic problems, so foreign interference at that immediate point was not, I think, a priority,” Green, who retired from the BCP Intelligence Assessment Secretariat, said Monday earlier this year.

“I raised the issue a few times (with Thomas) thinking it would still be good to have that conversation, so I can’t really explain why it hasn’t come up in a meeting ( deputy ministers) or not… I can make the recommendation, but I can’t say, you know, you have to go.

Trudeau and his cabinet finally had to have this conversation – after the document was leaked to Global News and became part of an ongoing reporting on foreign interference operations in Canada.

Green previously told the commission he remembered “feeling bad” when the document was leaked, and said it was “very problematic” that it was reported publicly.

The heavily censored version of the report, released Monday by Hogue’s commission on foreign interference, reveals little that a casual observer of the foreign interference record would not already know.

Namely that the Chinese government poses the most “significant” threat of foreign interference to Canadian democracy, that Canada remains “highly vulnerable” to these operations and that China’s activities are “sophisticated, persistent and multi-dimensional”.

The Chinese government employs proxies to distort public opinion, deploys clandestine networks to “ring” elected officials for leverage, and threatens Canadian businesses and individuals to advance Beijing’s political goals, suggests the report.

Chinese government officials have repeatedly rejected these claims, despite the mountain of increasingly public evidence to the contrary.

Additional information, gleaned from 100 CSIS memos, was largely hidden in the unclassified version of the report.

But another BCP official, Lisa Ducharme, told commission lawyers she was “surprised” that so much attention was given to the report — which she said was never finalized.

“(Ducharme) explained that it is not uncommon for reports to be written in draft form, but to be delayed or left unfinished, for a variety of reasons, whether it be resource issues, overcoming events or a change in direction,” she told the commission’s lawyers. .

Over the last year, the Hogue Commission has heard repeatedly about the government’s difficulties in ensuring that intelligence reports reach decision-makers, including senior officials and their political masters.

“The evidence appears to demonstrate that the role of some actors in existing processes is not always well understood, that there are sometimes significant differences of opinion between the intelligence community and elected officials, and that fear of disclosing information that could harm national security is a problem. a major barrier to information sharing,” Hogue wrote in his preliminary findings, released in May.

“The nature of the information collected and shared by intelligence agencies appears to arouse the suspicions of many people, who may prefer to refrain from acting when such information is brought to their attention. »

These problems go well beyond why a single intelligence report, however informative, was not brought to the attention of the Prime Minister. But the commission’s lawyers will have the opportunity to get clarity on the specific incident on Wednesday, when Thomas is scheduled to testify a second time.

Justice Hogue also took the time Monday to welcome the Liberal government’s desire to give her commission “extraordinary” access to classified documents and to have recently authorized the publication of the summaries of four memoranda to Cabinet – some of the most most sensitive in the possession of the federal government. .

Typically, this type of document falls under a principle called Cabinet confidentiality, under which discussions around the Cabinet table and the evidence that informs them cannot be publicly disclosed, in most cases for 20 years.

“The government’s willingness to disclose this information to the commission will help me develop recommendations that will help preserve the integrity of Canada’s electoral processes and democratic institutions and strengthen Canadians’ confidence in their democracy,” said Ms. .

These recommendations, along with Hogue’s full report, are expected by the end of the year.