A 2021 analysis of China’s foreign interference operations intended to spark discussion among senior government figures did not make it to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or cabinet ministers, the Hogue commission heard Monday.
The report, produced by the Privy Council Office (PCO) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and delivered in January 2022, was stalled for months in the office of Trudeau’s then-national security adviser, Jody Thomas.
The foreign interference inquiry, overseen by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, has heard repeatedly about the challenges of ensuring that vital intelligence reaches senior decision-makers.
As the nerve centre of government, PCO has a division called the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat, tasked with supporting the prime minister and their national security adviser digest intel from a variety of sources.
The 2021 analysis attempted to combine what CSIS knew about China’s operations in Canada, gleaned from roughly 100 separate intelligence reports, with trends observed in Beijing’s interventions overseas.
National security sources told Global News that the report made it to Trudeau and select cabinet ministers, allegations which the government broadly denied.
Martin Green, a former senior intelligence official with PCO, recommended to Thomas that the report be shared widely — to select senior bureaucrats and cabinet ministers, as well as within the security and intelligence community.
That 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 made it to the prime minister’s desk.
Green noted in January 2022 there were significant national security issues — such as Russia’s impending invasion of Ukraine and the so-called Freedom Convoy descending on Canada’s capital — that may have pushed the foreign interference file off the front burner.
Get breaking National news
For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.
“There were some pretty dramatic issues that we were (facing), so foreign interference at that immediate juncture was not, I think, top of mind,” Green, who retired from PCO’s Intelligence Assessment Secretariat earlier this year, testified Monday.
“I raised the issue several times (with Thomas) thinking that it would still be good to have that conversation, so I can’t really speak to why it was not the subject of a (deputy ministers’) meeting or not … I can make the recommendation, but I can’t say, you know, you gotta go do this.”
Trudeau and his cabinet were eventually required to have that conversation — after the document was leaked to Global News and formed part of ongoing reporting into foreign interference operations in Canada.
Green previously told the commission that he remembered “feeling ill” when the document was leaked, and said it was “very problematic” that it was reported publicly.
The heavily-censored version of the report, released by Hogue’s foreign interference commission Monday, reveals little that a casual observer of the foreign interference file wouldn’t already know.
Namely, that the Chinese government is the most “significant” foreign interference threat to Canadian democracy, that Canada remains “highly vulnerable” to those operations, and that China’s activities are “sophisticated, persistent and multi-dimensional.”
The Chinese government employs proxies to misrepresent public opinion, deploys clandestine networks to “surround” elected officials to gain leverage, and threatens Canadian businesses and individuals to advance Beijing’s policy objectives, the report suggests.
Chinese government officials have repeatedly rejected those claims, despite the increasingly public mountain of evidence to the contrary.
Additional intelligence, gleaned from 100 CSIS memos, was largely blacked out of the report’s unclassified version.
But another PCO official, Lisa Ducharme, told the commission lawyers that she was “surprised” so much focus was placed on the report — which she testified was never finalized.
“(Ducharme) explained that it is not uncommon for reports to be written in draft form, but be delayed or remain unfinished, for various reasons, whether resourcing issues, being overtaken by events or a shift in focus,” she told the commission lawyers.
Over the last year, the Hogue commission has heard repeatedly about challenges the government has had in making sure intelligence reporting makes it to decision makers, including senior public servants and their political masters.
“The evidence seems to demonstrate that the roles of some actors in existing processes are not always well understood, that there are sometimes significant differences of opinion between intelligence community and elected officials, and that the fear of disclosing information that could undermine national security is a major impediment to information sharing,” Hogue wrote in her preliminary findings, released in May.
“The nature of the information gathered and shared by intelligence agencies seems to raise the suspicions of many, who may prefer to refrain from acting when such information is brought to their attention.”
Those issues are much broader than why a single intelligence report, however insightful, did not make it to the prime minister’s attention. But commission lawyers will have the chance to get clarity on the specific incident on Wednesday, when Thomas is scheduled to testify for a second time.
Justice Hogue also took time Monday to praise the Liberal government’s willingness to give her commission “extraordinary” access to classified material, and for recently granting permission to publicly release summaries of four Memorandums to Cabinet — some of the most sensitive documents in the federal government’s possession.
Typically, that type of document would fall under a principle called cabinet confidentiality — that 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 assist me in developing recommendations that will help to preserve the integrity of Canada’s electoral processes and democratic institutions and enhance Canadians’ trust and confidence in their democracy,” Hogue said.
Those recommendations, and Hogue’s full report, is expected by the end of the year.
