Canada’s culture of secrecy on foreign threats puts our citizens at risk

Open this photo in gallery:

Justin Ling is a freelance investigative journalist who writes the Bug-eyed and Shameless newsletter.

In July of last year, a man was lingering suspiciously outside the Brooklyn home of Masih Alinejad, an Iranian activist. He had sent a text to his associate, declaring he was “at the crime scene.” He sent a photo of his car trunk, which contained an AK-47 with the serial number filed off.

Ms. Alinejad observed the situation and, sensing danger, left the area. The man drove away a short time later, only to be pulled over in a traffic stop. Searching the car, the police officer found the assault rifle and arrested him. The FBI believes that the man, and two of his associates, had been hired to kill Ms. Alinejad, one of the most vocal critics of the theocratic Iranian regime.

We know these extraordinary details, including details on the Iranian government’s alleged involvement, because New York prosecutors filed them in court just months after the alleged plot was foiled. This sort of document is known as a “speaking indictment” because, well, it speaks for itself.

These unsealed indictments, and this kind of transparency more broadly, are unheard of in Canada. That should change.

We have been thrust into an international diplomatic incident over India’s alleged role in the murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar: The details of that accusation remain secret. We are also in the midst of a global fracas over Beijing’s malign meddling in our democracy: We only know about that interference campaign because of extraordinary leaks in the media. Iranian dissidents here say they have been targeted by Tehran, and no longer feel safe in Canada. Friends of human-rights activist Karima Baloch believe her death in Toronto, officially ruled “non-criminal,” has Pakistani intelligence’s fingerprints all over it.

Ostensibly, Ottawa agrees that transparency is key here. After all, it was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who spearheaded the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism, an international process to identify and attribute foreign meddling and state-backed disinformation campaigns.

Attempts have been made within our security services to highlight foreign disinformation campaigns, but they have often been smothered by layers of lengthy approvals and been written in impossibly vague language.

Even when charges are laid, secrecy reigns. We know that William Majcher, a retired RCMP officer, was allegedly engaged in “efforts to identify and intimidate an individual” at the behest of the Chinese government, per an RCMP press release, but virtually nothing else. We likely won’t know anything until his trial begins, which could take years.

Countries willing to surveil, intimidate, harass, even kill their critics see Canada as an easy target. They appear fairly confident that we have neither the policing capacity to protect those human-rights defenders, the intelligence know-how to catch them in the act, nor – perhaps most importantly – the political will to make the accusation and back it up with facts.

Any clandestine foreign operation involves a cost-benefit analysis: a weighing of the domestic benefit against the possible international diplomatic ramifications. In Canada, the costs have been extraordinarily low. Any malign state could be confident that actual evidence of these espionage operations may take years to emerge. In the meantime, they can use disinformation operations to discredit the investigation.

Calling out India was a good start. But Ottawa has already retreated back to form, opting to stay mum.

We can, and must, do more to protect dissidents, journalists and activists in Canada. Unfortunately, improving protective policing may take some time – even federal cabinet ministers say the RCMP is unwilling or incapable of addressing the very real bevy of death threats they receive.

Canada needs to change how it handles cases of foreign interference. It could require more disclosure, akin to the Americans’ speaking indictments, offering the entire country a window into exactly how foreign agents operate within our borders. Ottawa could become more bellicose in laying sanctions against these rogue regimes for their activities in Canada. It could create new legal processes to make these charges easier to lay.

I asked Mr. Trudeau earlier this year why Canada has been so timid in calling out this meddling, and he bristled at the suggestion. “Maybe you’re just waking up to the fact that there’s foreign interference,” he said. “But I’ve been talking about it for years.”

Maybe it’s time he starts talking about it more pro-actively. Certainly, Ottawa ought to keep secret anything that could reveal our “sources and methods,” to use spy parlance. Turning the tables to expose the sources and methods of foreign intelligence operatives in Canada ought to be a strategy in and of itself.