Canada urged to enable CSIS to share more on national security threats with country

A parliamentary committee probing China’s meddling in Canadian affairs is calling on Ottawa to empower Canada’s spy service to speak more plainly and precisely to the public about foreign interference threats.

The Commons standing committee on access to information, privacy and ethics, in a report tabled Tuesday, urges the government to direct the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to share information with the public regularly “in order to increase national security literacy.”

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The report also calls on Ottawa to add Criminal Code penalties that cover “all foreign interference operations, including harassment and intimidation by a foreign state.” It asks the government to ensure these new penalties “provide appropriate sanctions.” Canada does not currently have Criminal Code offences that explicitly and comprehensively address the full range of clandestine methods used to conduct foreign interference.

And the committee is also asking the government to review and update Canada’s national-security policy, as well as a new directive, introduced in May, that allows CSIS to warn Members of Parliament of threats related to foreign interference.

Ottawa’s handling of outside meddling in Canadian affairs has been under scrutiny in recent months, as The Globe and Mail and other news media have reported on attempts by China to exert hidden influence on Canada’s elections and political life. A public inquiry into foreign interference, separate from the committee’s investigation and headed by Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, is now getting under way.

The Globe and Mail revealed on May 1 that Beijing had targeted Conservative foreign-affairs critic Michael Chong and his relatives in Hong Kong in the lead-up to the 2021 election. The disclosure prompted Ottawa to expel Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei later that month.

The Globe has published more than 15 stories based on national-security sources and secret CSIS documents, including a February story, based on CSIS intelligence reports, that described a concerted strategy by Beijing to disrupt the democratic process in the 2021 federal election.

MPs on the ethics committee, chaired by Conservative MP John Brassard, are also calling for measures that could affect national-security whistleblowers. The committee’s recommendation is that Canada “strengthen rules and penalties governing illicit disclosure of national security intelligence.”

Bloc Québécois MP René Villemure, the committee’s vice-chair, acknowledged that in the case of interference from China the disclosures from whistleblowers were useful.

“As an ethics specialist, I would not approve leaks in general, but I’m forced to say it in this case: It helped a lot. And what we should be looking at is not trying to find who leaked in order to punish, but instead working on what was leaked and fix it.”

The committee is also urging the government to make haste in its pledge to bring in a foreign influence registry, which would require people employed on behalf of foreign governments or interests to disclose information about their work. Similar registries are in effect in the United States and Australia, and Britain is setting one up now.

Also among the committee’s recommendations is that Ottawa and CSIS “provide more training and information to Canadian parliamentarians and public servants on the threats posed by foreign interference in Canada, the various tactics used by foreign actors and the means to counter them.”

The committee, where the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc have the ability to outvote the Conservatives, said it would draw no conclusion about the controversy surrounding the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

In February, The Globe reported, based on a national-security source, that the Chinese government had orchestrated $1-million in donations to the foundation and the University of Montreal law school in hopes of influencing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose father attended the school and was the foundation’s namesake.

The foundation announced in early March that it planned to return $140,000. The foundation’s board of directors and Pascale Fournier, its president and chief executive, resigned on April 11, citing the political backlash over the Beijing-linked donation.

“In light of the evidence, the committee cannot take a definitive position on this case,” the ethics committee report says.

The Conservative Party distanced itself from some of the recommendations, and in a statement Tuesday urged a forensic audit of the Trudeau Foundation. The Conservatives noted that many questions about the donation remain unanswered.

The Bloc’s Mr. Villemure said his party would table a private member’s bill to spur the creation of a foreign influence registry because, he said, the Liberals have not followed through on a spring promise to bring such a mechanism into being.

He said he expected the bill would receive the support of other opposition parties, which together outnumber the Liberals.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, asked by reporters about the registry on Tuesday, said the Liberals are still working on it.