Watchdog report on Global Affairs unit named in Michael Spavor’s case still unreleased three years after its completion

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A national-security watchdog says China’s imprisonment of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig prompted it to delay the release of its 2020 review of Ottawa’s foreign intelligence collection unit, saying at the time there were “high sensitivities” about a public examination of the Global Security Reporting Program.

The report from the first dedicated review of the Department of Global Affairs’ GSRP, a unit that Mr. Spavor alleges bears some responsibility for his incarceration, has still not been released nearly three years later.

John Davies, executive director of the National Security Intelligence Review Agency, told The Globe and Mail that the agency finished the report in 2020, but “at the time there were high sensitivities with detailing anything to do with GAC’s security reporting program.”

The GSRP, a specialized unit that reports on security matters in countries such as China, has come under public scrutiny after The Globe reported Saturday that Mr. Spavor alleges China arrested and imprisoned him and Mr. Kovrig, a diplomat who worked for the GSRP, because he unwittingly provided information to Mr. Kovrig that was shared with Canadian and Western spy services.

China decries Canada’s ‘hypocrisy’ after Spavor blames Kovrig for their detention

The Globe has also reported that Canadians Kevin and Julia Garratt were detained by Chinese authorities in 2014 after Mr. Garratt met a GSRP officer. China accused the couple of participation in espionage – an incident widely seen as hostage diplomacy by Beijing.

Mr. Garratt told The Globe he would not have spoken to GSRP officer Martin Laflamme had he known the discussions would be passed on to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and its Five Eyes intelligence partners that include the U.S., Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Ottawa maintains GSRP officers are not covert intelligence operators and do not recruit, handle or pay sources. But it acknowledges their reports can be shared with CSIS and Five Eyes.

A senior Global Affairs official said in an interview that there are 30 GSRP diplomats working abroad in global hotspots, calling it “extremely sensitive work.” The official said GSRP provides the government and intelligence services with insights that the host country is not willing to share with Canada.

The senior official declined to say whether GSRP diplomats have a duty of care to inform people they are talking to that those discussions will be passed on to CSIS and Five Eyes. The Globe is not identifying the official, who was not authorized to discuss the GSRP publicly.

The National Security Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) said in its annual 2020 report that it undertook a review of the GSRP covering the period Jan. 1, 2017, to Dec. 31, 2019, “although information from outside this period was used to conduct a full assessment of specific aspects of this program.”

The two Michaels were arrested in China in December, 2018, and accused of espionage by Beijing. Their arrests followed Canada’s detention of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant for wire and bank fraud relating to violations of American sanctions against Iran.

Ottawa has always denied the two men were spies and accused Beijing of hostage-taking diplomacy in retaliation for the detention of Ms. Meng.

From the archives: What we know about Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig’s time in China

In its 2020 annual report, NSIRA said its review of the GSRP “identified several areas of improvement” and Global Affairs Canada had agreed to “positively address all of the recommendations.”

But, it made no commitment at the time to release the report. “Due to the highly sensitive nature of this review, NSIRA will not be publishing anything further at this time,” the 2020 report said.

Mr. Davies told The Globe that the agency began to work “with relevant agencies to redact, translate and release our work” soon after the two Michaels were freed in September, 2021. “In early 2022, after the release of two Canadians, our proactive release process began this review,” he said.

Work on releasing it began in 2022 but the process has since been taken over by Global Affairs Canada, the department that was the subject of the review, to decide what information should be redacted.

That’s because an unnamed individual submitted an access to information request to the department for a copy of the NSIRA report, Mr. Davies said.

“GAC is now leading the consultative process toward release. We are working with GAC and hope to release the report as soon as possible,” he said.

Fen Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University, said the years-long delay in redacting the report leaves the impression the government has something to hide.

“The descripted nature of the program is that this is not what our intelligence agencies do undercover. This is supposedly above-board reportage. Are there protocols or is it easy come, easy go?” he said. “The public has a right to know.”

Dan Stanton, a former executive manager of operations at CSIS, said NSIRA has unfettered access to review intelligence except for cabinet confidences.

“So they can see everything that GAC has in its holdings on a priority basis,” said Mr. Stanton, now director of the national-security program at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute. “NSIRA is well-resourced, and they have a critical mandate to carry out. This is the last agency that should be taking so long.”

Former CSIS officers and national-security experts say the GSRP needs the same legislative control as Canada’s other intelligence agencies.

Phil Gurski, a former senior strategic analyst at CSIS, said GSRP diplomats have put the lives of people at risk in dangerous parts of the world, but said he could not provide details for security reasons.

Andy Ellis, former assistant director of operations at CSIS, said the GSRP has grown into an information-collection program for its staff who are not sufficiently trained.

According to report in 2022 by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, GSRP officers are based “across the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Middle East, Africa, and East and Southeast Asia.” Global Affairs said its annual budget is $20-million.