PM tells foreign interference probe government's hands are tied on intelligence leaks to media

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the Foreign Interference Commission on Wednesday that intelligence leaks to the media can't be refuted without declassifying secret information.

The prime minister told the commission looking into foreign meddling in Canadian elections that revealing secret information to refute leaks would put some security officials at risk.

"Why these leaks were of such deep concern was that we couldn't actually correct the record without … sharing with adversaries some of the information or the methods that we use to keep Canadians safe," he said.

Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue's inquiry is investigating claims that China and others meddled in Canada's past two elections. She is also assessing the flow of information within government related to alleged meddling in the previous two federal elections.

The inquiry was triggered by a series of media reports, citing unnamed sources and leaked documents, and repeated calls from the opposition.

One of those media reports claimed that in 2019, security officials told senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) that then Liberal candidate Han Dong "was part of a Chinese foreign interference network" and that the party should "rescind Dong's candidacy."

Defence Minister Bill Blair arrives to appear as a witness during the Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions in Ottawa on Wednesday, April 10, 2024. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

The 2019 allegations involved international students being bused to the federal riding of Don Valley North, Dong's riding, to vote in the Liberal nomination contest.

Trudeau said he was briefed about concerns that CSIS had about Dong's nomination contest, but said the evidence wasn't sufficient to remove Dong as a candidate.

"The decision to remove someone [as a candidate] needed a high threshold, a threshold that incidentally I have met and seen in many other cases," he said.

"But in this case I didn't feel there was sufficiently credible information that would justify this very significant step."

MP Han Dong arrives to appear as a witness at the Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions in Ottawa on Tuesday, April 2, 2024. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Prior to Trudeau's testimony, former public safety minister Bill Blair, now the defence minister, said he was not concerned about claims that China interfered in the Toronto Liberal nomination race because Canada's spy agency could not back them up.

"Intelligence isn't necessarily factual evidence of what took place," Blair told the foreign interference inquiry Wednesday.

Before his public testimony, Blair spoke to commission lawyers in both classified and unclassified settings. Summaries of those discussions were made public Wednesday.

Blair, who served as public safety minister from 2019-2021, said he was briefed by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) after the 2019 election on alleged foreign interference-related irregularities after he was shuffled into the new cabinet role.

According to those summaries, Blair said he was "not concerned about the intelligence at the time."

When asked why, Blair told the inquiry CSIS "indicated to me that they did not at that time have other corroborating evidence in any way to substantiate that."

According to the summary, Blair also told commission lawyers he had faith in CSIS and believed that if the service had believed Dong to be under the influence of the People's Republic of China, "it would have taken the appropriate actions."

He also told the inquiry CSIS did not indicate that Dong had any knowledge of the irregularities.

Dong left the Liberal caucus last year following another media report alleging he advised a senior Chinese diplomat in February 2021 that Beijing should hold off on freeing Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. He denies those allegations and has filed a $15 million defamation lawsuit against Global News and its parent company Corus Entertainment.

Office of the Prime Minister staff John Brodhead, Policy Advisor, Katie Telford, Chief of Staff and Brian Clow, Deputy Chief of Staff, appear as witnesses at the Public Order Emergency Commission in Ottawa, on Thursday, Nov 24, 2022. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Trudeau's testimony about the media leaks echoes that of his deputy chief of staff Brian Clow.

On Tuesday, Clow addressed the allegations about Kovrig and Spavor. He said he learned of the accusations only after the media reports were published.

"We had a number of discussions about how we could get the truth out about this document so that it could be known that Han Dong did not actually advocate for the delay of the release of the two Michaels," he said.

Clow said the PMO had classified information that would refute the claim and senior staff to the prime minister discussed whether they could declassify it. Ultimately, Clow said, they decided they could not make it public at the time, despite his strong feeling that the allegations were "wrong."

Last week, the inquiry viewed a document that showed CSIS director David Vigneault had issued a burn notice for an intelligence assessment about possible foreign interference in the Don Valley nomination race

The commission's lawyers wrote that Vigneault told them he "has no recollection" of why the document was recalled, but was confident that he only would have agreed to do so "because there was an issue with it."

"He had never and would never recall a document because it was too sensitive," the document says.

Gould says she was briefed about low-level Chinese interference

The inquiry heard earlier in the day from former democratic institutions minister Karina Gould, who said Canada's spy agency told her after the 2019 federal election that it had observed low-level foreign interference activities by China but that the vote was not compromised.

Gould, who held the portfolio from early 2017 to November 2019, said CSIS told her Beijing's interference activities in the lead-up to that October vote were similar to what had been seen in the past.

"Probably in every election that Canada has ever had, there have been attempts at foreign interference, just like in probably every election in a democracy around the world — probably since ancient Greece —  there have been attempts at foreign interference," she said Wednesday.

"Whether they are successful or not is another question."

Liberal member of Parliament Karina Gould appears as a witness at the Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions in Ottawa on Wednesday. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

The minister was questioned about her role in creating and setting the parameters for what's been called the "panel of five" — a team of five bureaucrats tasked with reviewing possible threats to the federal election.

Hogue already has heard that China and other state actors attempted to meddle in the 2019 and 2021 elections, but that the panel didn't feel those attempts reached the high threshold to make a public alert.

Gould defends threshold for public alert

Gould, who now serves as the government's House leader and is on maternity leave, defended that high threshold under cross-examination.

"The very act of making a decision to announce something publicly could be seen as interference itself," she said.

Gould said she was not briefed on the Don Valley North concerns during or after the election. She also said she was not made aware that security-cleared Liberal Party representatives were briefed in late September 2019 about the allegations of foreign interference by China in the Toronto-area nomination contest.

Gould said she wasn't briefed during the 2019 election about foreign interference because that's how she designed the process, adding she had a vested interest in the outcome of the election and it would have been inappropriate to receive those intelligence briefings.

'They just wanted us to have the information'

Testifying Tuesday, Jeremy Broadhurst — the Liberals' national campaign director for the 2019 federal election — disputed claims that CSIS warned the party to drop Dong has a candidate.

"They weren't making a recommendation that the party should do anything," he said. "They weren't advising that the prime minister take any specific actions. They just wanted us to have the information that they had at that time."

Longtime cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc, who oversaw democratic institutions before taking on the role of public safety minister last summer, told the inquiry Wednesday he was not always briefed with granular details and learned of some specific allegations when they were published by certain media outlets.

Trudeau's high-profile appearance was originally supposed to mark the end of this stage of the inquiry, but the commissioner agreed to recall Vigneault to respond to questions about certain documents by video conference on Friday.

Hogue's interim report is due in early May.

The inquiry will then shift to broader policy issues. A final report is expected by the end of the year.