The House of Commons voted today in favour of a Bloc motion to ask the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference (PIFI) to take note of the recent report by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) and to investigate (further) the issue of the involvement of federal MPs and Senators in foreign interference operations targeting Canada. The motion had all-party support (minus the Greens).
I asked Dan Stanton to comment on this plan and he graciously agreed. Dan is a former CSIS Executive officer who now leads a national security program at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute. He is a frequent commentator on national security issues for the media. I value his take on issues. What follows is Dan’s commentary on the decision to hand off the NSICOP report to the Hogue Inquiry.
Dan Stanton writes:
Times - and tune - have certainly changed for a government that barely a year ago would not entertain the idea of having a commission of inquiry. Considering the effusiveness of the Liberal government's confidence in the inquiry's investigative prowess, you would think it had discovered penicillin. Such is the desperation of this government to find a safe harbour - or safe house as a nod to LeCarre - for the foreign interference shipwreck.
Two problems with this punt:
NSICOP did a thorough and impressive review of the threat of foreign interference to our electoral and democratic processes. This is not surprising, as they understand the operations of our intelligence agencies, their peculiar cultures, warts and all. Will the Commission of Inquiry do a better job than NSICOP? Will they truly be able to "investigate further" the shocking findings of the NSICOP report?
The Commission of Inquiry, while staffed by top-notch lawyers, is not an investigative agency. Their commission experience lies in interviewing pliant Government of Canada witnesses, not in sussing out the words and reported deeds of the targets of a CSIS investigation. Can they conduct intensive interviews with accused spies, detect deception, and better ascertain the threat these targets pose to national security better than CSIS? Does the Commission have the analytic horsepower to reassess the threat?
The second problem is that the Commission of Inquiry has a regular day job of Sisyphean proportions. Phase II of the Inquiry begins in early September with another ridiculously concise diary date. In many ways, this policy implementation phase is the most important for Canada, especially with significant changes to national security laws coming down the pike (or barreling down the falls). And is any of this fair to Commissioner Hogue?
The government must not shirk its responsibility to make decisions and move forward with recommendations. It must engage all parties, allowing them to vet their MPs and remove problematic cases from access, influence, and temptations. It's time for the government to step up, show leadership, and foster teamwork in Parliament. Leave the punting, deflections, dodging, and weaving to the sports field.
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I say, bravo, Dan.
Here is my own thinking about the punt manoeuvre. Not so concise as Dan’s.
Wesley Wark writes:
The most interesting development for me is the decision by the Green Party not to join the Bloc motion. OK, the Greens are a miniscule party, even if Elizabeth May is a mighty MP. Why care what the Green position might be? Answer, this is a change of heart with a cause.
Elizabeth May has used her existing top secret security clearance (granted her to read the Johnston report last year) and has dived into the classified version of the NSICOP report. She held an hour-long press conference on her assessment of the report today. Within the limits of what she could say, Ms. May was extremely revealing.
In a prepared statement she proclaimed herself “vastly relieved” by the report’s contents and happy to say that she has no worries about anyone in the House of Commons. She said there was no “list” of disloyal MPs. She added that a few MPs may have been compromised to a degree and benefitted from foreign interference assistance in nomination campaigns but had not, in her reading, acted against the interests of Canada. She confirmed there were no references to Senators in the NSICOP report. The cases of concern involved only a small number of elected officials, a tiny handful of people.
All of this was hugely helpful for putting the affair in perspective. She said the media firestorm, while understandable, was overblown.
MP May saved her fire for one singular instance contained in the NSICOP report, regarding a former MP who maintained a “relationship” with a foreign intelligence officer. She called this case “outrageous.” It warranted prosecution, in her view.
After reading the NSICOP report, May has come to a determination that reference of the problem to the Hogue inquiry is not necessary. The gravity isn’t there. In her view, it should be up to Parliamentarians to come up with solutions to police themselves. This would require the inculcation of a better understanding of the foreign interference threat and an ability on the part of ethics officers for the House and Senate to enforce compliance with ethics rules, including on foreign interference.
Elizabeth May is way out in front on this issue.
Leaders of the NDP and the Bloc have said they will get security clearances and read the classified NSICOP report. But that won’t stay the move to punt the NSICOP report to the Hogue Inquiry. It appears that Jagmeet Singh, has now received his own security clearance, after some dithering, and will read the classified version tomorrow. Whether he will regret the decision to hand what Elizabeth May called the “hot potatoe” to the Hogue Commission remains to be seen. We will probably never know.
Pierre Poilievre has maintained a stubborn insistence that he won’t get a security clearance and won’t read the classified version. He doesn’t want to know. Punting the issue to the Hogue Inquiry gets him off the hook on that one.
Similarly, for the governing party, the hope is that punting to Hogue, plus the new bill on foreign interference, C-70, will relieve them of some immediate political pressure. In any case, Parliament will soon close up shop for the summer.
So, over to Justice Hogue.
What can we expect? First, the Inquiry may ask for additional time to complete its final report, currently due in December. That would be reasonable, even if it doesn’t fit with the idea, much touted by opposition politicians, that we need the Hogue report before the next election (perhaps with high hopes for political ammunition?). Keep in mind Dan Stanton’s comment about the Commission’s already Sisyphean task.
It is also important to recall the original terms of reference for the Hogue Inquiry. It is empowered, in the second phase of its work, to:
“recommend any means for better protecting federal democratic processes from foreign interference that the Commissioner may consider appropriate.”
It is no stretch for the Inquiry to incorporate into its study the problem of federal political actors who may be “witting” or “semi-witting” accomplices in foreign interference. We now know, thank to Ms. May, the problem is on the smallish side, and in her view mostly does not involve acts of disloyalty to Canada, though one proxy is one too many and hostile state actors will persist in their blandishments in future.
In taking note of the NSICOP report, as the Parliamentary motion requires, PIFI will not only have to consider the intelligence reporting about federal political actors, but the recommendations advanced by NSICOP.
The NSICOP report provides six recommendations. One involves changes to various pieces of national security legislation. Much of this is addressed by Bill C-70, which is being fast-tracked in Parliament.
Three of the Committee’s recommendations don’t involve changes to the law, but are in the realm of policy and governance of the national security system. One is an apple pie appeal to the government to stay abreast of the evolution of national security threats, matching a Committee finding that the government has been slow to respond seriously to the foreign interference threat. Another involves an effort to ensure that the public can be properly informed about the work of the new National Security Council, as the head table for intelligence reporting and national security decision-making in Cabinet. This recommendation mirrors a broader unease that the new NSC may not be used to maximum effect.
The third recommendation in this basket asks that the government come up with a consistent and uniform understanding of what constitutes foreign interference that would feed into “timely and comprehensive assessments of threats and advice for action.” What I like about this recommendation is not the call for a common understanding, which should already be available in the definition of foreign interference in the CSIS Act, but the emphasis placed on intelligence assessments that actually get circulated to senior decision-makers, and read.
NSICOP is passionate about an issue it has raised in the past, shaped as a new recommendation. It wants better education for parliamentarians, through regular briefings on national security threats, including an initial briefing for every newly elected MP or newly appointed Senator. The committee rightly finds it hard to understand why this is not being done. I am with them on that. I think Elizabeth May is as well.
NSICOP has also advanced a recommendation that the government should engage with all the political parties to discuss the better regulation of nomination contests and leadership conventions. They suggest that it would be important for both chambers to ensure that their respective ethics commissioners and bodies are seized by the issue of foreign interference. This should be happening now; it doesn’t need to wait for the Hogue Commission to opine. MP May is also onboard.
Coming out of the NSICOP report there are things being done (Bill C-70) and recommendations that should be acted on without any need for further investigation.
This still leaves some space for the Hogue Commission to advance some recommendations of its own, whether on legislation, policy or governance on foreign interference, in due course. We might as well grant the space, and hope it proves fruitful, given the punt. Sorry, Ms. May.
But understanding what the Hogue Commission will not be able to do remains important. It may involve some dashing of public and media expectations.
The Commission won’t be able to reveal the details of intelligence reports. It faces the same restrictions in that regard as did NSICOP. Like NSICOP is must respect the protection of secrets. It may provide more context about these reports, but that will be the extent of its powers. Elizabeth May has already delivered the corrective headline.
Justice Hogue might ask the government to produce a new intelligence ”summary,” as a public document, that would try to capture the general nature of the intelligence holdings on the political actor accomplice problem. Fourteen such summaries have been produced to date and are available on the Commission website. Reader alert—they are very general and high-level, and surrounded by a wall of caveats. But, still, it might be helpful.
The Commission won’t name names, even if they were there for the calling out. No judge would be prepared to engage in such an extra-legal process.
Action to counter foreign interference can take many forms. None, on their own, will end the threat. Collectively, through legislative and policy changes, through sharpening our intelligence capabilities, through paying serious attention at the political level and across society to national security issues, the threat can be managed.
But the ultimate test of how we manage the threat will rest on our ability to prosecute the most serious cases of those found to have engaged in foreign interference. Prosecutions have to be considered the gold standard for the worst offences. We simply cannot afford to be overly pessimistic, or hand-wringing, about the ability of law enforcement and prosecutors to bring such cases forward to.
There is, after all, a case at hand for action. The NSCIP report tells us so; Elizabeth May affirms this.
The problem at the heart of all of this, is why Trudeau and his government went to such ferocious lengths to avoid any looking into the possibilities of foreign interference. There must have been some rather good reasons. Such arrogant behaviour was not for nothing.
Thank you for continuing to shed light on this issue. Your readers might be interested in Ng Weng Hoong's recent Substack article, "Canada Endorses Chinese-Scapegoating In Latest Inquiry". It highlights the threat posed by a new roving band of glory hunters, intellectual mercenaries, and fearmongers masquerading as patriots