In from the Cold

A whistleblower speaks

The secret person who has been the main source for the leaked classified records provided to the Globe and Mail on Chinese election interference has partly stepped out of the shadows. This person, labelled a “national security official” by the Globe and Mail, retains his or her anonymity but has provided a picture of what drives an extraordinary campaign in an Op Ed published in the paper on late Friday afternoon (March 17). Curious timing that.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-whistleblower-china-canada-election-interference/

We learn something of the professional experience of the whistleblower, the motivations behind the leaks, and the objectives that are sought. The Op Ed doesn’t provide a full profile of the whistleblower, but is a tantalizing reveal.

So let’s examine the main highlights.

First of all, we learn that the whistleblower is a public servant of long standing. Rank and agency remain matters for guesswork (but I will make guesses). What irked this person appears to have been the inability to move more senior officials to successfully engage with their political masters to take action, and growing “evidence” of unnamed senior public officials “ignoring interference.” In other words, this is someone caught in a bureaucratic machine, frustrated by its pace, acuity, and responsiveness to national security threats, as they experienced it. Unable to make his or her voice properly heard. Disconnected from political decision-makers. Middle-management, probably. You can hear the pain and the passion come through.

Curiously, the whistleblower says that she/he holds “no complaint against our political leaders, against our national security community, or against the Liberal party.” The whistleblower takes pains to state, “I do not believe that foreign interference dictated the present composition of our federal government.” Our secret agent rejects any suggestion that “any of our elected leaders” is a traitor to our country. So much for the more fervid rhetoric employed by opposition politicians (here’s looking at you, Pierre Poilievre) and media columnists (hi, Andrew Coyne).

What does the whistleblower fear, then? The answer seems to be—the future of the country and its democratic governance. The whistleblower compares him or herself to Jody Wilson-Raybould as a courageous individual holding fast to principles and values. The whistleblower fears that he/she may be one of the few. He or she knows the pound of flesh that whistleblowing may demand in terms of career termination and even jail time.

What does the whistleblower want? Not an ugly and divisive debate. Not an outcome that tears at the soul of multiculturalism and national unity, or undermines confidence in our democratic institutions and elections. (He/she even sounds like Justin Trudeau here!)

So what then? It’s a gentle and reasonable prescription and it draws me to this person. The desire is simply for greater national security transparency, enhanced accountability (presumably for our national security agencies), better protections for members of our society targeted by foreign interference, and efforts to beef up the resilience of our system of governance. The whistleblower offers no roadmap, no nostrums, perhaps because he or she knows, through painful experience, the difficulty of achieving these worthy goals, certainly in the short term.

There is no call for a public inquiry, no suggestion one way or another about the value of the triple-headed review currently adopted as a strategy by the Liberal government. Just a call for greater public awareness and a “much deeper conversation about what it is that we expect of our government.” If I was to put this is plainer words I would guess that what the whistleblower wants is for government to pay much greater attention to national security threats and to do a better job educating Canadians about them.

Who can say no to that?

Many of us have been calling for similar goals for years. I am only sorry that this person has to risk so much to achieve what should be a common and natural objective.

Whistleblowers will wrap themselves in the flag of righteousness. That is understandable, not least because of the risks they take. The incentive to see their actions as heroic and, by nature, lonely, is a given. Two courts may ultimately decide about this pose—the court of public opinion and the court of law. As I said in a previous column, history suggests white knight whistleblowers are rare. We may well be in the presence of one.

I am going to venture a guess about where in the national security community this person works. I do not do so to help the counter-intelligence hunters track him or her down. That is their business and they are probably ahead of me. The purpose is rather to draw attention to something that was revealed as long ago as 2020 in the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians annual report (for 2019) discussing foreign interference. This was the report whose recommendations the government paid no apparent heed to.

https://www.nsicop-cpsnr.ca/reports/rp-2021-04-12-ar/annual_report_2020_public_en.pdf

The NSICOP report drew an alarming picture of a national security community whose key components worked in silos, held no unified view of the threat from foreign interference, lacked coordination, and sometimes operated at cross-purposes. The Committee found no “comprehensive, whole of government approach.” It thought a foreign interference strategy was needed—none has been forthcoming. It mused that changes to legislation including the CSIS Act and the Security of Information Act might be needed to address the foreign interference threat. No changes. It wanted better public outreach by ministers and senior officials. Not much doing. It wanted regular briefings of the risk of foreign interference to be given to Parliamentarians (and not just during the election writ period). No soap. If you were perched within the bureaucracy watching this inaction, you can imagine the growing frustration that might have been felt (for others, maybe it is just part of the job).

Where in the system might this frustration have been experienced most acutely? The best candidates would appear to be the RCMP and Global Affairs Canada.

The RCMP because, according to the NSICOP report, it was still primarily focused on counter-terrorism, faced difficulties in criminal investigations because of the challenges posed by the intelligence-to-evidence problem, and held to a very diffuse understanding of foreign interference that failed to distinguish espionage from other kinds of interference threats. To them, the Delilse spy case was a good example of foreign interference, worth putting to NSICOP in an appearance before the Committee. Espionage is, to be sure, an important form of foreign interference but it wasn't what the Committee was talking about. And, well, let’s face it, the RCMP has lots of internal problems.

GAC, for a different reason. Attention to the foreign interference threat poses challenges to the conduct of diplomatic relations, which is the bread and butter of the department. Foreign service officers will naturally privilege the building and sustaining of diplomatic relationships (and trade relationships) with foreign countries, even if they are known to be engaged in interference operations, There is an inbuilt reluctance to take steps against embassy and consular officials known or suspected to be involved with interference operations within Canada, for fear of upsetting the diplomatic apple cart. The NSICOP report is somewhat sympathetic to the complexity of the problem for GAC, and quotes GAC officials who told the committee that “measures taken to counter foreign interference present a number of trade-offs which can impact Canada’s relationships and interests…action is not taken in a void; any response has spillover and tradeoffs.” (p. 84) Evidence to date about how these calculations are made suggests spillovers are feared and trade-offs deemed unpalatable. No Chinese embassy or consular officials have been declared persona non grata and given the bum’s rush, and only one visa has been denied to an incoming official.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/joly-visa-china-1.6773302

Don’t poke the dragon.

I get the concern, but not the risk aversion. Moreover it must be said that GAC officials sometimes look askance at the other elements of the intelligence community, believing that intelligence reporting competes unnecessarily with political reporting from our posts abroad and that elements of the Canadian intelligence system are too dependent on ties with our Five Eyes partners and the information flows that come from them, especially the U.S. If you were someone working in the GAC machinery, how easy it might be to grow frustrated.

Why not CSIS as the whistleblower’s home department, you might say. A good question, as some of the leaked material originates with CSIS. But CSIS has been the most active security and intelligence agency in taking efforts to counter the Chinese interference threat and talking openly about it. If you are frustrated at CSIS, you might have too low a boiling point.

The Privy Council Office (PCO) is another outside possibility. It produces intelligence assessments, handles intelligence inputs to Cabinet, provides rapid response to national security issues, and coordinates the intelligence community. A perch there might give one a bird’s eye view of aspects of inaction and missed opportunities. But PCO is also small and tightly knit.

All is guesswork and I am terrible at it (I would never have guessed David Johnston as the “special rapporteur”). Ultimately it may not matter where the whistleblower is situated, except from a safeguarding standpoint. The whistleblower knows something first hand that the NSICOP report revealed to us all in 2020, about deficiencies in the whole-of-government response to foreign interference. Attention was not paid (including by the media at the time).

A principled call for greater national security awareness and greater action against foreign interference threats cannot be faulted. Whether leaks to the media, and letting the media “curate” and run with the message, achieves this worthwhile goal is another question. Time will tell.

Where the public interest is not served is in the failure to publish the documents themselves. Do a Pentagon Papers, do a Snowden. Whose failure this is, and why, remains a mystery.