The dam breaks v2
(Please read this version, not the earlier draft...)
It’s hard to keep up with the news, at least today. I was sitting down earlier today to write a column on the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) and why it could do important work on the foreign interference question. That one has gone over the shoulder into the waste basket.
Late this afternoon, March 6, the Prime Minister held a press conference to announce a raft of measures in response to the ongoing controversy, driven by leaks to the media, alleging Chinese electoral interference.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trudeau-tapping-special-rapporteur-and-two-national-security-bodies-to-investigate-foreign-interference-1.6301292
These measures show a government that, while it emphasizes its record in responding to foreign interference threats since coming to office in 2015, is spinning in all directions to find an answer to a media-instilled fear that has settled on Canadians that the Canadian democratic and electoral process has been shaken to the core. The reality is different, but it is the perception that counts, and the government knows this. So too do opposition parties and their leaders.
Some of the measures announced today have more easily discernible substance; with others that is less true.
Let’s talk about the former first, beginning with a foreign agent registry. The Prime Minister’s announcement shifted the goal posts on a foreign agent registry, moving them in two ways. He announced that public consultations would begin immediately and that these consultations would be about the best ways to establish a foreign agent registry, not whether a registry was a good idea. This is clearly a concession to opposition political pressure, but probably takes us where even a more open-ended and slower-moving consultation, as previously announced by the Public Safety Minister, would have eventually arrived—at the need for some kind of foreign agent registry that would be sensitive to rights concerns. The Prime Minister hinted darkly at some previous episodes in Canadian history which involved forms of “registering” ethnocultural communities in Canada—presumably he was conjuring up the disgraceful internment of Japanese Canadians during World War Two, or even harkening back to the treatment of allegedly disloyal ethnic minorities from central and eastern Europe during World War One. Whatever the consultation serves up, the Government would be wise to devote a good deal of attention to the nature of established foreign agent registries among close democratic allies, including Australia and the United States, as well as amendments to national security legislation in the UK to create a “Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.” We can learn from others’ experience—a solid Canadian tradition when it comes to national security matters.
The Prime Minister also announced the creation of a special coordinator in the Department of Public Safety to ensure that the multiple government departments and agencies with pieces of the foreign interference pie are working together. While the creation of this position responds to some earlier criticisms aired by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians about a scattered and ad-hoc approach by government, how such an office is going to function from within Public Safety is unclear. Why the position was not created within PCO as a central coordinating agency, with a direct link to the National Security and Intelligence Adviser is a puzzle. It suggests to me a government moving at speed, but spinning in all directions.
Prime Minister Trudeau further stated that he had asked Inter-Govermental Affairs Minister Dominic Leblanc, to look into gaps in terms of legislation and previous recommendations made. Fair enough, but why Minister LeBlanc? It’s not really his portfolio.
To turn to different Ministers to try to fix portions of the problem suggests a bigger problem with Cabinet governance as it now stands—namely the lack of a dedicated Cabinet committee on national security.
But none of these measures are the real head-line grabbers. The biggest headline is the creation of an independent “special rapporteur” with a wide mandate to make recommendations to combat foreign interference and to strengthen democratic practices. The Prime Minister said that the first task of the special rapporteur would be to make recommendations on appropriate next steps to investigate foreign interference. Here, the government has made itself a hostage to fortune by committing to abide by the recommendations of this as yet un-named special rapporteur (qualifications: an eminent person with knowledge of national security), including on the question of a public or judicial inquiry. The door is thus wide open.
In my view, this is abdicating the responsibility of the government to set policy on important national security issues. It’s a form of buck passing, which lets the government say—we were convinced by the eminent arguments of an eminent individual. Rather than—we bow to media and opposition party pressure.
Why a special rapporteur and not some other next mechanism? Here the answer is troubling, but at least the Prime Minister was clear. He said he recognized that “Canadians” (read as you will) would not be satisfied by having the foreign interference question reviewed and studied by the very institutions created between 2017 and 2019 to strengthen independent accountability for national security and intelligence—the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (created in 2017) and the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (created in 2019). Even though the Prime Minister conceded that reviews by these two bodies would not be enough to convince Canadians, he has gone ahead and urged both review bodies to conduct urgent studies of the foreign interference problem and report to Parliament. What?
So we will get two reviews, potentially duplicative, operating alongside a special rapporteur (operating alongside Morris Rosenberg’s independent report on the work of the Election interference panel and protocol). The Prime Minister did say each review body would work within its mandate—a telling insider statement. It’s not clear to me why both review bodies needed to be assigned this task, not least because their mandates are very different. The NSICOP is meant to take a strategic level look at the performance of the Canadian national security and intelligence system. NSIRA is primarily concerned with compliance review—that is whether elements of the Canadian security community, especially CSIS and CSE, are abiding by their mandates, authorities and laws. NSIRA seems much less relevant to the issue of foreign election interference than is NSICOP, which previously studied the issue in 2019 and came up with some important recommendations-which were not acted upon at the time. What NSIRA might look at is the question of leaks from CSIS, as the review body has put considerable emphasis on studying what it calls “safeguarding” within the national security system, but this part of its mandate was not elaborated on by the PM. The conclusion reached by the PM and his advisers may be that calling for CSIS leaks to be investigated isn’t winning him any political points.
No doubt the two review bodies will try to make the best of these Prime Ministerial imperatives, but its a poor recipe and an even worse reflection on the status of the new review system which the Liberals themselves created in a burst of ambition and revolutionary esprit. Even the Liberals don’t seem to trust their own creation sufficiently at this point. The Conservatives never did.
It would have been better by far to have vested an urgent review in the hands of NSICOP and damn the political torpedoes. (But then I am not a politician).
That aside, what’s missing in this head-spinning, out of control, response to the foreign interference controversy. For an answer, I will turn to some of the recommendations made by NSICOP in its foreign interference study in 2019.
https://www.nsicop-cpsnr.ca/reports/rp-2020-03-12-ar/annual_report_2019_public_en.pdf
The Committee recommended the government develop a “comprehensive strategy” to counter foreign interference. No mention in the press conference late this afternoon of any such endeavour. It suggested the need for government, both Ministers and senior officials, to better engage with Canadians to explain the evolving nature of foreign interference threats. No mention. It argued for the need for the federal government to work with provincial, terroritorial and municipal levels of government to tackle foreign interference. No mention. And it stressed the importance of working collaboratively with allies on foreign interference. Here the Prime Minister did remark on the work of a unit established at Global Affairs Canada, called the “Rapid Response Mechanism” (must be a computer-generated code-name) which is meant to work alongside G7 partners in countering threats to democracy, especially through state sponsored disinformation campaigns.
But what will our allies make of a government flailing in so many directions in response to media and political pressures, as if the foreign interference problem just jumped out at them like some kind of jack-in-the-box.
Well, they will be polite.
