There is something about men in uniform that seems to bring Parliamentary committees to heel. That magic power was on display during the testimony of two senior Mounties, Commissioner Michael Duheme and Deputy Commission Mark Flynn, before the Commons Committee on Procedure and House Affairs on June 13, continuing its study of Chinese election interference.
Committee members were almost lambs, asking questions respectfully, waiting for answers, avoiding aggressive cross-examination and partisan slanging. It was a wonder to behold. Not that it always produced a lot of new information.
The RCMP is an important actor when it comes to foreign interference. They are part of the intelligence machinery for the flow of information, and hold the law enforcement power to arrest and charge. They are part of the problem (poor intelligence flows and low law enforcement rates) and part of the solution (better intelligence flows and enhanced enforcement).
A number of important points were made during the hearing. The RCMP is, and has been, actively engaged on the problem of foreign interference in its broad dimensions (including espionage and intellectual property theft). Deputy Commissioner Flynn told the committee that the RCMP has opened over 100 investigative files dealing with foreign interference in the past several years.
The problem of illegal, Beijing-sponsored “police stations,” is being tackled by the RCMP, with all known ones in Canada having either been shut down through disruption efforts or put under investigation. We learned that the overt efforts made by the RCMP to bring illegal police activity to a halt at these Chinese centres, using uniformed personnel and marked cars, had an important spill-over effect by encouraging diaspora communities to have greater trust in the RCMP and greater willingness to come forward with concerning information.
Perhaps the best message brought to the Committee by senior RCMP brass was their understanding of the need for greater engagement with communities targeted by foreign interference and their determination to achieve it. This message was delivered emphatically and marks a promise that the RCMP will need to be held accountable for.
On the other side of the ledger, there were aspects of the Committee hearing that didn't advance public knowledge very much. The RCMP Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner noted that there are internal discussions underway about new legal tools that might allow the Mounties to better tackle foreign interference, but offered no details.
There were no questions about the RCMP view of the value of a foreign influence registry, so no opportunity to learn anything on that front.
The RCMP leaders referenced problems with the issue of “intelligence to evidence” which structures relationships and information sharing between the RCMP and CSIS but proposed no concrete ideas on next steps to improve it.
When asked, they told the committee that despite there being over 100 investigative files, the RCMP had only made one arrest, back in November 2022, and that involved a case of alleged industrial espionage on behalf of Chinese entities.
The most significant issue, raised but not answered, was why the RCMP was not made aware of election interference threats targeting specific MPs prior to the exposure of these threats based on leaks of classified CSIS intelligence to the media. We know that the RCMP has now opened, as a result of Globe and Mail stories, criminal investigations into the cases of three MPs who were targeted—Michael Chong and Erin O’Toole from the Conservative Party and Jenny Kwan from the NDP. It stands to reason that if the RCMP had been made aware of interference threats dating back to 2021 targeting these MPs, and known to CSIS, that the necessary criminal threshold would have been present at the time to allow the RCMP to investigate, as they are now doing, belatedly.
On this point the perspicacity of former special rapporteur David Johnston’s, investigation and findings about dysfunction in the government machinery for information sharing and action seems born out. This was essentially acknowledged in their testimony by the two senior RCMP officers, who stated that they were not interested in any finger pointing, but instead believed that it was important to learn lessons from the problems revealed in intelligence sharing. Lots of intelligence is shared between the RCMP and CSIS, but these pieces were not. Problem.
The committee chair, Liberal MP Bardish Chaggar, called the hour long testimony an “honest” discussion. And so it was, in a limited way. But it was only a small step on the road to greater national security transparency.
malapropisms never die
The committee chair, Liberal MP Bardish Chaggar may have called it an honest discussion but she also said she was simultaneously distracted because at the time she was penning her congratulatory message to Nick Taylor on his PGA victory. Now that is a committee chair to be taken seriously.