Liberal and Conservative MPs say the government never warned a group of 18 parliamentarians critical of Beijing it was being targeted by hackers linked to the Chinese regime.
The statement from Mr. McKay and Mr. Genuis is related to an IPAC announcement on the same day saying it has “confirmed with intelligence” that 18 MPs and senators were targeted by a group of Chinese state-sponsored hackers called APT31 in 2021.
IPAC added parliamentarians were not told about the attack despite the Canadian government being informed in 2022.
Mr. McKay and Mr. Genuis describe the event as a “reconnaissance cyberattack” from a People’s Republic of China “state-controlled entity.” They say the FBI warned IPAC about the attack, which then immediately informed Canadian lawmakers.
“According to information shared with IPAC by the FBI, legislators outside the United States were not directly informed by American authorities when this attack was initially detected, because of sovereignty concerns, however the FBI informed their counterparts in other countries,” the MPs said.
FBI counterparts in Canada include the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Neither responded to a request for comment by publication time.
Public Safety Canada, the department overseeing RCMP and CSIS, declined to comment and deferred back to the agencies. “Public Safety Canada is not an investigative agency and does not have any operational function with regards to criminal investigations,” said spokesperson Tim Warmington.
The Epoch Time also sought comments from the Communications Security Establishment, which has primacy for countering cyber attacks, but didn’t immediately hear back.
The FBI told The Epoch Times in a statement that it “notified host government partners of the existence, nature of, and attribution for the targeting activity several years ago, as soon as it was discovered by the FBI.” The FBI explained it is not allowed to reach out directly to foreign officials due to sovereignty concerns.
The group was charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, with the DOJ saying their activities spanned around 14 years and targeted critics of Beijing in the U.S. and abroad, as well as political and business officials.
The DOJ says APT31 was part of a cyber espionage program ran by the Chinese spy service Ministry of State Security’s province of Hubei branch.
APT31 sent malicious tracking-link emails to the IPAC members in or around 2021, the DOJ says, including every European Union member of IPAC and 43 United Kingdom parliamentary accounts.
The DOJ says these activities and others targeting the U.S. “resulted in the confirmed and potential compromise of economic plans, intellectual property, and trade secrets belonging to American businesses, and contributed to the estimated billions of dollars lost every year as a result of the PRC’s state-sponsored apparatus to transfer U.S. technology to the PRC.”
Mr. McKay and Mr. Genuis say the government should take steps to inform legislators of attacks or potential attacks in the future. They also asked that the perpetrators be sanctioned.
The issue of MPs not being warned by the federal government about targeting attempts and interference by the Chinese regime has come up repeatedly in the last year.
Intelligence leaks in the media surrounding this issue eventually led the Liberal government to hold a public inquiry into foreign interference.
Those leaks led to senior ministers, including the prime minister, saying they were not told that MPs such as Conservative Michael Chong were being targeted by Chinese intelligence.
Mr. Chong and other Canadian politicians and officials testified during the latest round of public hearings for the foreign interference commission earlier this month.
