Tensions within the federal government regarding the question of whether Beijing is meddling in Canadian affairs or merely conducting diplomatic activities have been laid bare at the Foreign Interference Commission, with one former intelligence official saying the issue was hotly debated.
The commission heard evidence around the disagreement in recent days as it probes the capacity of Ottawa to counter the threat of foreign interference. One aspect involves looking at the machinery of government and how intelligence is being shared internally.
The foreign interference saga that has unfolded over the last two years has shown that intelligence often wasn’t shared at all with senior decision-makers.
The commission heard about one specific instance on Oct. 7 pertaining to a “Special Report” on “China’s Foreign Interference Activities” produced by the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat (IAS) of the Privy Council Office (PCO).
The January 2022 report, which says the Canadian intelligence community is of the “consensus view that China poses the most significant foreign interference (Fl) threat to Canada,” was not distributed to senior political levels at the time.
Martin Green, a former PCO official and former assistant secretary to the cabinet for IAS, told the inquiry it was his idea to produce the report. However, he said he couldn’t explain why the report was not distributed.
“It’s not a perfect report, [but] I think it’s a darn good one,” he said.
Green said his idea to produce the report came as there had been “significant debate” for years and ongoing conversations at senior levels about what constitutes foreign interference and foreign influence. In its Special Report, PCO defines foreign interference as being deceptive and clandestine, whereas foreign influence is part of normal diplomacy.
“This paper was an innovative attempt to marry the international and the domestic, because there was a big debate about whether or not, particularly China, which is the subject of the paper, wasn’t really doing a lot of foreign interference in Canada,” Green said.
In late 2021, when the report was being written and this debate referred-to by Green would have taken place, the federal government already had intelligence about Beijing’s interference in the democratic process, such as in the 2019 Liberal nomination race in the Don Valley North riding of Toronto.
Conflicting Testimony
Green’s assertion that the idea to produce the PCO Special Report was his doesn’t entirely align with the testimony of another official at the inquiry.Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs David Morrison, who was serving as National Security and Intelligence Adviser (NSIA) in late 2021, told the inquiry on Oct. 4 that he was behind the PCO Special Report on Beijing interference.
Morrison said the release of the 2021 CSIS assessment on Chinese interference had left him with a “series of important questions unanswered.”
“If [Chinese officials] were working on parliamentarians, were they winning? If they were engaged in other kinds of activity that was inappropriate, what were the concrete examples of that?” he said.
Green said his recollection was that the PCO Special Report was “my idea” when asked by commission counsel to comment on Morrison’s evidence. “David Morrison thought it was a good idea,” he said.
According to Green, Morrison requested corrections after receiving a draft of the paper, raising concerns about its tone.
“Mr. Green recalled that Mr. Morrison pointed out that a number of the activities included [in] the Report were regular diplomatic activity,” reads a summary of Green’s in-camera (i.e. private) interview with the commission. Green said it was a matter of perception, and that while some cases could be described as regular diplomatic activity, “in his view, those activities, in combination with other things, showed a growing trend.”
‘Own Understanding’
To explain why the PCO Special Report was never distributed, Morrison said he had commissioned the assessment to “increase my own understanding of the threat.”Morrison left the NSIA role and was replaced by Jody Thomas in early 2022, who also didn’t distribute the Special Report. Thomas is set to testify on Oct. 9.
Green had provided Thomas with a cover note for the Special Report on Jan. 20, 2022, saying CSIS had been consulted extensively in the drafting process and that the agency concurred with its conclusions. The note also recommended Thomas provide the Special Report to deputy ministers, cabinet ministers, and other entities like the RCMP and GAC.
Green told the inquiry he also had regular meetings with Thomas in which he asked about the status of the report, “hoping that it would move forward.”
Morrison said he didn’t know why Thomas didn’t distribute the Special Report and why it was not provided to the prime minister. The Special Report was sent to her around the time of the Freedom Convoy protest and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Morrison said that, in his view, the PCO Special Report “absolutely” didn’t have to be provided to the prime minister.
“As the commissioning person, I was looking for something ... that had a certain amount of granularity, a certain amount of telling us what it would look like if [foreign interference] were happening,” he said. “Until you know that, I don’t see how you can decide what to do about it.”
This is one instance among several others of an NSIA not briefing senior levels about China’s interference threats that raised questions later. Morrison did not brief Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the 2021 CSIS assessment on Chinese interference which he said prompted him to commission the PCO Special Report.
