Liberal and Conservative parliamentarians are calling on a government committee to probe the targeting of MPs by Chinese hackers, saying their privilege has been breached.
Conservative MP Garnett Genuis asked House Speaker Greg Fergus on April 29 to recognize the breach and allow the tabling of a motion to refer the matter to committee for study.
APT31 targeted a wide array of political and business figures, including members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), which comprises cross-party legislators from around the world seeking to change how democratic countries deal with Beijing.
Mr. Genuis and Mr. McKay are the co-chairs of IPAC’s Canadian branch.
The FBI told The Epoch Times in a statement that it notified its Canadian partners of the hack “as soon as it was discovered.”
The affected MPs say they were never warned and Mr. Genuis stated IPAC learned about it through the unsealing of the indictment.
Mr. Genuis told the House of Commons the issue is similar to that of his Conservative colleague Michael Chong. An intelligence leak revealed in May 2023 that Mr. Chong was a target of Chinese intelligence, and he also had not been warned by the government.
Then-speaker of the House Anthony Rota recognized a breach of Mr. Chong’s privilege to conduct his parliamentary work unhampered and the matter was referred for study to the Procedure and House Affairs Committee.
In relation to the Chinese hack, Mr. Genuis said the effect on the work of parliamentarians remains unknown, though it could have entailed the disruption of communications or the monitoring of parliamentarians’ activities.
“But we do know that our work as parliamentarians was under attack, and that once again, Canadian authorities responsible for protecting our democracy did not pass critical information along to parliamentarians, information that they had,” he said.
Mr. Genuis said IPAC and its legislators are being targeted by Beijing because they’re building an “effective global coalition” to challenge abuses by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
A total of 18 Canadian parliamentarians are members of IPAC, but some of their involvement is not public. Mr. Genuis mentioned some of the public members during his speech in the House: Liberal MP Judy Sgro, Conservative MPs Tom Kmiec, Stephanie Kusie, and James Bezan, and non-affiliated Senator Marilou McPhedran.
Ms. Sgro rose in the House after Mr. Genuis spoke, saying she would support an eventual motion. “I think it’s a very serious breach of our privileges,” she said. “I think it’s very important that we get some answers here as to why we were not notified, and what’s happening next, and how do we better protect ourselves in the future.”
NDP House Leader Peter Julian and Liberal Parliamentary Secretary to the House Leader Kevin Lamoureux did not express an immediate position on the matter, saying they would take time to assess the request.
Along with asking for a referral to committee, Mr. Genuis suggested foreign intelligence partners from democratic countries be asked to inform Parliament directly when there are threats against its members.
This would bypass the current mechanism, where foreign agencies send information to their counterparts in Canada. These agencies then decide what to do with the information, such as whether to bring it up or not.
The Epoch Times asked three relevant Canadian security agencies and a government department what was done with the FBI information on the Chinese hacking of parliamentarians, but no specific answers were provided.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told reporters April 30 he’s “not prepared to say that no notifications were given” to Parliamentarians about the hack.
“We’re determining the exact facts of what happened a couple of years ago,” he said. “I think the Communications Security Establishment has confirmed that when they receive the information, they obviously pass that on to the appropriate authorities.”
