‘Regret to Inform You’: CSIS Briefed Liberal Party Again in 2021 Over Foreign Interference

A sign for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service building in Ottawa, in a file photo. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

Canada’s spy agency provided a sensitive briefing to the Liberal Party about foreign interference a few days before the 2021 elections, according to a document released during the foreign interference inquiry on April 8.

“Importantly, we regret having to inform you of this activity and, again, understand the difficulties associated with the limitations of what you can do with it,” reads the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) briefing delivered to representatives from the Liberal Party on Sept. 12, 2021.

The briefing was destined to Liberal Party officials Azam Ishmael and Braeden Caley. “It is being provided for your awareness and action based on your judgement, while respecting the restrictions that have been discussed in the political party briefing forums on sharing classified intelligence,” it says.

Security-cleared Liberal Party officials had been briefed during the 2019 elections about intelligence surrounding the Liberal nomination contest in the Don Valley North riding, which was won by Han Dong.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was subsequently briefed by his staff but he chose to leave Mr. Dong in place, who went on to win the seat in the House of Commons.

The contents of the classified 2021 briefing and the nature of the foreign interference threat were censored in the released document, and CSIS wrote the distribution of the intelligence was “very limited” and it did not want to disclose it to anyone without a “Secret” clearance or who did “not have a need to know.”

“You cannot share or discuss this information over an open telephone line, via text message, encrypted apps, email, or other means,” said the briefing.

The document also revealed that the briefing was held at CSIS headquarters in Ottawa, and involved two CSIS officials and one from the Privy Council Office.

Threat Did Not Meet Threshold to Inform Canadians

The revelation came during testimony by bureaucrats from the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol (CEIPP), which lays out the process by which Canadians would be notified by the government of a threat to the integrity of an election.

Janice Charette, former clerk of the Privy Council and a member of the five-person CEIPP panel back in 2021, testified that during the deliberations with CSIS on foreign interference, at “no point” did the panel conclude that the issue briefed to the Liberal Party met the threshold to inform the public.

The 2019 members of the CEIPP also testified before the inquiry that the concerns surrounding the nomination contest in Don Valley North in 2019 didn’t warrant warning the public. Nathalie Drouin, the prime minister’s top security adviser, said the CSIS briefing for the Liberals was thought to be sufficient to mitigate the risk, and thus the threat did not meet the threshold to warn the public.

Ms. Drouin testified that the CEIPP, and hence the security establishment, were aware of intelligence before the 2019 vote that the Chinese regime was funding federal candidates.

“At the end, we concluded that the information we have, because of the potential impact it had, because of the reliability of some information, that our threshold was not met to do any announcement,” testified Ms. Drouin, who was at the time deputy minister of justice.

The matter was however referred to the commissioner of Canada Elections, which confirmed having open investigations to the inquiry in late March. One of the allegations being probed relates to Han Dong and the involvement of the Chinese consulate in his nomination process.

The next two days of inquiry will see the prime minister and his political staff testifying. Relevant ministers will also be appearing before the commission.