'Ottawa-speak of the highest order': Trudeau's advisor accused of foreign interference cover-up

The Canadian Press / Adrian Wyld

At the Foreign Interference Commission Thursday, a lawyer representing Conservative MP Michael Chong accused the Trudeau government of constructing a paper trail to assign blame for its failure to inform Conservatives they were targets of foreign interference.

Lawyer Gib van Ert produced a 2023 memo from Jody Thomas, Trudeau’s former National Security Advisor, calling it “nonsense” and a bureaucratic attempt to cover up the government’s gross negligence.

At the heart of the issue is the government’s failure to inform Chong about a Chinese diplomat’s efforts to target him and his family in Hong Kong. Chong, who only learned about the threats from a Globe and Mail report in 2023, testified that CSIS had flagged these concerns to ministers and senior bureaucrats as far back as 2021.

This shows the timeline of who became aware and when of the PRC targeting of Michael Chong.

May 2021, senior officials in the Liberal government were looped in.

Chong was never told. He learned of it in a news report in 2023. pic.twitter.com/Yi39cL7CmB

— Sheila Gunn Reid (@SheilaGunnReid) September 26, 2024

Despite this, senior officials, including then-Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, never read or acted on these warnings.

ooof, that's gonna leave a mark.

CPC MP Michael Chong lights up the Canadian government for their lack of transparency about threats to candidates of foreign interference.

Chong says it is the Trudeau government that is fomenting anti-Asian hate while accusing others who… pic.twitter.com/JlUoqHK4AP

— Sheila Gunn Reid (@SheilaGunnReid) April 3, 2024

"The agencies will inform the affected party ...of the incident directly."

However, they didn't inform Kenny Chui, Michael Chong, Bob Saroya, Jenny Kwan, and Alice Wong, although agencies knew about foreign state actors targeting these MPs and candidates. pic.twitter.com/6SH5ukws7Z

— Sheila Gunn Reid (@SheilaGunnReid) April 8, 2024

Chong’s lawyer argued that top officials, including Thomas, had shifted blame to CSIS to deflect responsibility for their own inaction.

He cited Thomas’s 2023 memo to Prime Minister Trudeau, which discussed vague plans to improve intelligence-sharing processes, but offered little in terms of concrete accountability. The memo spoke of a "more systematic and comprehensive approach" to handling intelligence, yet Chong’s lawyer dismissed it as bureaucratic double-speak, calling it “a lot of nonsense" to cover up inaction.

Senior officials from the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) testified that existing protocols for sharing intelligence with decision-makers were already effective. Caroline Xavier, a senior official at CSE, told the commission that no new measures were needed and that CSE had been doing its job.

Chong’s lawyer asked Xavier whether she agreed with Thomas’s memo, which promised new frameworks and proactive approaches.

“Do you agree with that, or is it just nonsense?” he asked. Xavier stopped short of criticizing Thomas directly, but she confirmed that CSE had been knocking on doors “all over town” to make sure the right people were informed of the threats.

Chong’s earlier testimony accused the Trudeau government of gross negligence in its handling of Chinese interference, including a Chinese diplomat, working out of Toronto, who targeted targeted him.

"I think the ultimate responsibility was the Prime Minister’s," Chong said during his testimony. 

CPC MP Michael Chong, targeted by the PRC, tells the Foreign Interference Commission who is responsible for the proliferation of foreign threats to Canada.

"The Prime Minister is uniquely responsible for the machinery of government.

He not only has a special responsibility for… pic.twitter.com/FZYuMD2aWu

— Sheila Gunn Reid (@SheilaGunnReid) September 18, 2024

"The Prime Minister is uniquely responsible for the machinery of government. He not only has a special responsibility for national security, he also is uniquely responsible for the structure of the Government of Canada, how things flow between departments and agencies, and he has a responsibility to ensure that the machinery is set up in a way that national security information flows to the appropriate people. He obviously did not do that job."