CSIS and Trudeau's adviser clashed on foreign interference threat in 2021: report
Intelligence regarding for‐ eign interference some‐ times didn't make it to the prime minister's desk in 2021 because Canada's spy agency and the prime min‐ ister's national security ad‐ viser didn't always see eye to eye on the nature of the threat, according to a re‐ cent report from one of Canada's intelligence watchdogs.
The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) released a report on Monday evening pointing to several schisms in the flow of information between Canada's intelligence agen‐ cies and the federal govern‐ ment during the last two fed‐ eral elections.
The independent body was asked to take on the re‐ view in March 2023, following media reports, citing un‐ named security sources and classified documents, that ac‐ cused China of interfering in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. Some of the re‐ ports also suggested that members of the Liberal gov‐ ernment were aware of cer‐ tain attempts at interference but didn't act.
The government tabled NSIRA's report late Monday in the House of Commons.
According to the intelli‐ gence watchdog, Privy Coun‐ cil Office and Canadian Secu‐ rity Intelligence Service (CSIS) analysts produced reports in 2021 meant to serve as sum‐ mary overviews of Chinese foreign interference activi‐ ties.
The prime minister's na‐ tional security intelligence adviser (NSIA), however, viewed the reports as "re‐ counting standard diplomatic activity," Monday's report said.
"The gap between CSIS's point of view and that of the NSIA is significant, because the question is so fundamen‐ tal," it said.
"CSIS collected, analyzed, and reported intelligence about activities that it consid‐ ered to be significant threats to national security; one of the primary consumers of that reporting (and the de facto conduit of intelligence to the Prime Minister) dis‐ agreed with that assess‐ ment."
NSIRA said that dis‐ agreement played a role in those intelligence products not reaching the political ex‐ ecutive, including the prime minister.
"Commitments to address political foreign interference are straightforward in theory, but will inevitably suffer in practice if rudimentary dis‐ agreements as to the nature of the threat persist in the community," the report said.
The report doesn't name which adviser it's referring to. The national security and in‐ telligence adviser's office was in flux in 2021.
Vincent Rigby retired and left the position at the end of June of that year and was later replaced by Jody Thomas in early 2022.
Dave Morrison, the deputy minister of foreign af‐ fairs, acted as the adviser un‐ til Thomas was appointed. But during the window of July 16 to Aug. 3, 2021, Mike Mac‐ Donald was filling in.
'Grey zone' of foreign in‐ terference
NSIRA said the "disagreemen‐ ts and misalignments" be‐ tween the adviser and CSIS underscore what's called the "grey zone," where political foreign interference borders on typical political or diplo‐ matic activity.
"This challenge was everpresent in the activities un‐ der review, influencing deci‐ sions about whether to dis‐ seminate and how to charac‐ terize what was shared, while raising sensitivities in terms of reporting about activities which skirt the political and diplomatic realms," NSIRA wrote.
"The risk of characterizing legitimate political or diplo‐ matic behaviour as a threat led some members of the in‐ telligence community to not identify certain activities as threat activities."
The report recommends that "regular consumers of intelligence work to enhance intelligence literacy within their departments and that, further, the security and in‐ telligence community devel‐ op a common, working un‐ derstanding of what consti‐ tutes political foreign inter‐ ference."
WATCH | CSIS and PM's adviser clashed on foreign interference threat in 2021: report
NSIRA's report said CSIS also struggled to reconcile whether to report foreign in‐ terference without being seen as, itself, interfering in elections.
Ultimately, CSIS's dissemi‐ nation of intelligence on po‐ litical foreign interference during the last two elections "was inconsistent," it said.
"The threat posed by po‐ litical foreign interference ac‐ tivities was not clearly com‐ municated by CSIS," the NSIRA report said.
In a statement, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said the government will review recommendations from the report.
Inquiry also pointed to gaps
Earlier this month, the for‐ eign interference commis‐ sion found that attempts by other countries to meddle in the 2019 and 2021 general elections did not impact which party formed the gov‐ ernment.
"Nonetheless, the acts of interference that occurred are a stain on our electoral process and impacted the process leading up to the ac‐ tual vote," Justice Marie-Josée Hogue wrote in her initial re‐ port.
Hogue said none of the evidence she's heard to date suggests officials acted in "bad faith" or that informa‐ tion was deliberately and im‐ properly withheld.
"But it does suggest that on some occasions, informa‐ tion related to foreign inter‐ ference did not reach its in‐ tended recipient, while on others the information was not properly understood by those who received it," she wrote.