Former public safety minister Bill Blair says he didn’t consider partisan politics when it came time to approve a spy service order to surveil a powerful Ontario Liberal man.
There was a gap of 54 days in 2021 from when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) submitted a request for the order until Blair finally authorized it. During that time, CSIS agents became frustrated by what they perceived as a delay by the minister’s office in the investigation into Michael Chan, a former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister.
After several days of testimony in the foreign interference investigation (including Blair, his former chief of staff, Zita Astravas, and senior CSIS officials), it is still unclear why this order took so much longer than most CSIS requests to the minister.
But Blair, now defense minister, testified on Friday morning that politics was not behind the delay in approving surveillance, which was finally approved just months before the 2021 federal election.
“When this order request was presented to me, I never considered anything other than my legal responsibility to review and, if appropriate, approve the order,” said Blair, who said he signed the order the same day it was served to him. commission.
“There were no other considerations and certainly no political considerations.”
Three weeks after Blair approved the order, a Federal Court judge approved CSIS’s request to investigate Chan.
Media reports identified Chan as suspected of working with the Chinese government since 2015, when Astravas worked in Prime Minister Kathleen Wynne’s office as director of media relations and Chan was an acting cabinet minister.
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“Michael Chan is a man of sterling character who has honorably served the people of Markham-Unionville and all Ontarians,” Astravas told the Globe and Mail, which first reported CSIS’s interest in Chan, in June of 2015.
Chan, now Markham’s deputy mayor, is suing CSIS and two reporters, including a former Global News employee, over leaks and news articles.
The delay with this particular order has become a central narrative in the second phase of Judge Marie-Josée Hogue’s public inquiry, in the same way as the “irregularities” surrounding Han Dong’s Liberal nomination in 2019 in Don Valley North they dominated the first phase.
The 2019 nomination story focused on how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) allegedly interferes in Canadian democracy. Questions about the Chan order have more to do with how the federal government responds when faced with accusations of foreign interference.
The order was delivered to the minister’s office in the midst of the global pandemic, and both Blair and Astravas testified that access to CSIS intelligence was significantly restricted while people continued to work from home.
However, Astravas received a report on the order from CSIS officials 13 days after the order was submitted for approval, and a second report in the following weeks. In his testimony Wednesday, Astravas rejected the claim that he wanted to “expedite” the file because it would bring CSIS into his party’s affairs, calling it “categorically false.”
While CSIS agents and officials may have been frustrated by the delay, former CSIS Director David Vigneault previously told the commission that he was not concerned about the order’s timeline.
Blair testified Friday that Vigneault never raised concerns about “delays,” although the former CSIS director did inform him of concerns about Chan’s activity months before the order was prepared.
“But I do understand… that it is important that a document that you submit to the Federal Court judge for approval has to be complete and contemporaneous with the application. So I understand the concern, but I’m not aware of a delay,” Blair said.
“When the matter was brought to my attention, I dealt with it very quickly and quickly, and at no time did the director of CSIS or the deputy minister (of Public Security) or my chief of staff suggest any concern to me with this delay issue, with the interval to complete this.”
The second phase of testimony before the Hogue commission is scheduled to conclude next week, when senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office, including chief of staff Katie Telford, will testify for a second time on Tuesday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is scheduled to take the stand on Wednesday.
After that, Hogue and his team of lawyers will have less than 11 weeks to draft their final report, including recommendations to better safeguard Canadian democracy from foreign meddling.
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