Michael Kempa: Downplaying the treason of MPs and senators is a betrayal of Canadian democracy

NSICOP has been around since 2018 and is made up of MPs from all major political parties as well as senators. Members are given full security clearance to review the most sensitive intelligence materials that the full machinery of national security can gather, including the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), Canadian Security Establishment (CSE), and RCMP. Perhaps due to the greater length of time that NSICOP has been on this interference file and the expertise it has developed at decoding intelligence reports—and interviewing their authors—the body has provided Canadians with a raft of new and far more disturbing details than Johnston or Hogue have managed.

The game changer in this report is the revelation of the witting participation of sitting members of Parliament and senators in China and India’s schemes to subvert the will of Canadian voters; to bend our democratic institutions in service of their often-hostile objectives. This includes the egregious example of a current MP who actively sought a meeting with a foreign security agent for the purpose of sharing information damaging to Canada’s interests. My senior colleague and one of Canada’s foremost national security experts, Wesley Wark, refers to this as an example of “textbook treason.”

Other examples abound. There are current members of Parliament who have allegedly reached out to foreign diplomatic offices asking for their help in mobilizing diaspora communities to support their campaigns. Others have sought out or turned a blind eye to funds that have shown up in their campaign coffers, after having been filtered through proxies.

Of course, nothing in this world is for free. In this sordid “you scratch my back” arrangement, foreign states providing political muscle or cash comes with the reciprocal expectation that favoured MPs will advance foreign interests in the institutions and hallways of the Canadian government. And that they have, according to NSICOP, which describes these favoured elected officials leaning on their colleagues with messages literally provided by foreign offices.

They’ve also been found tattling to foreign offices about which of their colleagues with a spine may be an impediment to their agendas. Favour and flattery have a way of turning fragile, narcissistic egos against one another, it would seem—and the PRC, in particular, is skilled in exploiting the human frailties that plague many politicians and public figures.

While NSICOP is just as clear as the reports before it that the overall outcome of Canadian elections has never been compromised, the bombshell that current members of Parliament and some of their key staff are in bed with hostile ideological opponent governments poses an existential threat to Canadians’ confidence in our democratic processes.

A serious state would muster an immediate and transparent response. Instead, we get crickets and a deputy prime minister escaping media microphones.

This week, the Trudeau government continued in its practice of downplaying, obfuscating, and hiding—its go-to gameplan since stories about foreign interference were first leaked by former members of CSIS to the media over a year ago.

Downplaying

First, downplaying. Each time this government has been faced with media reports built upon intelligence leaks or agency reports built on formal intelligence that is unflattering of its handling of the foreign interference file, it has been quick to remind everybody that “intelligence is not evidence.” What CSIS collects from open-source documents and communications, human sources, and intercepted communications very often does not meet the evidentiary standards necessary in a criminal trial. But while this is true, the government’s implication is that there is simply no proof of any wrongdoing that would merit urgent action.

This is a disingenuous representation of the facts. CSIS would not have reported a simple rumour to NSICOP. The committee is sophisticated enough that it would have asked about the depth and reliability of the intelligence in question in deciding what weight to assign to the language of their report.

In the Trudeau government’s latest invocation of this “nothing to see here” tactic, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc acknowledged the important work of NSICOP but went on to say that the “government respectfully disagrees” with some of NSICOP’s findings, based on “concerns centr(ing) around the interpretation of intelligence reports which lack the necessary caveats inherent to intelligence.” At the very minimum, Leblanc must tell Canadians which conclusions are troublesome and why.

Obfuscation

Second, obfuscating. The opposition parties are rightly picking up on Canadian voters’ demands to know the names of those who have been reliably accused of surreptitiously consorting with foreign powers. But the government will not budge. For his part in justifying their silence, Leblanc has said that “no responsible government” would release such sensitive intelligence information, for fear that it may tip our hands to foreign states on what we know about their efforts to compromise our politicians.

I would argue that a serious country would recognize this cat is already out of the bag as far as Beijing and New Delhi are concerned. Acknowledging this and thus staving off further damage to voters’ confidence in our electoral process means revealing this information. After all, the government has shared sensitive intelligence before—going out on a limb to accuse India’s Modi government of orchestrating the murder of political opponents on Canadian soil last year. Were we not tipping our hand then? Not only that but candidates have been rejected and MPs booted from caucus over matters of far lesser consequence, such as uncomfortable social media posts or publicly criticizing party leadership.

The second familiar obfuscation tactic, exemplified by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, is to hide behind the police. Freeland has argued that the public release of the names of offenders is dependent on the police laying criminal charges, a decision that she, as an elected politician, says she must not influence. While, of course, politicians should not call the shots on the exercise of the police powers to investigate, arrest, and lay charges, all responsibility for ethics violations and abuse of elected office does not rest with the police. Sometimes, they’re even constrained in exercising it.

Our criminal laws governing foreign interference are hopelessly out of date and lag behind more effective legislation in the United States, Britain, and Australia. Each of these heavier-hitting Five Eyes allies has brought effective prosecutions of elected officials for leaking secrets and other influential citizens for engaging in foreign interference. Meanwhile, in Canada—the junior and increasingly sidelined member of the Eyes—weak laws and an under-equipped RCMP mean that Freeland ought to know she is offloading responsibility to act to police agencies that are perhaps conveniently incapable of acting.

Hiding

Third, hiding. When the scandalous allegations of foreign meddling in then Liberal MP Han Dong’s 2019 nomination first broke in March 2023 of 2023, the prime minister first attempted to hand the file to an old family friend, former Governor General David Johnston; a kindly and respected gentleman, for certain, but hidden away in his office at his professor’s desk, and his involvement restored the confidence of precisely no one in our political process.

Undaunted, this week Freeland assured Canadians that the Liberal Party of Canada will now embark on an “internal review” to sift through and apply the lessons they deem are contained in the NSICOP report. It is hard to imagine how anyone could believe another internal process would move the needle on repairing deeply damaged public perceptions.

In the Globe and Mail this week, Andrew Coyne wrote that Canadians are likely to face a “conspiracy of silence” from the government and Parliament more generally on the issue of which members are selling their country out. Given that the government is yet again resorting to its tactics of downplaying, obfuscating, and hiding, I would instead assert they are engaging in a “conspiracy of arrogance.”

In June of 2024, our federal government is sitting on top of a mountain of reports on foreign collusion, each one more damning than the last. Instead of sounding the alarm bell for the good of Canadians, they are instead taking us for fools.

As Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell told Conservative committee members today who were pressing for the names of MPs who are reliably alleged to have betrayed the country they swore to serve: “Boo hoo, get over it.”

“Getting over it,” however, would mean the death of caring about our democracy.