Minister Blair Doubles Down in Blaming CSIS for His Not Receiving Intel on Beijing Threat to MPs

Minister of Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair holds a press conference in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on June 12, 2023. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair says staff in his office and department aren’t to blame for not informing him of Beijing threats to MPs and has repeated that Canada’s spy agency is at fault.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) “had Top Secret information that they felt that I should see, and clearly, the process that they had in place to bring it to my attention was not complete, and did not bring it to my office’s attention and that’s now been remedied,” Mr. Blair said in a press conference in Ottawa on July 11.

While making an announcement on spending to support organizations working in disaster relief, Mr. Blair was asked by reporters to shed light on the Beijing matter.

The latter refers to the Michael Chong affair, when the Globe and Mail reported in May, based on national security leaks, that the Conservative MP was being targeted by the Chinese regime in 2021 for his critical stance on Beijing.

Ministers in function at the time, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, all said they had been unaware of the issue until the media report was published.

It was later revealed that in May 2021 CSIS had sent a briefing note to Mr. Blair, who was then minister of public safety, and to his chief of staff and the department.

The note warned that some MPs were being targeted by Beijing and that CSIS would give them defensive briefings, which don’t include specific details about the threat.

“Unfortunately, it was not sent to my office, it was sent to a secure device not located in my office, but somewhere else that I had no access to, no one in my office had access to and no one in my office was ever made aware of that there was a memo,” Mr. Blair told reporters.

While testifying before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs on June 1, Mr. Blair did not blame the process but instead said that CSIS Director David Vigneault had made the determination it was not information worth bringing to the minister’s attention.

Days later Mr. Vigneault told the same committee the procedure for transmission of information to the department had been followed.

“My understanding of how the information flows from an agency to the minister is that this is sent to the department—in this case, the Department of Public Safety,” he said. He added that the sending of a briefing note “speaks to the notion that we wanted to highlight the information.”

In his May report, former special rapporteur on foreign interference David Johnston called the failure to transmit that CSIS information to senior levels of government the “most prominent, but not the only, example of poor information flow and processing between agencies, the public service and Ministers.”

Mr. Johnston, who recommended against holding a public inquiry into foreign interference, has since resigned and all parties have reportedly reached an agreement on terms to hold an inquiry.

The Liberal government has been under increasing pressure to hold an inquiry following multiple national security leaks in the media depicting widespread Beijing interference in Canada.