Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 9th, 2023

[Cherie Wong]

Yes. Our organization was invited in August 2020 to speak to the Canada-China committee. After our testimony, our website and our cyber-network were basically taken down by hackers from Russia and from China. We recorded extensively the cyber-attacks and the IP addresses they were coming from, some of which are Beijing state-owned companies. They took down our website successfully with that attack.

We've since improved our security apparatus to prevent that. We did submit a report with the cyber-attack details to members of our security agencies, but we have never heard back.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Thank you.

I have one follow-up question for you. In your opening remarks, you talked about Mandarin or Cantonese-based media outlets here in Canada, domestic media outlets. I've heard through people communicating with me that the vast majority of Mandarin or Cantonese media outlets are directly or indirectly owned, operated or influenced by Beijing. Can you confirm that?

[Cherie Wong]

I won't be able to confirm it. I don't have solid knowledge, but I can say that most of the diaspora who are aware of the information tactics that are used by the United Work Front deem ethnic media in Canada as compromised and overwhelmingly pro-Beijing.

It's also because of the self-censorship of journalists who practise in these media organizations.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Okay, thank you for that.

Mr. Conacher, on April 24 Democracy Watch released a six-page letter it sent to the federal Ethics Commissioner's office calling for an independent investigation and ruling on whether the Prime Minister violated the Conflict of Interest Act by giving a contract to a special rapporteur by the name of David Johnston. Could you speak to that letter and what your thoughts are?

[Duff Conacher]

Yes.

According to both Prime Minister Trudeau and David Johnston, they are friends, and the Conflict of Interest Act says very clearly that you are not allowed to participate in any decision-making process that gives you the opportunity to further the interests of yourself, your relatives or your friends, or improperly further another person's interests, so I think it's a clear violation.

Handing a government contract that pays $1,400 to $1,600 a day to someone does further their financial interest, and the Prime Minister and David Johnston say they're friends. Even if they're just family friends, if that's the decision of the Ethics Commissioner—when there is an Ethics Commissioner—it would still be improper to hand a government contract to a family friend, and it's a violation of the Conflict of Interest Act to improperly further another person's interests. It would be improper again to hand a government contract to a family friend.

In terms of the Ethics Commissioner, as I mentioned, all the so-called watchdogs under our key democracy laws are hand-picked by the cabinet through secretive, partisan, political, cabinet-controlled processes, as we saw with the interim Ethics Commissioner. The cabinet is currently choosing the Integrity Commissioner, the RCMP commissioner and the Ethics Commissioner, as well as the interim ethics commissioner.

You can't choose your own judge, and choosing David Johnston was, in effect, Prime Minister Trudeau choosing his own judge, but now Prime Minister Trudeau will also choose his own Ethics Commissioner, Integrity Commissioner, RCMP commissioner and all the other commissioners as those roll over. It's a very flawed system, and the Federal Court of Appeal ruled unanimously that cabinet is biased when making these appointments. The appointment system has to change to be independent, involving all the parties and an independent commission doing a merit-based search—an actual merit-based search—and a merit-based decision as to who's going to watch and enforce these key laws that protect our democracy, including protecting us from foreign interference.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Notwithstanding the notion of the friendship relationship, as noted by both individuals, we know that there was $200,000 or $140,000, whichever number you deem appropriate, and another $800,000 donation to the University of Montreal that had been tied back to Mr. Zhang Bin and of course those operatives in Beijing. CSIS believes that those donations were part of that influence from Beijing, and given the fact that Mr. Johnston was a board member of the Trudeau Foundation that received that money, do you see a another conflict of interest there, other than just the friendship one?

[Duff Conacher]

Yes, but the friendship aspect is the most important one, obviously. The alarm bells did go off. There was a lot of media coverage back in 2016 when that donation was revealed. Unfortunately, the bells didn't really go off very loudly in the foundation itself until very recently, but everything was there to show that that donation never should have been accepted.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

Mr. Turnbull is next.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm going to start with Mr. Mitrovica.

I recently read an article that was published in Al Jazeera in March that you wrote, sir. In that article you said, “because a piece of paperwork churned out by an 'information officer' with a CSIS badge is marked with any sort of security classification...does not make it true.”

I wanted to ask you this: Does this mean that we should be contesting the truthfulness of the leaks that we've seen published on platforms like The Globe and Mail and others over the past few weeks, or at least bringing their veracity into question until they're corroborated? Could you speak more to that?

[Andrew Mitrovica]

Yes, I think this is quite an important and crucial point. Intelligence services don't collect evidence; they collect information. That information is not tested in the way that police evidence is tested in courts. It is not tested as rigorously as is evidence that is collected by police. That's an important distinction that I think the committee should understand and that Canadians more broadly should understand and, to be quite frank, journalists should understand but don't seem to be understanding enough in terms of their reporting about these matters.

The other issue at the core of the question that you're asking is that when CSIS gathers information, it often gathers that information without context and, as you rightly pointed out, without corroboration. Often the language that is being used can be embellished to support a certain narrative that might be established within or among a few intelligence officers within CSIS. Then, of course, there is the editing of that information, which again might be framed in a way to support a particular narrative that doesn't include exculpatory information.

What I suggested in my opening statement is for the committee—and, more broadly, for Canadians and some journalists who don't have an appreciation of how information is created within CSIS—to step back and understand that they have to be much more cautious in accepting as gospel information that is either being paid publicly or being leaked to them by CSIS. I think it's a very important point.

My own reading of what I've been reading, watching and listening to is that this information is being accepted simply as gospel. That can be dangerous and has certainly, as I said in my opening statement, affected people's reputations, and it has led to at least two very serious defamatory libel suits against journalists who have produced these stories. I think that's also quite cautionary.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you for that response.

I know you've also cited in that article other examples. You rightly said in your opening remarks that sometimes CSIS gets it wrong. I think you actually said they often get it wrong. Certainly you've cited the example of Maher Arar, which I think we all know of. Would you like to speak to how they got it really wrong in that particular case?

[Andrew Mitrovica]

Before I address that question, I think it's important for the committee to note that I think you should also invite Eva Plunkett to appear before the committee to provide you with some context. Of course, the inspector general's office was closed, shuttered, by a previous administration, largely because Ms. Plunkett was doing her job too well. In her last report, she pointed out that there were systemic issues throughout the range of CSIS's core activities where they got it wrong, and repeatedly got it wrong; and she warned about that.

To the point of Maher Arar, in a very lengthy piece I wrote for Walrus magazine I dissected not only the security intelligence infrastructure's role in smearing an innocent Canadian, but how that information was being fed, literally fed, to some reporters—who are doing reporting today about Chinese interference—about Mr. Arar's alleged role as a terrorist. All of it turned out to be absolutely false.

The same dynamic is playing out here today. You have a few anonymous sources within the security intelligence superstructure feeding information, again, to selected journalists, who then repeat that information as gospel.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you.

How much time do I have, Madam Chair?

It's 30 seconds.

I have a quick question for you, Ms. Wong. Could you tell us about or point to any other countries that are leaders in the field of protecting their citizens from foreign interference?

[Cherie Wong]

I think most of the western world is lacking in it, but I urge the committee to look at Taiwan and some of their more successful tactics in safeguarding their communities.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

No one jurisdiction in the world stands out as being the front-runner.

[Cherie Wong]

Beijing has a multidecade engagement and outreach strategy on national security. Most western countries, due to democratic cycles, only have four-year plans, so most countries in this world are falling behind Beijing's interference operations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

Now we have Madame Normandin.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to direct my first question to Mr. Conacher, but then I'll come back to Ms. Wong.

Mr. Conacher, you talked a lot in your speech about the importance of impartiality when people were appointed to investigate various issues.

I would like you to tell us more about a potential inquiry commission and about how the person who would chair such a commission would be appointed. The Bloc Québécois has suggested that this person be appointed by all the parties.

I would like to hear your comments on this proposal and perhaps on an independent public inquiry in general.

[Duff Conacher]

Thank you very much for....

I should practise my French, but I do not have a strong enough handle on the language.

I will answer in English.

The key is to have a fully independent commission that does the merit-based search for a short list of candidates. It will be a commission that no party controls, a commission of people who are not tied to any political party. The commission members can be set up by all the parties approving the members so that you will all cancel out biases, or by using people who are in set positions. They will then do a public, merit-based search for candidates and come up with a short list, and that short list should go back to an all-party committee.

Quebec has elements of that for appointing provincial judges. None of the members on the advisory committee that does the searches are appointed by the minister.

B.C. has another element for all the democracy watchdogs in B.C. It's an all-party committee that does the search. I don't think politicians should be doing the search, because these watchdogs watch over politicians from all parties. An all-party committee in B.C. makes the final choice.

That's the way it should happen for any inquiry commissioner and any other watchdog, the RCMP commissioner and all of the officers of Parliament. Anyone who's doing any watchdogging or judging of anyone in politics has to be selected in this way. Otherwise, we have just a biased, partisan, politically controlled process that ends up choosing lapdogs, not watchdogs.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

I imagine you would make a positive recommendation on the Bloc Québécois request to amend the Inquiries Act so that all public inquiries would be chaired in a neutral and impartial manner by a person selected by all parties.

Is that correct?

[Duff Conacher]

Yes, I would, very much so.

As I mentioned, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled unanimously that when cabinet chooses these people, they are biased. Unfortunately, an old Supreme Court of Canada ruling says that bias is allowed, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's a bias, and it means that there's a layer cake of conflicts of interest that undermine effective law enforcement, which is very dangerous when the laws being enforced apply to cabinet ministers and are there to protect our democracy.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Wong, I would like to come back to the creation of a registry. You said in your speech that it should not be limited to political actors, but should also include actors from academia, the media and the cultural field.

What criteria should be considered for the inclusion of names in this registry? Do you have any suggestions on how to create an effective registry, based on criteria that would be universal in terms of the people to be selected?

[Cherie Wong]

For one, we repeatedly urge this committee to consider country-agnostic views on these types of policy, because we don't want the registry to be seen as falling into racial tropes whereby it overcompensates and only applies to ethnic individuals in Canada.

We look to the transparency schemes that actually provide transparency in how people are funded in their activities, who they're connected to, their meeting frequencies and where monies are spent. As my colleague said earlier, we want to collect this data so that it can inform policy-making in the future as well.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

I would like to come back to the issue of threats.

You talked about threats to yourself and other threats that the community has received, for example, in the form of phone calls or dead animals left on the front porch.

Are you aware of any more direct threats or even physical attacks on members of the diaspora?

I would like to know if these have been reported to the authorities. If so, has there been any follow-up?

[Cherie Wong]

In one of our older reports from 2020, we actually recorded pro-Beijing actors undertaking a global operation in countering pro-Hong Kong democracy activists. It happened across seven provinces and across the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Japan and Taiwan. What we saw there was that pro-Beijing actors actually came ready with these red plastic mats so that they could be ready to make a physical confrontation with pro-Hong Kong democracy actors at these rallies.

Of course, these are being recorded because there are cameras and cellphones, but a lot of times, policing agencies take these as conflict within the community. They don't see it as actual physical intimidation or assault.