Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 15th, 2023

[Daniel Jean]

Madam Chair, it's an excellent question.

To some extent, the shortcomings of the CSIS Act are at the heart of what you're reviewing right now. When the media first reported on the Chong affair, because of the job I've had, neighbours and people always asked me about it. My first reaction was that I've known Michael Chong for a number of years, and if he says that he hasn't been briefed, I have to tend to believe him because I think he's somebody of very high integrity. At the same time, I have a lot of respect for national security and for CSIS, and I have a really hard time believing that if CSIS had the information that's being reported they would not have taken action. What I'm concerned about is that they may have been very limited in what they could share with Mr. Chong, because of the lack of legislation.

Second, while I have a lot of respect for CSIS, I'll go back to my last testimony. Now that “the crown jewels” are no longer in the government, CSIS needs to change their culture on how to do outreach with people when you have information like that, to make sure that they have enough to be able to defend themselves. When I was NSIA, private sector people would come to me and say, “You should be concerned,” but they won't give you more, so you don't have enough to know what posture you need to take. The reality is that the legislation doesn't allow them to do that.

[Technical difficulty—Editor] update the CSIS Act. A foreign registry, that's a good thing. It's not a panacea in itself. We should regularly update our national security. We need to do something on intelligence evidence. I would suggest that we do something narrow to start with and then we test it. We should work with civil liberties groups to make sure that it still offers a fair defence to people. There are a number of things that can be done. Awareness, prevention...very important as well.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Okay.

The minister spoke earlier today about the ministerial directive that just has opened the doors to share information. He seems to think that this is the solution. I think the solution is legislation. I'm wondering about your thoughts on that.

[Daniel Jean]

The challenge is that if you go too far.... Right now, because of what's happened, everybody is kind of happy with the ministerial directive and wants to make sure that members of Parliament can be protected.

The trouble is that if you go too far with a ministerial directive in the absence of legislation, at some point, people, the courts, will say that you may be out of your boundaries. You need both. You need to modernize our instruments. Other countries update their national security legislation almost every three or four years. We don't do that regularly.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Juneau-Katsuya, I do have a question for you. You have been to the committee—on May 11—and you talked about one of the biggest gaps of course being the nomination process. We know that every party has its own process of how they do nominations. When we look at this and we see that there's a particular gap there, and we recognize there may be a lack of information or a lack of awareness at that party level, how do we bridge that gap?

It's very important that in the roles the government plays they're not seen as partisan, but it seems to me that the parties themselves need information to be able to address these kinds of particular gaps that lead to greater vulnerability. I'm just wondering if you have any recommendations for us on that.

[Michel Juneau-Katsuya]

Absolutely. Right from the get-go, it's a question of communication and to educate the general public at large.

I would follow on what Mr. Jean said as well. We need to mature as a country in terms of knowledge of what national security is about and what role every single individual in this country plays in national security.

I suggested and I recommended, for example, that every candidate of any party sign a declaration on their honour that they are not either influenced by or under the authority of a foreign state. It's the same thing for their staff.

If we go with just the allegations or the media reports, it looks as if, in 2019, there were some people on the payroll of a foreign country. We need to be capable of having this kind of process, because if we find later that they were lying, they should be prosecuted.

Let's remember one thing. Foreign interference is not only done by diplomats. Foreign interference is also done by Canadians who help those people and what they do is close to treason.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you for that.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Mr. Cooper, you are next.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Chair, I want to follow up with Mr. Jean on my last question.

Mr. Johnston's report said that one of the earlier drafts of the 2017 memo referred to or contained similar language to what was in Global News. There was language to the effect of Beijing agents assisting Canadian candidates running for political offices. You said that you didn't see that particular draft of the memo, as I understood you.

Mr. Johnston, then, in his report stated that it was revised:

This memorandum warns him—

—him, being the Prime Minister—

—that public efforts to raise awareness should remain general and not single out specific countries, because of diplomatic sensitivities.

I ask you again, why was the decision made not to, for example, identify or point out the threat posed by Beijing? Why was the language changed?

[Daniel Jean]

The note is very clear that we have to be concerned about China and that there are growing concerns. It gives all kinds of examples. I'm not going to go into all the specifics.

In this context, in the work that we're going to try to do to protect our elections—because efforts were under way with the minister of democratic institutions in terms of developing some of the mechanisms to follow—we should also make sure we have mechanisms to deal with analog threats such as the ones I described.

With regard to the one sentence that you were referring to, I want to remind you that at that time, CSIS had not yet started to name China in its annual CSIS foreign interference.... It's only recently that we started to name China.

The memo invites action on cyber interference to include.... It's not saying don't take action. It's just saying that in doing that, you may wish to manage the foreign relations aspect of it.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you for that.

For the balance of my time, I will now turn it over to Mr. Berthold.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Cooper.

Earlier, Mr. Jean, when you were asked whether you agreed with the conclusions of Mr. Johnston's report, you began by saying that you were generally in agreement, but that you had reservations about a number of points. Could you give us the list of points on which you had reservations?

[Daniel Jean]

I don't think that this would be in the interest of what you are trying to do here. However, I would be glad to send you the suggestions I made to Mr. Johnston about how we might better prepare ourselves to curtail foreign interference.

Just to be clear, when I answered that question earlier, I wanted to say that I was being asked to assess the overall report. I said that I was generally in agreement with the content of the report, but that here and there, there were a few things on which I disagreed.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

We are very interested in information like that. Given what you knew as the national security advisor, we would be interested in knowing what you disagreed with from the report. I won't ask any other questions about it. However, if possible, I would appreciate it if you could inform the committee of the points about which you disagreed, because the core of the problem is in fact the transfer of information.

We heard talk about a black hole when Jody Thomas appeared, about messages that were not reaching the intended recipient, even when it was the minister or the Prime Minister. So it's important. I'm putting myself in the shoes of the people currently watching us as we discuss the process.

For example, you signed a briefing note in June 2017. The final note, the one read by the Prime Minister, was one which in an earlier version was about the financing of a network of candidates. However, it's not clear who requested the briefing note or who worked on them. How does it work? Who approves them? Who makes the decisions at the end of the line? It's your signature on it, but who ultimately decides which are actually sent to the Prime Minister? How many people would be involved in these notes? Who are they? Are any of them political?

[Daniel Jean]

Certainly not; the answer to your last question is no.

We work as a team, of course. It's a collective effort, but when we see—

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Who's on the team?

[Daniel Jean]

When it's a memorandum from the Privy Council Office and enough factors have come into play, making it essential for the Prime Minister to be informed or for recommendations to be made, then it's the national security and intelligence advisor's team that decides to write it.

Someone from the political side of things may on occasion see an intelligence report and ask for more information about it. The notes are prepared by the members of my team, but ultimately, the advisor signs them. As I was saying, the 2017 note was very clear: we were right to be concerned and steps had to be taken with respect to the elections. These mechanisms were implemented.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

What isn't clear is the process that led to the final note. Why did the process lead to a version that had to be made public—

[Daniel Jean]

I'll give you an example, Mr. Berthold.

At the time, reports from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service often confused diplomatic relations, meaning things that Canadian diplomats do abroad, with things that actually involved foreign interference. I raised that with the director at the time, and he made an excellent suggestion. We therefore sat down with those of his analysts who were most familiar with China. We looked into the various sorts of examples to determine what was really foreign interference, and what was simply Canadian diplomats doing their work. We wanted to improve the intelligence in order to be able to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you, Mr. Jean.

Mr. Berthold, you let Mr. Jean finish his response, and that's why I gave you a little more speaking time. If we're going to proceed like that, I have no problem allowing more speaking time.

Mrs. Romanado, you have the floor.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Through you, I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here.

Today's meeting is focused on the question of privilege related to the intimidation campaign against MP Chong. I understand, Monsieur Jean, that you were the NSIA from May 2015 until May 2018. With respect to the specifics of the question of privilege, you were no longer in that position when this specific issue was happening with this specific MP, because we understand now, from testimony from the head of CSIS, that the IMU came out after sanctions, following the February 2021 vote in the House of Commons on MP Chong's opposition day motion. I'm going to come to the two of you in your expertise in intelligence and ask some questions.

Mr. Juneau-Katsuya, you mentioned something in answer to a previous question with respect to candidates running who may or may not be loyal to Canada and so on and so forth. As you are both aware, I'm sure, on June 28, 2017, the National People's Congress in China passed the National Intelligence Law and outlined the first official authorization of intelligence in the People's Republic of China. This is a quote:

The intelligence law highlights one important continuing trend within the state security legal structure put in place since 2014: everyone is responsible for state security. As long as national intelligence institutions are operating within their proper authorities, they may, according to Article 14, “request relevant organs, organisations, and citizens provide necessary support, assistance, and cooperation”.

Based on this change, this legislation, could you give us some feedback in terms of the change in posture with respect to our intelligence gathering? We know that the position of the national security adviser changed to the national security and intelligence adviser from an OIC dated April 28, 2017. We know that the question of intelligence was increasing in terms of our capabilities or where we were focusing. Can you give us a little more information on how that changed Canada's position and posture with respect to intelligence gathering?

[Michel Juneau-Katsuya]

First of all, it demonstrated the aggression at that point that China decided to send as a message. We have to understand the way the Chinese government functions with its intelligence services, which is almost in direct line with the central committee that basically gives the marching orders for them.

It also sends the message to the entire diaspora, everybody who is of Chinese descent, that they must collaborate if it comes to them and asks them to collaborate, period, which could potentially make them traitors to the country where they reside, to a certain extent. There is a conflict of interest here that is forced on the people abroad. That is a form of pressure that is exercised on the community.

Unfortunately, understanding how the Chinese intelligence services function and how the Chinese government functions still eludes a lot of the western intelligence agencies, particularly CSIS. CSIS has a long history of being Eurocentric. We worked for decades during the cold war on Russia, and we tend to analyze the intelligence world from a Russian or Eurocentric perspective. The Chinese don't work like this. They work very differently. They have time on their hands because the government is never elected—it just stays on—so the operation can last for five, 10, 15, 20 years. They have no problem.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

On that note, we know that, according to Hofstede's power index, they are long-term oriented, which means they will play the long game. It may take 10 or 15 years in terms of gathering intelligence. Would you agree with that?

[Michel Juneau-Katsuya]

Absolutely.

That is to our detriment because we need to come out with results very quickly. Otherwise, the operational priorities will change. That's why, to a certain extent, the communities have been badly served, because we were not capable of accumulating the information for long enough.

The RCMP has done excellent work to try to catch up since this issue came out. I think it's made very good progress with the community and reaching out to the community, as was testified also by the commissioner. I believe what was said.

Unfortunately, we are still behind. There is also a lack of communication horizontally between CSIS and the RCMP.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you.