Former public safety minister Bill Blair says he did not consider partisan politics when it came time to approve a spy service warrant to surveil an Ontario Liberal powerbroker.
There was a 54-day gap in 2021 from when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) submitted an application for the warrant to when Blair eventually authorized it. During that time, CSIS agents grew frustrated with what they perceived as a delay by the minister’s office in the investigation into Michael Chan, a former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister.
Over multiple days of testimony at the foreign interference inquiry — including Blair, his former chief of staff, Zita Astravas, and high-ranking CSIS officials — it is still not clear why this warrant took significantly longer than most CSIS requests to the minister.
But Blair, now the defence minister, testified Friday morning that politics was not behind the delay in approving the surveillance, which was eventually approved just months before the 2021 federal election.
“When this warrant application was put before me, I never considered anything else other than my statutory responsibility to review and if appropriate approve the warrant,” Blair, who said he signed off on the warrant the same day he was given it, told the commission.
“There was no other consideration and certainly no political considerations.”
Three weeks after Blair signed off on the warrant, a Federal Court judge approved CSIS’s request to investigate Chan.
Media reports identified Chan as being under suspicion of working with the Chinese government going back as far as 2015, when Astravas worked in Premier Kathleen Wynne’s office as director of media relations and Chan was a sitting cabinet minister.
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“Michael Chan is a man of sterling character who has served the people of Markham-Unionville, and all Ontarians, honourably,” Astravas told the Globe and Mail, which first reported CSIS interest in Chan, in June 2015.
Chan, now the deputy mayor of Markham, is currently suing CSIS and two reporters, including a former Global News employee, over leaks and news articles.
The delay with this particular warrant has become a central narrative in the second phase of Justice Marie-Josée Hogue’s public inquiry, in much the same way “irregularities” around Han Dong’s 2019 Liberal nomination in Don Valley North dominated the first phase.
The 2019 nomination story focused on how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) allegedly interferes in Canadian democracy. The questions concerning the Chan warrant have more to do with how the federal government responds when they have allegations of foreign interference.
The warrant 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 curtailed while people were still working from home.
Nevertheless, Astravas was given a briefing on the warrant from CSIS officials 13 days after the warrant was submitted for approval, and a second briefing in the following weeks. In testimony on Wednesday, Astravas rejected the assertion that she wanted to “slow walk” the file because it would bring CSIS into the affairs of her party as “categorically false.”
While CSIS operatives and officials may have been frustrated with the delay, former CSIS director David Vigneault previously told the commission that he was not concerned with the warrant’s timeline.
Blair testified Friday that Vigneault never expressed concerns about “delays” — although the former CSIS director did brief him about concerns surrounding Chan’s activity months before the warrant was prepared.
“But I do understand … that it’s important that a document you present to the Federal Court judge for approval would have to be complete and contemporaneous to the application. So I understand the concern but I have no knowledge of a delay,” Blair said.
“When the matter was brought to my attention, I dealt with it very expeditiously and promptly, and at no time did the director of CSIS or the deputy minister (of Public Safety) or my chief of staff ever suggest to me any concern with this issue of delay, with the interval to complete this.”
The second phase of testimony at the Hogue commission is scheduled to wrap up next week, when senior officials from 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 her 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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