Foreign Interference And CSIS Leaks

On A Big Problem

If the Liberals knowingly accepted Chinese interference in our democracy because Chinese interests and Liberal ones were in line, it’s a horrific abdication of responsibility and everyone who knew about it should resign.

If Justin Trudeau knew about it, he should resign.

This is coming from the same person who has not voted for the Liberals the last two elections because of a disdain for the Liberals’ indifference to ethics. This is coming for someone who has voted for parties not named the Liberals more times federally than I have the Liberals. I know I’m a broken record when I talk about this, but this is all essential to remember in the context of what I’m going to say next.

This CSIS story has so many holes in it it could fill the Albert Hall.

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Let’s start with the obvious one: why is this story now leaking?

Let’s take CSIS at its word (for now), and accept that the Liberal MP at the focus of this story is actually a security risk sufficient for CSIS to take the deeply irregular step of telling the Liberal Party that he should be removed as a Liberal candidate without any due process. If you accept this, then CSIS has already decided that this now-MP is a security threat, presumably they feel this way because the evidence is so overwhelming that something had to be done.

If that is true, why did we not find out about this in 2019 when he won, or in 2020, or in 2021, or 2022? Why did it take close to 3.5 years for us to find out about this supposed clear security risk? Let’s say that CSIS did their jobs after they told the party, the party didn’t rescind his nomination, and then he won. Let’s say they referred this to the RCMP at the time, as the allegation is that he is a “witting affiliate” (the words of the Global reporter who broke this) of Chinese interference. Why didn’t they leak it before now?

If this guy is such a security risk, why the fuck did CSIS sit on their asses for at least 2.5 years before even starting the process of getting this out? If this guy was such a clear and obvious security risk, why the fuck did CSIS allow us to have a security risk in Parliament? If your answer is “it’s illegal to leak security secrets”, you’re half right – but that falls apart when you remember they just broke the law to leak this now, so no.

Plainly, if this was such a clear cut security risk, either CSIS would have leaked beforehand, or they would have been able to convince the RCMP to investigate him, but clearly, on the evidence, either they never gave this information to the RCMP and sat on it from October 2019 until at least June 2022, which is when Global’s investigation began, or they did refer it to the RCMP and the RCMP have done the sum of fuck and all with it in the interim.

If the former’s true, then CSIS didn’t view this as an actual security threat, merely something to save for when this could be used as a cudgel against the Liberals, and if the latter’s true, the fact that CSIS couldn’t convince the RCMP to take this seriously is a sign it’s not an actual security threat. You can pick which of those you find more believable, but either way, the actual behaviour of CSIS doesn’t match the gaudy rhetoric of their sources and experts.

Let’s also not ignore the fact that CSIS asking the Liberals to overturn their internal party selection is an absurdist act that is so far over the line of their own jurisdiction or legal authority that it’s hard to decide whether to be offended by their arrogance or honestly a little bit impressed by their intestinal fortitude. A spy agency dictating who can and can’t be a candidate is terrifying in a vacuum, but it’s made worse by the fact that CSIS seems to be politically incompetent. Again, quoting from the tweets from Global’s reporter: “[Sources] said CSIS believed that Dong emerged suddenly and suspiciously as a successor to MP Geng Tan as the Liberal candidate for Don Valley North.” I’m not doubting that the reporter was given that sentiment, but that sentiment is some of the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.

Yes, Han Dong was an MPP for downtown Toronto before becoming an MP in the Don Valley, but the idea of this happening isn’t rare nor sudden. Michael Ford was a Toronto City Councillor in Etobicoke and now represents York South-Weston in the provincial Parliament. After losing his provincial seat in 2018, if he would have wanted to run for politics again, he would have been waiting out Adam Vaughan in perpetuity. Yes, Vaughan ended up retiring before 2021, but the trio of seats in his area of the city were represented by Chrystia Freeland, Bill Morneau, and Vaughan – which, as of 2019, looked like would be the triumvirate that would hold those seats for decades. So when a seat popped up that looked winnable for him, of course he took it.

It's not at all surprising he would go for this, because his political career was dead after 2018 and he found a way to revive it. It’s not at all suspicious that he would run, nor is it suspicious that the Liberals would want a former MPP in the seat, and if CSIS’ interpretation of basic facts is this shit, I suspect their assessments all over this story are less than solid.

It’s clear we need a public inquiry into foreign election interference – my preference would be naming credible, retired politicians from all four major parties to conduct a review of the existing laws so that it can’t happen again, but it needs to happen. The downside of an inquiry is that the Liberals look bad, but the status quo is probably more and more of these leaks that, frankly whatever the actual truth, end up making the government look bad. If they call the inquiry and get a proper cross party agreement to support the recommendations of it, they look statesman like.

The honest truth is that there was some election interference in 2021 and the Liberals are laissez fair about it because the CPC lost heavily Chinese seats to the Liberals. Trying to ascribe how much of the losses in Richmond and Markham were because of the interference versus the Tories just being more hawkish on China in 2021 than 2019 is impossible, because nobody can honestly answer with any certainty. But what I’m pretty damn certain of is this would not be getting the governmental equivalent of a shrug if this was Iranian interference trying to defeat Anthony Housefather in Mount Royal or Ya’ara Saks in York Centre.

Foreign interference is a very important issue, and one that’s not helped by CSIS leaking veritable nonsense. We need to take what happened in 2021 seriously and we need to do everything we can to ensure our future elections are better prepared for attempts than the last one was. And if the Liberals fail to do that, then I’ll be out with the calls for resignations. But this CSIS leak is a distraction from the hard shit. It’s bullshit, and it’s going to end up making actually fixing the very real problems of foreign interference immeasurably harder.

Fucking hell.