Joly says she was kept in the dark for years on foreign interference

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OTTAWA – Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said there continues to be a threat of more murders like the one of Canadian Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar that Canada has linked to the Indian government.

Testifying at the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference (PIFI) Thursday, Joly described Canada’s current relationship with India as “tense” and “very difficult.”

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That’s largely due to the murder of Nijjar, who was shot dead by two masked gunmen as he left a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C., in June 2023. Nijjar was a vocal advocate for the creation of an independent Khalistan for Sikhs and was considered a terrorist by the Indian government.

Months later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a bombshell statement in Parliament that there were “credible allegations” the Indian government was linked to Nijjar’s murder.

Earlier this year, Canadian police arrested four individuals suspected to be linked to Nijjar’s death.

At the inquiry, Joly said she’s been putting pressure on the Indian government to co-operate with the police investigation into Nijjar’s murder.

“We’re calling for co-operation from the Indian government because in the end, we want to hold all those who were involved in Nijjar’s murder responsible, and especially want to prevent any further murders because the threat is there,” she said.

Speaking to reporters after her testimony, Joly said there’s currently “no co-operation” from the Indian government with Canadian law enforcement officials.

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She also said she is “always concerned” that there could be other assassination attempts in Canada that are linked to the Indian government.

During her testimony, Joly detailed how she was largely kept in the dark about foreign interference efforts in Canada for years after her appointment as foreign minister in 2021.

For example, she said she only learned from reporting in the Globe & Mail in May 2023 that Chinese diplomat in Canada Zhao Wei had been seeking information about Conservative MP Michael Chong.

Wei was expelled from Canada shortly after the reporting, though Joly said that she had already made up her mind about expelling Wei before the article.

“The fact that I discover that there is intelligence linked to the behaviour of … diplomats on Canadian soil and I am not informed … shed light on the fact that we must change our system of transferring and consuming intelligence information,” she said.

Testifying at PIFI earlier in the day, former public safety minister Marco Mendicino says there is a need to “clear the air” about allegations some MPs are wittingly participating in foreign interference in Canadian elections because the discourse about the claims is devolving into a “kangaroo court.”

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The MP and former Liberal minister said he was concerned about the discourse around the alleged presence of treasonous current or former MPs, as detailed by an intelligence review agency report earlier this year.

In June, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) reported that some MPs were “wittingly assisting” foreign state actors. The report noted unnamed MPs had provided “privileged information” to foreign influence actors or had responded to “requests or direction of foreign officials to improperly influence” Parliament to the benefit of a foreign state.

The shocking revelations have since sparked calls for the government to reveal the identity of the alleged “treasonous” parliamentarians, which the Liberals have so far resisted.

During his testimony, Mendicino was told by counsel for NDP MP Jenny Kwan that she has since been labelled a traitor by some individuals simply for being a parliamentarian of Chinese descent. That, despite the fact she is a frequent critic of the Chinese government.

Mendicino responded that the NSICOP report had gone “further” than what CSIS or the prime minister’s national security and intelligence adviser had assessed when reading the intelligence the review body’s report was based on.

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Earlier this week, current national security and intelligence adviser Nathalie Drouin said she had seen no evidence there are “traitors” in Parliament and that some of the conclusions in the NSICOP report made her “very uncomfortable.”

Mendicino said he believes there is a need to “clear the air” about NSICOP’s findings.

“I am very worried that the entire conversation around foreign interference and parliamentarians is being transformed into a kangaroo court with very little regard for the process of understanding how we assess intelligence,” he told the inquiry.

“I think it is extremely important that we heed the opinion and the evidence that has been given to this commission, from Ms. Drouin, from CSIS, around the fact that… this NSICOP report has gone further than where they are at in the assessment of the intelligence,” he added.

During his testimony, Mendicino also brushed aside a claim by Conservative MP Michael Chong that Canada has become a “playground” for foreign interference.

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“I fundamentally disagree with that characterization,” Mendicino told the inquiry. Canada is “an obstacle course for foreign interference” since the government enacted a series of new measures and laws to fight it in the last year, he added.

Mendicino was public safety minister from 2021 to 2023.

The inquiry has also spent considerable time discussing the fact that a CSIS warrant authorization allegedly targeting Liberal powerbroker and former Ontario cabinet minister Michael Chan sat in the office of Bill Blair — Mendicino’s predecessor in the public safety portfolio — for 54 days before it was signed.

Without speaking to that warrant directly, Mendicino told the inquiry that he reviewed and decided on warrant authorization requests quickly every time one was brought to his attention.

“There were no undue delays in the approvals of warrants during my tenure as public safety minister,” Mendicino said.

CSIS officials have previously testified that the average turnaround for a warrant authorization to be signed after it was sent to minister’s office for approval was four to 10 days.

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The inquiry is expected to hear from Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly Thursday afternoon.

National Post
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