Justice Marie-Josée Hogue’s final report on foreign interference in Canada found the conduct of some unnamed politicians was troubling but didn’t constitute treason.
The Globe and Mail
Justice Marie-Josée Hogue’s final report on foreign interference in Canada says some parliamentarians showed poor judgment and troubling conduct in dealings with foreign powers but she concluded their actions did not amount to treason.
Justice Hogue, who led a public inquiry into foreign interference that was struck 16 months ago, tabled a seven-volume report Tuesday that proposes new measures to safeguard elections and urges Ottawa to better protect diaspora communities, including from disinformation campaigns.
Of the 51 recommendations offered, she said about half can be implemented promptly, “perhaps even before the next election.” A federal election is expected this spring.
She called on all federal party leaders to obtain top-secret security clearances, in an apparent prod of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who is the only leader who has so far refused to do so. Obtaining a national-security clearance would allow Mr. Poilievre to view classified intelligence about activities that might involve Conservative Party members.
The House of Commons had asked Justice Hogue last June to rule on findings by the all-party National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) that suggested some current and former politicians were wittingly or unwittingly pawns of hostile foreign states.
She told reporters she had not seen “any evidence of traitors in Parliament plotting with foreign states to act against Canada.”
“Although a few cases involving things like attempts to curry favour with parliamentarians have come to light, the phenomenon remains marginal and largely ineffective,” she said. “While the states’ attempts are troubling and there is some concerning conduct by parliamentarians, there is no cause for widespread alarm.”
Justice Hogue said the classified version of the NSICOP report did not, in fact, identify any parliamentarians by name and some of its findings contained inaccuracies and were more definitive than the intelligence provided. It is not known whether the inquiry ultimately obtained the names of the politicians of concern from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
But she said the behaviour of parliamentarians who have engaged with foreign powers is still very troubling.
“There are legitimate concerns about parliamentarians potentially having problematic relationships with foreign officials, exercising poor judgment, behaving naively and perhaps displaying questionable ethics,” she said.
NSICOP, while it was chaired by Liberal MP David McGuinty, who was recently appointed Public Safety Minister, warned in a report released in June that some parliamentarians were being compromised by foreign actors and some had accepted bribes and shared information with foreign intelligence officers and diplomats.
The intelligence watchdog report caused a furor in Parliament, with NDP MP Jenny Kwan and other members saying that it had cast Asian and minority MPs under a cloud of suspicion. She had urged the government to name names.
In her report, Justice Hogue said her “ultimate take-away from this aspect of my investigation is that great care must be taken when using intelligence to draw conclusions about individuals, and even more when reporting this publicly.”
Mr. McGuinty, the Public Safety Minister, and Democratic Institutions Minister Ruby Sahota promised to carefully review the final report’s findings and recommendations.
A major problem identified by Justice Hogue is intelligence failing to reach senior decision-makers.
Her report highlighted six instances of suspected foreign interference, some of which had never been passed on to the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The Final Report from Justice Marie-Josee Hogue is seen in Ottawa, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
They include reporting of how Pakistan tried to influence Canadian federal politics clandestinely before the 2019 federal election to further its interests in Canada. A foreign government official was suspected of interference directed at the Liberal Party. The government of India was suspected of using proxy agents to provide secret financial support to candidates from three political parties in a federal election.
Also, a foreign government undertook several actions, including interference, to reduce the election chances of a specific federal Liberal Party candidate who supported issues perceived to be contrary to the state’s interests. These actions “likely had a negative impact on the individual’s political career,” the report said.
“The evidence suggests that no information about this was given to the political level of government until the Commission requested the list of instances. The Prime Minister said he was astonished that he had not been informed of the events, since they involved his party, and the information would have been relevant for him as party leader.”
She said illegal police stations China was operating in Canada were used to conduct transnational repression – where Beijing harassed people of Chinese ethnicity – and “presented challenges to the government’s ability to use traditional tools to respond.” Some of the operations were run by people who had Canadian citizenship. “Expelling those responsible from Canada was not an option as it would have been with respect to foreign state officials.”
Justice Hogue also mentioned the important role that investigative journalism has played in exposing the extent of foreign interference in Canadian electoral and domestic affairs. The Globe and Mail broke a series of stories, based on top-secret intelligence, that showed China and its proxies meddled in elections, bullied diaspora communities and targeted politicians, senior civil servants and business executives to act in Beijing’s interests.
She told reporters that Ottawa must do a better job of informing Canadians. “Most Canadians first learned about foreign interference through media reports and without the government being the source of the information communicated,” Justice Hogue said. “This should not have been the case.”
She concluded the government has been, “overall a poor communicator when it comes to foreign interference” in Canada.
“The risk of leaks increases if government agencies keep such incidents almost entirely secret, and the dependency on investigative reporting will persist,” she said. “Properly informed, I have no doubt that Canadians will be able to understand what foreign interference is and help defend Canadian democracy against this threat.”
Justice Hogue’s recommendations include: a hotline for Canadians to report foreign interference and a prohibition on allowing foreigners other than permanent residents to vote in nomination or leadership contests.
She recommends Ottawa consider creating a national agency to monitor disinformation and misinformation that could affect the democratic process in Canada. She proposed that the Department of Public Safety create a “duty to warn” policy, covering “credible threats of serious harm” that could potentially be attributable to a foreign entity. As well, MPs and senators should be warned when they are being targeted by cyber threats or disinformation potentially coming from foreign states.
Justice Hogue also recommends political parties be required to obtain declarations from their members that confirm their status as Canadian citizens or permanent residents and that parties be obliged to maintain records of declarations for a minimum of seven years.
She suggested that CSIS start flagging intelligence reports it feels senior decision-makers must read and summarize its findings in precise, non-technical language.
At the same time Justice Hogue recommended Ottawa create a declassification system to start releasing information on foreign interference “where it is in the public interest and where it would not unduly prejudice national security.”
Shortly after the report was released Tuesday, the government announced $77-million for more effective election investigations, stronger measures to counter online disinformation and better tracking of possible foreign interference.
Justice Hogue raised concerns about how Conservative MP Michael Chong was not warned that CSIS believed he and his relatives in Hong Kong were being targeted by the Chinese government in an effort to gain leverage over him. The Globe broke this news in May, 2023.
“In my view, when there is specific information indicating that a state is planning to undertake punitive measures against an individual or those connected to them, it is important to ensure that individual is informed,” she wrote.
She also said it was unacceptable that a surveillance warrant sent to former public safety minister Bill Blair’s office took 54 days for the minister to sign approval. As The Globe previously reported, the warrant was to surveil Michael Chan, a Liberal power broker and a former provincial minister. “Delay in approving a warrant application can risk compromising a CSIS investigation by materially delaying the start of surveillance,” Justice Hogue wrote. “This could give rise to questions about the integrity of the process, which, if substantiated, would be a serious concern.”
Also, Justice Hogue offered her assessment of allegations reported by Global News that former Liberal MP Han Dong suggested the People’s Republic of China (PRC) should hold off releasing Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. Mr. Dong, who left the Liberal caucus after this news story, has forcefully denied he said this.
Justice Hogue said the classified information she has read “corroborates Mr. Dong’s denial.” The MP “did not suggest that the PRC should extend their detention.”
Mr. Trudeau named Justice Hogue of the Quebec Court of Appeal to head the public inquiry in September, 2023, under pressure from opposition parties after a report on foreign interference by former governor-general David Johnston was largely dismissed.
She heard from 150 witnesses over 35 days of public hearings and several weeks of in-camera hearings. A classified supplement to her report was presented to the government but she said it does not contradict the findings and conclusions of the final report.
The first report of the Hogue inquiry tabled in May examined foreign meddling in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. While this interference did not influence the overall election results, it likely affected several ridings, Justice Hogue concluded. The acts of foreign interference that occurred, or are suspected to have occurred, “are a stain on our electoral process and impacted the process leading up to the actual vote,” she wrote last May.
Concern over foreign interference led to the swift passage last June of legislation to establish a foreign agent registry, amend the Criminal Code to make foreign interference a criminal offence and provide legal authority for CSIS to disclose intelligence to entities such as universities, provinces and municipalities to help combat foreign interference – the most significant update to Canada’s national-security laws in 40 years.