Politics
Justin Trudeau Throws “CSIS” Under the Bus Over Chinese Threats
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Wednesday blamed Canada’s intelligence agency CSIS for suppressed information on Chinese threats against a Canadian MP and his family in 2021. Saying that he had informed CSIS that such threats must be shared immediately in the future.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) judged that the threats against Michael Chong, a member of Canada’s main opposition Conservative party, were not serious enough to warrant informing him, Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa.
MP Chong stated that he learned about the threat to his family in Hong Kong from a newspaper and chastised the Trudeau government for its inaction when the Globe and Mail published on the allegations on Monday, citing a CSIS report.
According to the Globe, Beijing wanted information on Chong’s family who were in China in order to “make an example of this MP and deter others from taking anti-PRC positions.”
Several Canadian media outlets have published reports, citing anonymous intelligence sources, alleging Chinese government schemes to interfere in Canada’s last two elections. Beijing has refuted the charges, claiming that it has no desire to meddle in Canadian internal matters.
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Justin Trudeau has previously stated that China sought to meddle in the 2019 and 2021 elections but failed to influence the outcome. To investigate the claims, he has engaged an independent special investigator.
Trudeau said on Wednesday that he learned about the threats against Chong via the Globe piece and that when he inquired about it, he discovered that CSIS had decided to suppress information.
“Going forward, we’re making it very, very clear to CSIS and all our intelligence officials that when there are concerns that talk specifically about any MP, particularly their family, those need to be elevated,” Trudeau said.
MP Chong said following Trudeau’s speech in Ottawa that if federal ministers were uninformed of the CSIS report, it “calls into question the Trudeaus handle on government.”
“The Trudeau government needs to come clean about who knew what, when they knew it, and what they did about it,” he says.
Chong was sanctioned by Beijing in 2021 after the Canadian parliament passed a vote calling China’s persecution of the Uyghur Muslim minority to be genocide.
