Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino says he can’t name the other MPs allegedly targeted by China’s state security agencies in foreign interference operations.
At a press conference in Mississauga Monday morning, Mendicino said he was bound by Canada’s official secrets laws and could not divulge which MPs were targeted according to Canadian intelligence assessments.
“I have a legal obligation under the law to respect the parameters within which we keep information classified,” Mendicino told reporters.
“What I can tell you is that very transparently we did meet with (Conservative MP Michael) Chong. We provided him a briefing.”
The Globe and Mail reported last week that members of Chong’s family, who live in Hong Kong, were allegedly targeted by China’s state security service. The targeting came after Chong supported a vote – which was unanimously approved by the House of Commons – to designate China’s oppression of the Uyghur minority as a genocide.
Both Mendicino and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that they first became aware of the allegations through the newspaper’s report. Mendicino pressed the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to give Chong an urgent briefing on the matter.
“We’re making it very clear to CSIS and our intelligence officials that when there are concerns that talk specifically about any MP – particularly about their family – those need to be elevated even if CSIS doesn’t feel that it’s a sufficient level of concern for them to take more direct action,” Trudeau told reporters on Wednesday.
But Chong told the House of Commons on Wednesday that Trudeau’s national security advisor, Jody Thomas, informed him that CSIS had shared that information with her office and the Privy Council Office – raising more questions about how that intelligence was handled.
“We also know that other MPs were being targeted, we don’t know who they are, by the Ministry of State Security in the (People’s Republic of China),” Chong said during an interview on The West Block this weekend.
“My case is not unique.”
The Trudeau government is now under pressure to expel a Chinese diplomat, Zhao Wei, who was allegedly involved in gathering information on Chong’s family. The Chinese embassy in Ottawa has denied any attempted foreign interference schemes, and threatened to retaliate against Canadian “provocations.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told a House of Commons committee that expelling Chinese diplomats was on the table, but warned about potential consequences of that diplomatic step.
“The reality is that there are well and long-established conventions around what is fair game when it comes to diplomatic activity and what goes beyond that,” Mendicino said Monday.
“Minister Joly (and) her department convened the Chinese ambassador last week to make those boundaries very clear and consistent with the action that this government took.”
Mendicino added that CSIS has briefed 49 parliamentarians in 2022 about foreign interference issues. CSIS’s public report, released last week, does not include details on what, specifically, those briefings entailed or how many related specifically to alleged interference from Beijing.