CSIS memo about attacking Beijing MPs sent to wrong agency, Blair says

Former Public Security Secretary Bill Blair says a secret memo prepared by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to inform the federal government that Beijing was targeting Conservative MP Michael Chong never reached him at the time because it was sent to the wrong office was sent.

“To be clear, CSIS did not notify me of that document,” Blair said told reporters in Ottawa on June 14, adding: “I heard they sent it to another office with the intention of me somehow getting to see it, but honestly, if they intended me to would have that information, my expectation would be whether they would come and inform me about it.

Blair, who is now the disaster preparedness minister, added that it “might have been helpful” if CSIS had called him or sent him “an email or a text message” to warn him that they had a briefing he needed to but the minister said he was never contacted in such a way.

Blair did say that CSIS would regularly brief him on matters of foreign interference while he served as secretary of public security from 2019 to 2021.

He said CSIS would brief him in a secure room in his Ottawa office, ask him to go to Toronto’s intelligence agency headquarters, or send a CSIS member to brief him at his home.

Appearing before a House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and Home Affairs on June 1, Blair blamed CSIS for failing to inform him of Beijing’s threats to MPs in 2021. He also previously said he was unaware of the matter until The Globe and Mail released a May 1 report based on a leaked CSIS review.

Blair told the committee that CSIS director David Vigneault had previously determined that he did not need to know information about Beijing’s threats to MPs.

“So I was never made aware of the existence of that intelligence, nor was it ever shared with me,” he said.

However, Vigneault told the same committee on June 13 that CSIS was following proper protocol at the time to pass information to the secretary of public security about the Beijing threat.

“My understanding of how the information flows from an agency to the minister is that it is sent to the department — in this case, the Public Security Department,” Vigneault said.

Blair responded to this, telling reporters the same day that Vigneault and CSIS drafted the relevant brief “with the intent” for Blair to read it – but claimed he never received it.

“Unfortunately, his intention has had no effect,” said Blair.

Noé Chartier contributed to this report.