QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of National Defence
Foreign Interference
November 7, 2024
Minister Blair, you claim that as Public Safety Minister you didn’t see a warrant application to monitor contact between a key Liberal organizer and Chinese regime agents, even though your office had it for nearly two months. You also claim you never received a secret issues management memo detailing potential threats by Chinese regime officials toward the family of Conservative member of Parliament Michael Chong.
First, you claimed you and your staff did not have access to the secure email network from your department. Then you claimed you didn’t get binders of intelligence information during the pandemic, although your own deputy minister and assistant deputy minister both testified under oath that these binders were sent to you. You claimed to not know what an issues management memo was even though your own top official testified that your office received these memos two to three times a week. They said you preferred to work from home and rely on verbal briefings.
Your story doesn’t add up, Minister Blair. Do all of these lapses stem from negligence, incompetence or wilful blindness?
Senator, unfortunately you’re badly misinformed. I might refer you to my sworn testimony. You characterize them as claims. I testified under oath four times, as did the Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, as did my deputy minister and my chief of staff. We testified under oath. Uncontradicted, I advised that I first saw a warrant application, the one in question, on May 11 and all of the other testimony confirmed that was true. That’s exactly what happened.
I would invite you not to simply accept the political rhetoric, the exaggeration and the misinformation that has been put out about this event. Go look at the sworn testimony — and I would hope you would also get an opportunity to read the final report of the Hogue commission, which has heard all of that testimony — and I believe strongly that you will come to a very different conclusion than the one you articulated.
I watched it, minister. Canadians have now learned about at least two major delays and failures in the flow of crucial security and intelligence information in your ministerial office. You tried to pass it off as your department’s responsibility. You tried to blame it on your chief of staff yet you kept her employed in that key role for four years, including for several months after these stories became public. When will you finally admit the problem is actually you?
Your ability to ignore the facts is rather remarkable. The sworn testimony of all of the witnesses who appeared on this matter corroborates my testimony in full. I am looking forward to the report of the Hogue commission. Your conclusions are simply wrong.
