Liberals blocking access to 1,000-plus documents says oversight panel

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OTTAWA – Two days after publishing an alarming report on foreign interference in Canada, an intelligence agency oversight committee says the federal government is trying to avoid disclosing information by “inappropriately” withholding over a thousand documents.

In its annual report published Wednesday, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) said that it is still fighting the Liberal government to obtain all the documents it requires to fulfill its mandate as an intelligence agency watchdog.

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The committee noted that despite being granted access to four documents covered by cabinet confidence last year as part of its review of foreign interference in Canada, it was blocked from accessing hundreds of others.

“Federal departments and agencies withheld or refused the disclosure of over a thousand documents, in whole or in part, on the basis that they were Cabinet confidences. Specifically, close to a quarter of these documents were withheld in their entirety,” the committee wrote.

“The Committee is concerned that some departments and agencies may be inappropriately using claims of Cabinet confidences to avoid disclosing information to the Committee,” the report continues.

It was not immediately clear if those unreleased documents were requested as part of the committee’s review into foreign interference against Canadian democratic institutions.

Documents that contain cabinet confidences — information that is discussed at the cabinet table — are normally prevented from disclosure so as to allow ministers to “express their views freely during the discussions held in Cabinet.”

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But NSICOP has complained since 2022 that the government continues to withhold information it requires due to cabinet confidence and has called on the Liberals to redefine the principle.

“While a legislative change to the definition of Cabinet confidence is desirable, in the near term, a clear statement of policy that NSICOP should be barred from receiving only core Cabinet secrets would go some way to addressing the issues being experienced,” the committee wrote.

“It goes without saying that it is essential for the Committee to have comprehensive access to all the information it needs to fulfill its statutory responsibility of conducting reviews and making relevant recommendations to enhance the effectiveness of the security and intelligence community,” the committee wrote.

In a shocking report published Monday, NSICOP stated that some MPs are “wittingly or semi-wittingly” helping foreign governments all the while confirming previous reports about foreign interference in Canadian elections.

The report revealed that MPs have provided confidential information to Indian government officials and advocated for the Indian government while in Parliament.

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The report also revealed that a former MP had maintained a relationship with a foreign intelligence officer and sought a meeting with that officer while in a foreign country.

The all-party committee, which includes MPs and Senators reviewed 33,000 pages of documents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the RCMP and other departments about foreign interference to prepare their report.

The report named no names and didn’t identify the party of the MPs in question, leading to calls for greater clarity from MPs.

Public Safety Minister Dominic Leblanc said earlier this week that some of the claims made in the NSICOP report are based on intelligence that has not been proven and are just one part of a larger puzzle.

“This is an example where certain information doesn’t have the caveats that some of the intelligence documents that we would see have,” he told reporters on Monday.

“That’s one of the concerns we have in terms of leaving the impression that an individual piece of intelligence might constitute evidence or might be a fact, but I want to be careful not to speak about a specific circumstance.”

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NSICOP declined an interview request with chair David McGuinty Wednesday afternoon. It did not immediately respond to questions about if the committee believed LeBlanc’s comments referred to documents that the government had refused to disclose to NSICOP.

NSICOP’s annual report also reveals that for the first time since its creation in 2017, the committee provided a secret review to the prime minister late last year that it requested not be tabled in Parliament and made public.

In a high-level overview of the report, NSICOP says it highlighted “concerns” about an unnamed federal department or agency’s authority to conduct an unspecified intelligence collection activity, as well as a “lack of appropriate governance”.

It also reported concerns about “the role that the Department of Justice plays in providing advice in areas of national security and intelligence that will likely not receive judicial scrutiny.”

The annual report says it provided the government with five recommendations, of which only three were accepted.

More to come.

National Post

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