Terry Glavin;

A clandestine intervention in Canada’s elections is not exactly “interference” if it’s solicited, invited and welcomed, and it’s not precisely “foreign” if the culprits are willing Canadian operatives and proxies in foreign-directed influence campaigns.

This appears to have been the case, NSICOP concludes, in several obliquely-described instances gleaned almost entirely from top-secret reports by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

There’s always the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner and the Senate Ethics Officer that could help Parliamentarians figure out how to reduce their exposure to the shadowy maneuvers of hostile foreign powers, the report observes. But these resources will only work against unwelcome advances.

“Unfortunately, the Committee has also seen troubling intelligence that some Parliamentarians are, in the words of the intelligence services, “semi-witting or witting” participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in our politics.”

This is not just about China’s vast United Front Work Department, which by strong-arming and influence-peddling has burrowed deeply into ethnic Chinese political activism, the media, the universities and Canada’s political parties, most notably the Liberal Party. Beijing has also disrupted Conservative party leadership races, the report notes (the United Front was especially determined to unseat Erin O’Toole from the Conservative leadership two years ago).[…]

Like the documents released during the course of Madam Justice Hogue’s hearings in the foreign interference commission proceedings earlier this year, much of the NSICOP report vindicates news reports based on CSIS leaks about Beijing’s monkey-wrenching during the 2019 and 2021 federal elections — reports the Trudeau government was all too willing to dismiss before the evidence became too overpowering to ignore.

“The Committee rejects any notion that the individual or individuals responsible for the leaks acted as patriots or whistleblowers,” the NSICOP report states. “On the other hand, the Committee acknowledges an uncomfortable truth. Prior to the leaks, there was little sense of urgency between elected officials and senior decision-makers to address outstanding gaps to this important and well-documented threat to national security.”

Sam Cooper: I’ve also discussed with @kshahrooz that a notorious LPC MP may appear to be implicated in both PRC and Iran threat networks, and this could be an important convergence to understand geopolitically.