(Ottawa) Former Public Safety Minister Bill Blair rejects any suggestion that his office sought to protect a senior member of the Liberal Party of Canada by delaying authorizing a Canadian Security Intelligence Service surveillance warrant ( CSIS) in 2021.
Testifying before the Committee on Foreign Interference on Friday, Mr. Blair said he fulfilled his obligations as Minister of Public Safety by authorizing this surveillance mandate as quickly as possible, regardless of the political ties that could have the person who was in CSIS’s sights.
Mr. Blair, who was the head boss of the Toronto Police before making the jump to federal politics in 2015 and who is now Minister of Defence, thus refuted any accusation according to which the long delay of 54 days which elapsed before the approval of this surveillance mandate was a matter of political favor.
“I have never considered anything other than my legal responsibility to review and, where appropriate, approve the warrant. There were no other considerations and certainly no political considerations,” certified Minister Blair, who was Minister of Public Safety from 2019 to 2021.
CSIS informed Minister Blair’s office in the spring of 2021 that it was seeking a warrant to monitor former Liberal Ontario government minister Michael Chan, who is now deputy mayor of the Town of Markham. The latter was suspected of using his position of influence within the Ontario Liberal Party and his federal cousin in Ottawa to promote China’s interests.
PHOTO GALIT RODAN, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
Michael Chan
But it took 54 days to obtain authorization from Minister Blair – a long delay which exceeds the average of four to 10 days for this process and which has caused frustration within CSIS.
This deadline left little time for CSIS agents to obtain final approval from a federal judge to place bugs in Mr. Chan’s cars, home, office, computers and cell phones before the start of the 2021 federal election campaign.
But Mr. Blair denied having been informed of this significant delay by his close collaborators, in particular his former chief of staff Zita Astravas, or even the leaders of CSIS.
In his testimony, Mr. Blair maintained that the existence of the mandate in question was only brought to his attention when he saw an addition in his ministerial calendar indicating that he would need to be informed of a confidential matter by CSIS.
He said he was not aware of the contents of the warrant in question until he received a briefing in a secure location, 54 days after the director of CSIS and the deputy minister of Public Safety had asked his office for permission. He approved the request the same day.
Mr. Blair said he learned of such a delay following the publication of a report on the subject in The Globe and Mail last year.
“Unfortunately, it was impossible for me to know information that we did not receive from them before it became public,” he maintained.
Earlier this week, former chief of staff Zita Astravas was unable to explain why it took 54 days for Minister Blair to approve the mandate.
Mme Astravas knows Mr. Chan well from her days working for Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government at Queen’s Park. During her testimony Wednesday, she categorically denied allegations by Gib van Ert, lawyer for Conservative MP Michael Chong, that she worked to delay approval of a spy warrant in early 2021 because it affected directly the operations of the Trudeau government.
“Having seen the extent to which this mandate would involve CSIS in the affairs of your party and your government, you did not want it to be carried out, and if it were to be carried out, you wanted to slow it down,” he said. ‘lawyer.
Mme Astravas responded that she could not mention the details of the mandate, “but I can tell you that your assumptions are categorically wrong.”
With The Canadian Press