The West Block – Episode 30, Season 13 – National

THE WEST BLOCK
Episode 30, Season 13
Sunday, April 7, 2024

Host: Mercedes Stephenson

Guests:
Steven Chase, The Globe and Mail
Dick Fadden, Former National Security Advisor
Retired Ltd.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Former UN Assistance Mission
for Rwanda Force Commander

Location:
Ottawa Studio

Mercedes Stephenson: Declassified summaries of top secret intelligence documents, attempts to funnel $250 thousand and what was said about the two Michaels. Stunning testimony from the foreign interference inquiry is on the show this week.

I’m Mercedes Stephenson, and The West Block starts now.

David Vigneault, CSIS Director: “Disinformation now is in the public domain.”

Mercedes Stephenson: The head of Canada’s spy agency takes the stand, revealing critical information about CSIS’ concerns on what foreign operatives were up to in the last Canadian elections.

And, on this sombre anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, General Roméo Dallaire tells us key actors in that slaughter are currently hiding out in Canada.

The public inquiry into foreign interference is back and it has been a big week. For the first time, we’re learning the details of what intelligence exactly the government had on the issue. The director of CSIS and the commissioner of the RCMP both testified about significant and numerous attempts by foreign governments to interfere in our democracy, from propaganda to China’s attempt to funnel about $250 thousand in cash to influence Canadian politics.

And we learned new details about independent MP Han Dong and the comments he allegedly made about the two Michaels. A CSIS document alleged details of a phone call between Dong and China’s consul general in Toronto. Dong testified that he didn’t recall making the statements about the two Michaels alleged in the CSIS report and said that he had always advocated for their early release.

One thing was clear in all of it: China is highly capable and motivated when it comes to election interference.

Joining me now to discuss this are former national security advisor and CSIS director Dick Fadden, and The Globe and Mail’s senior parliamentary reporter Steven Chase, who’s broken a number of the stories on foreign interference.

A really remarkable week in terms of a chance to see documents Canadians would typically never lay eyes on. To hear from senior national security officials about what was happening behind the scenes. Steven, I know you’ve been tracking every moment of this as it goes by. What jumped out to you this week?

Mercedes Stephenson: And sparked one of the opposition leaders’ catch phrases.

Steven Chase, The Globe and Mail: Well what—first of all, what jumped out to me is that David Johnston really did a poor job. We learnt so much more in week of this inquiry than we’ve learned from his entire report. We had the revelations that there were serious concerns about Chinese disinformation campaigns being levelled against the Conservatives that were not passed on. We finally learned more about the conversation that Han Dong had with the Chinese consulate and the actual details of it. We had revelations of about $250 thousand being, you know, delivered by the—from the Chinese government to threat actors in the region. So—and the week’s not even over. The inquiry’s not even over. We’ve got another week going.

Mercedes Stephenson: And of course, we’re seeing public summaries of what would have been highly classified documents. We’re not seeing the original documents or any of the things that we’re not permitted to see for national security reasons. When you watch this through the national security lens, Dick, what does it all say to you about how significant this all was and things that we’ve learned, as Steve points out, through this inquiry that we otherwise never would have known and in some cases were denied by the government or by the Johnston report?

Dick Fadden, Former National Security Advisor: I think the main conclusion that I come to, which I find very distressing, is given everything that’s been made public this week or quasi-public this week, in the context of the government’s clear reluctance over time to admit that there was a problem. I mean, the government had to be driven to set up this inquiry. I still don’t think they really registered how serious it is substantively. It’s certainly important publicly and in communication terms, but the thing that came across to me mostly was all of this information, or most of this information should have been available quite broadly. Not all publicly, but broadly within the system. Certainly, the political side of things should have known about it, as should the senior public service. And despite all of this, as I said a moment ago, the government was very reluctant to deal with the issue and they still are. You know, Mr. LeBlanc has been promising a foreign agents registry now, I think for about 18 months. This is not a complicated piece of legislation.

Mercedes Stephenson: Is there any way they wouldn’t have known some of this stuff? Because when you look back on some of the things that the government said a few months ago, and now you look at what’s before the Commission, did they never see this? Did they see this and think it would never come out so they could continue along their path? There’s some pretty glaring deficiencies in the public commentary compared to what we now know CSIS is saying yes, we had analysis that suggested this and that it would have been passed on to appropriate authorities.

Dick Fadden, Former National Security Advisor: I mean it’s the job, for example, of PCO, to make sure that when things like this come up, the prime minister and PMO and ministers are available. So I don’t know why they’ve been reluctant to accept this in their public commentary, as you say, or to accept that they should have done something about it. But I’ve certainly come to the conclusion having worked in Ottawa for a goodly number of years that nothing stays secret forever. And I would have thought that that would have registered as well, but it seemly hasn’t because you’re right, the contrast between what they’ve said and what now appears to be the case, not quite congruent.

Mercedes Stephenson: Steve, what’s the political fallout of this for the government?

Steven Chase, The Globe and Mail: Well I think it shows that they weren’t really on the job. They were—either there was a failure in the communication or there was a deliberate decision not to share information about the extent of the Chinese foreign interference. And let’s be clear, 90 per cent of what we’re talking about here is Chinese state foreign interference, although we’ve added other countries to the roster. We don’t have a lot of evidence of other countries being as pervasive and aggressive.

Mercedes Stephenson: And it was the questions about China that initially sparked this inquiry. Of course, we’ve since started talking about India. Russia’s been a persistent problem. Iran. It’s a very broad scope, and I do want to get to that in a moment, but I wanted to ask you your opinion, Dick, on this information we got about the CSIS interception of the phone call between Han Dong and the Chinese consul general. And this has been a lot of controversy, a lot of debate about this phone call. We finally got the CSIS summary of what they allege was said, and it included things like concerns that the Canadian public wanted more transparency on the two Michaels being held, which of course is true. But you have Han Dong and it’s suggesting that if the Chinese government were to provide more transparency about the detention it might placate public opinion. It might give the Liberal government some talking points that if they were to release the two Michaels right now, it in fact, might embolden opponents of the regime here in Canada and in the opposition were hardliners on China. That was quite interesting to take a look at. When you look at that as a national security official, do you think that’s an appropriate conversation, if it unfolded that way—this is what CSIS says—if it unfolded the way that CSIS said it did?

Dick Fadden, Former National Security Advisor Well I have no reason to believe that what CSIS said did in fact not happen. And no, I don’t think it’s appropriate. You know, MPs are entitled to have relationships with embassies. I mean, socially and professionally to some degree. But I think we have to look at the context. Canada was going through a really rough patch with China. We had two of our citizens being held. So anybody who was mucking around, complicating our relationships with China, was doing so, I think in variance with the best interest of both the country and the individuals concerned. I understand why Mr. Han Dong would be concerned and he might want to help. It was not appropriate for a backbencher, in my view at that time, to try and play. Even if you attribute the most positive of motives to him, anything that complicated what we were trying to do with the Chinese was not helpful.

Mercedes Stephenson: And Han Dong, of course, was up testifying this week, the first time that we’ve heard from him in front of the Commission. What did you think of what Mr. Dong had to say?

Steven Chase, The Globe and Mail: It was especially, I think, difficult for him when he was asked about these specific summaries of his conversation with the consul. And he couldn’t recall advising them. He couldn’t recall saying that—or he didn’t remember whether he had in fact advised them to—that right now might not be a good time to release the Michaels or that it might embolden the hardliners. And he didn’t recall other very specific and tantalizing bits of the conversation. That didn’t—I don’t think that came across well.

Mercedes Stephenson: And there is, of course, the question of this $250 thousand that CSIS bullied this essentially—I believe the Commission lawyer called it a slush fund that they were hoping to funnel through sort of a network of intermediaries to try to affect the election. And it’s not clear whether that money ever actually changed hands, but that there was an intention to do so there. I wonder, Dick, when I look at all of this, and CSIS had all of this information and they say that they passed it onto SITE [Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force], which is the elections body that’s supposed to be monitoring and warning if there’s an issue. Why didn’t we hear anything about this publicly at the time given what we now know?

Dick Fadden, Former National Security Advisor: I think that’s a $57 thousand question. I think there are basically three reasons. One, the way the SITE was constituted, it puts senior public servants in this role. One of the things you were taught when you’re a senior public servant is you stay as far away from elections as you possibly can. It’s part of the DNA. And I think they would have been reluctant intuitively that make these things public.

Secondly, I think the views of the prime minister at the time were that this was not a really significant issue, and I don’t for a minute think that the prime minister told anybody: don’t release things. But the views, the moods of ministers and prime ministers permeate the system, and I think that would have added a little bit to the reluctance.

And the third reason, and I’ve felt this since the very beginning, I think I may have said this on one of your shows, I thought the constitution of SITE was wrong. I think that we would have been far better to have a retired politician, you know, former prime minister Clark, not particularly partisan but he’s well-respected. He understands elections in a way that none of these senior officials could have, or I could have.

So I think for those three reasons, in the end I think that the problem would have had to be so serious that they would have felt compelled to release the information.

The other issue, too, is I think their mandate wasn’t as clear as it could have been. Thy interpreted it as requiring them to release information if there was a systemic issue, not if there was an issue as Mr. O’Toole argues at the particular constituency levels.

Steven Chase, The Globe and Mail: There was also an incident Friday that I thought was really telling. The Privy Council Office, a staffer from that office, revealed that they actually had sort of intervened in the 2019 election campaign and they’d asked Facebook to take down a false allegation, an article that made really false allegations about Mr. Trudeau, a publication called The Buffalo Chronicle. At the same time, they were asked by Commission staff, well how come you didn’t take any action with respect to WeChat over the allegations that they made about Erin O’Toole and Kenny Chu, the defeated Conservative—now defeated Conservative candidate. And they said, well, we felt one was more of a personal tack, and the other, it was not only—it was in Mandarin, so it only would have really affected the Chinese-speaking Canadians. It wouldn’t have been—it didn’t have the potential to go viral like the other article.

Mercedes Stephenson: Some interesting logic and I’m sure we’ll hear more about it in the Commission in the coming week as we start to hear from politicians, including the prime minister. So much more for us to talk about, including whether the Commission has enough time to do all its work. I’m sure we’ll be back chatting about this again. Thank you both so much for joining us today.

Steven Chase, The Globe and Mail: Good to be with you.

Mercedes Stephenson: Up next, on a sombre anniversary, is there hope for peace?

[Break]

Mercedes Stephenson: It was 30 years ago today that the Rwandan genocide began. Extremists in the dominant Hutu tribe started torturing and slaughtering the minority Tutsis.

It happened so brutally and at such an alarming rate. It was a clear attempt at wiping out the entire ethnic group.

The total number of people killed was first believed to be 800 thousand, but bodies are still being discovered. In fact, another 100 thousand victims have been unearthed in the last five years alone.

Seven UN peacekeepers were also slaughtered on this day, three decades ago. Canadian Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire headed the UN mission. His attempts at trying to shelter vulnerable locals without external help were valiant, but he could not stop the genocide

Retired Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Former UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda Force Commander: “You are not to take sides.”

Mercedes Stephenson: His first book about it sparked a Hollywood movie.

Unknown speaker: “Do they know how many people are going to die here?”

Unknown speaker: “It’s over. C’est fini.”

Mercedes Stephenson: His latest book, The Peace: A Warrior’s Journey, explores the underlying causes of war and the need for more than Band-Aid solutions for a better and more peaceful future, something the world could certainly use right now.

Retired Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire joins me now. General Dallaire, thank you so much for joining us. It’s always such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Retired Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Former UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda Force Commander: Thank you.

Mercedes Stephenson: As we reflect on the 30th anniversary of the beginning of such a terrible time in Rwanda with the genocide, one that stands out for so many Canadians is we watched in abject horror as people lost their lives, hoping that help that was coming that never materialized. You have been the face in so many ways of that pain and suffering here in Canada. As you reflect back on your time in Rwanda, and I know you were able to return recently as well, what is your feeling on this anniversary?

Retired Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Former UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda Force Commander: Well there’s enormous hope because the generation that’s—the young people are the generation post-genocide now and that nation is making headways beyond belief in becoming a modern, effective, sophisticated country. And so there’s an enormous amount of optimism there. However, the genocide remains a reference point, and the tribulations around the non-resolution of the genocide. That is to say, the world not getting involved, the international tribunal not being complete and that there’s still some of the intellectuals that created the genocide are free in France still today, leaves a level of concern about something trying to be reconstituted again in the future.

Mercedes Stephenson: The Rwandan government is pretty close to authoritarian at this time. In fact, there’s been evidence of them trying to reach out and silence critics here in Canada. There’s concern that some of those underlying issues that led to the genocide, as you mentioned, have not been resolved. Are you worried that it could happen again in Rwanda?

Retired Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Former UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda Force Commander: There is a constant concern that because we’ve not truly moved towards human security and lasting peace, we are living in periods of truces even after World War 2. I mean, everybody screamed that we are at peace. The next day, we started up with the Russians and the Warsaw Pact. So there is a constant sort of acceptance that if we have a truce and we can work things out, seemingly, at certain levels that we will actually have peace. But we haven’t reached that. We’ve never gotten to that depth. And so there’s always a nagging concern that there are left frictions that can, in fact, regenerate the problem. And all the more so, when we know that there’s activism to want to do that. Many of the bad guys, of the Hutu regime, ended up in Canada. And I have testified in one—just one trial. There are other ones. And so there are movements outside of Rwanda that want to undermine the political process inside Rwanda and so yeah, I’m not surprised that there is concern about what’s going on outside. Any diaspora that we have has connections with their old countries, and so there’s nothing surprising that the two diasporas: Hutu and Tutsis are here, and there are elements that are uncertain and unsatisfied.

Mercedes Stephenson: So if they’re here, I assume the Canadian government knows they’re here. Are they not holding them accountable or attempting to deport them?

Retired Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Former UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda Force Commander: When I was—testified against one of the genocidal—the trial was in Montreal. It lasted nearly two years, cost a couple million bucks. We had a list still then of people that should be brought in front of the Canadian court because we have that international law that if we have people who have committed these crimes against humanity, we can trial them here in Canada. And the justice department kept telling me that we don’t have the money to be able to do the trials. And so these people are still living around, but they are not sitting, sort of silent, as they’re not in Belgium, as they’re not in France. And so unless you bring justice throughout the process, you’re going to continue to have people who are getting away with it and will nurture this in the next generation. And that’s the real concern, because the eastern Congo is a hot bed of instability and they would love to get rid of all the Tutsis that are in the Congo, let alone their hatred for Rwanda and the power that Rwanda has.

Mercedes Stephenson: That is horrifying to me that our justice department didn’t want to hold—or doesn’t want to hold—war criminals accountable over a money issue. That just seems to be such a clear moral question there with a clear answer.

I know that you’ve just written a book called Peace, and part of what you’re looking at is this moral question of whether we are doing what we can to stop genocides like Rwanda from happening again. And I look around the world, I see October 7th in Israel. I see what’s happening in Gaza. I see Sudan, Afghanistan, Ukraine. So many areas and it seems like we are a more complicated and dangerous time than we have been in decades. What can be done? What needs to be done to try to bring more peace to the world?

Retired Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Former UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda Force Commander: I think that, first of all, don’t just think of the short term. We’re going to have these catastrophic failures still into the future. Remember that the nation states have only been existing for over three centuries and we’ve been battling, you know, beating each other up and swallowing each other ever since. And humanity has been doing it from the start, in fact, for power, for money and whatever. So there’s going to be a need of a near revolutionary transition, and that’s why I based my book on a lot of the Italian renaissance, when they were able to create a revolution of thinking in humanity. And now that we can talk to all of humanity, all of it, I believe that the younger generations: the millennials, the Zs, the As, are going to master and mature and mature the communications of the world. They’re now already global. They’re what I call generations without borders. They see things in a grander scale of things, both the climate, both the planet and humanity and they feel that we can, in fact, thrive into the future and not simply continue on this road with nuclear weapons and so on of surviving.

The other angle that’s coming into effect that is crucial, is we’ve got to get a hold of all these male dominated institutions and organizations and governance that have been built by men under their ego, under their often misogynist, under their self-interest based concepts of what is right and what should be, and we’ve got to get the women to influence, fundamentally, the philosophies of leadership of the world. And that, with the millennials, with the generations without borders, those two gangs together are going to change the face of humanity and move us beyond just thriving for truces, but actually looking for lasting peace.

Mercedes Stephenson: An inspirational message. Thank you so much for joining us today, General Dallaire. I know it’s always a difficult anniversary, and we appreciate your insight and your wisdom.

Retired Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Former UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda Force Commander: Well, you’re kind.

Mercedes Stephenson: Up next, revelations from the foreign interference inquiry last week that raised questions about the findings in the Johnston report.

[Break]

Mercedes Stephenson: Now for one last thing…

When it comes to foreign interference, the question is not just what other countries were up to in Canada, but what Canadian authorities and leaders knew who they told about it and whether they took the appropriate action to try to stop it.

This week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will make a much anticipated appearance at the foreign interference inquiry. Global News asked Mr. Trudeau about CSIS intelligence summaries that were presented last week, and whether former Liberal MP Han Dong would be allowed to return to caucus. We asked those questions in three different cities to the prime minister last week. And while he gave us a response, he did not give us an answer each time we asked.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “Obviously these are ongoing conversations that need to be taken very seriously and we are. This Commission is an important moment for Canadians and for our institutions. I think everyone is looking forward to the world of the independent inquiry into foreign interference and looks forward to seeing the commissioner’s reports in the coming months. I look forward to taking all sorts of questions at the Commission next week.”

Mercedes Stephenson: We hoped to get some clear answers from the prime minister at the inquiry about what he knew and when he knew it. That transparency is key to trust, and to stopping future foreign interference.

That’s our show for today. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you right back here next week.