Three days before Canada’s 2019 federal vote incumbent Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national security advisor recieved intelligence alleging that Chinese officials had covertly transferred about $250,000 into a clandestine pro-Beijing network including federal candidates and political staffers, and “there was some financial support for some candidates,” Ottawa’s Foreign Interference Commission has heard.

Meanwhile, documents tabled Monday showed Prime Minister Trudeau was directly warned by his previous national security advisor Daniel Jean in 2017 that:

The explosive CSIS warning days ahead of the 2019 vote stemmed partly from investigations into suspected Chinese interference in the Toronto-area riding of Liberal MP Han Dong, the Commission heard Monday.

But while senior officials, including Greta Bossenmaier, Trudeau’s then-national security advisor [NSIA] and Ottawa’s so-called “Panel of Five” monitors recieved allegations of China secretly funding some 2019 candidates, they judged not to intervene and believed Canada’s election would be “free and fair.”

“Presumably, since NSIA had the information Friday, she could have convened a discussion if she felt it were necessary,” said a “Canadian Eyes Only” email sent several hours before polls opened on Monday, October 21, 2019.

That email from Lyall King, an election threat official, noted "Privy Council Office was provided a heads up on the report," on Friday, October 18th, and “once Elections Canada recieved the information, they reached out to Privy Council Office to consult (discussion on reliability of intelligence, etc.)”

The Panel of Five bureaucrats that recieved CSIS’s clandestine funding allegations before the 2019 election — including Greta Bossenmaier, Trudeau’s current national security advisor Nathalie Drouin, and senior Public Safety Canada official Monik Beauregard — were examined by Commission lawyers Monday.

Prime Minister Trudeau and his top aide Katie Telford will be examined later this week on pre-2019 election Chinese interference alerts.

The Commission lawyers appear to be focused on whether the Panel of Five and Ottawa’s so-called SITE election task force neglected to intervene publicly in the 2019 and 2021 federal votes, and possibly in ways that benefited Trudeau’s Liberal government.

For example, the Commission has heard SITE didn’t intervene or inform former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole and former MP Kenny Chiu that they were being smeared with Chinese disinformation on WeChat during the 2021 campaign.

But senior officials intervened with Facebook in 2019 to suppress a false and salacious report on Trudeau that was hosted on a United States-based website.

At issue in the Panel of Five’s decision in 2019, the Commission heard Monday, was CSIS’s investigation of Dong’s nomination and a broader piece of intelligence that pointed to funds of “$250,000 from PRC officials in Canada,” clandestinely “transferred via multiple individuals to obfuscate their origins via an influential community leader.”

“Some of the intel had some funding allegations,” Nathalie Drouin told Commission lawyers of investigations in Dong’s riding, saying this is why her team reported these financial allegations to Elections Canada.

“We were aware the fact there was, uh, some financial support for some candidates,” Monik Beauregard said, regarding the intel her team recieved Friday, October 18, 2019. “And we had to look at it.”

“Was the panel made aware of intelligence reporting indicating that buses were used to bring international students to the nomination process?” a Commission lawyer asked, of CSIS’s concerns in Liberal MP Han Dong’s riding.

“Yes,” Drouin answered. “One thing that was more corroborated was the existence of busses with students.”

In a document tabled while Bossenmaier, Drouin and Beauregard were examined on their choice to call the 2019 election “free and fair” a Commission lawyer focused on CSIS’s clandestine funding information, which Beauregard characterized as “ambiguous” intelligence.

The document said CSIS found prior to and during the 2019 election “a group of known and suspected People’s Republic of China related threat actors in Canada, including PRC officials, worked in loose coordination with one another to covertly advance PRC interests though Canadian democratic institutions.”

It said that some “threat actors received financial support from the PRC,” and CSIS’s “reporting indicated that 11 political candidates and 13 political staff members were assessed to be either implicated in or impacted by this group of threat actors.”

The document said seven of these 2019 election candidates were from the Liberal Party and four were from the Conservative Party.

“Some of these individuals appeared willingly to cooperate in foreign interference related activity,” while others appeared to be unaware, the document tabled Monday says, before pointing to a serious allegation involving the staff of one particular candidate.

According to confidential intelligence sources for The Bureau with awareness of this particular CSIS intelligence and allegation, the political staffers in question served for 2019 Liberal candidate Mary Ng, who is a sitting minister in Trudeau’s cabinet.

Minister Ng has not been named in this document nor in the Foreign Interference Commission hearings, and Ng and the Prime Minister’s Office haven’t responded to questions from The Bureau on this intelligence allegation.

“In one example, intelligence reports indicate that officials from the PRC met with political staffers and specifically conveyed their expectation that the staffers screen their candidate’s attendance at certain events such as those hosted by Taiwanese officials,” the document examined Monday says.

It adds that “Intelligence reports also indicate that some of these threat actors also directed certain Chinese language media outlets to support specific candidates.”

Regarding the clandestine People’s Republic network and “threat actor” funding allegations specifically, the document says “intelligence assessments suggest some of these threat actors received financial support from the PRC.”

“For example, there likely were at least two transfer of funds approximating $250,000 from PRC officials in Canada,” the document examined by the Commission says. “These were transferred via multiple individuals to obfuscate their origins via an influential community leader to the staff member of a 2019 federal election candidate, and then to an Ontario MPP.”

The document adds transfers “reportedly took place in late 2018 — early 2019.”

Conflict between SITE and CSIS reporting on Han Dong’s 2019 nomination

Meanwhile, the Commission heard for the first time last week that CSIS director David Vigneault agreed after a discussion with Greta Bossenmaier in 2019 to water down CSIS’s assessment of suspected Chinese interference in Han Dong’s 2019 nomination by revising the allegation that a “politically-connected Canadian” had certainly impacted the 2019 election in Dong’s riding.

In testimony last week Dong said he was aware some high school students from China were bussed into his nomination in Don Valley North, but said he did not know who arranged or paid for the bus.

The Commission heard last week CSIS intelligence after the 2019 election summed up that “reporting also indicated that the students were provided with falsified documents to allow them to vote, despite not being residents of Don Valley North. The documents were provided by individuals associated with a known proxy agent.”

Also last week, Canadian signals intelligence official and SITE task force member Lyall King explained why he took issue with CSIS’s controversial report on Han Dong’s nomination, before CSIS director Vigneault chose to “recall” and revise the report.

King said he had an issue with “the bottom line statements” in CSIS’s assessment that said an unidentified politically-connected Canadian had compromised the 2019 election, and that the “messaging” between SITE and CSIS delivered to Trudeau’s senior officials was “conflicting.”

“My concern was with the dissemination,” King said last week. “It was that it went to [senior Trudeau Government officials] as it went to SITE. And given the nature of it, just after the election and the bottom line statement seemed to have some disagreements with what we were saying from a SITE perspective with regarding the nature of the foreign interference.”

“At first glance SITE was saying one thing,” King said, “and this report seemingly said something different.”

King said he had no knowledge of how Vigneault revised the assessment on Dong’s riding after the CSIS director discussed concerns with Trudeau’s then NSIA, Greta Bossenmaier.

However on Monday the Commission heard that Bossenmaier didn’t specifically recall her discussion with the CSIS director or understand why he recalled the report.

“I would not and did not tell another intelligence agency to change their report,” Bossenmaier told the Commission on Monday.

“You could have made an announcement around Mr. Chiu”

Later Monday, lawyers for a human rights coalition and Conservative MP Michael Chong pressed the 2021 Federal Election “Panel of Five” on their choice not to intervene in WeChat and Chinese disinformation that election threat officials were informed of, specifically against candidate Kenny Chiu in the 2021 campaign.

The Commission also heard the Panel of Five considered how a report in Ottawa’s Hill Times newspaper regarding Erin O’Toole’s platform was cited and amplified in Canada-based WeChat accounts that were evidently linked to Chinese Communist Party media reports.

“In your opinion, do you think it would have been valuable to make some sort of targeted announcements specifically to Chinese speaking voters … that are highly vulnerable to foreign interference?” a human rights lawyer asked the panel.

“You could have made an announcement around Mr. Chiu, even without attributing it to China,” MP Michael Chong’s lawyer told the panel, “and say to the people in writing there is disinformation and misinformation about his policies and positions.”

But the panelists, including Trudeau’s former national security advisor David Morrison, said they never considered intervening in WeChat media accounts.

“We never adjudicated the threshold coming close to being met in either an individual (riding) level, or at the national scale,” Morrison answered.

Testimony continues Tuesday.

sam@thebureau.news

Editor’s Note: This breaking story was updated with testimony from the evening of Monday, April 8th.