Trudeau Officials Defend Withholding Intelligence Reports on Chinese Interference
Jody Thomas Testifies 'Special Report' Alleging Clandestine Funding and Implicating 11 Toronto-Area Candidates in PRC Network in 2019 Needed 'Peer Review'
OTTAWA, Canada — Justin Trudeau's former senior officials, Jody Thomas and Janice Charette, defended their decisions not to escalate two high-impact 2022 intelligence reports on Chinese interference to the Prime Minister—decisions that have become central to the Hogue Commission inquiry into whether the administration neglected to address growing threats from Beijing.
The Commission and a related review have found fundamental and continuing divides between senior Trudeau officials and Canadian intelligence over the two reports and the issue of Chinese interference more broadly.
These reports include the pivotal Privy Council Office “Special Report” reviewed by The Bureau, which alleges that 11 Toronto-area candidates were implicated in a 2019 federal election interference network involving clandestine fund transfers into proxy networks from the Toronto Consulate. The report examined by The Bureau names none of these politicians but notably claims that Trudeau’s former cabinet minister and ambassador to China, John McCallum, could have been influenced to advocate policies beneficial to Beijing in the Meng Wanzhou detention case. [McCallum has not responded to requests for comment.]
The controversy around Trudeau’s vulnerabilities, fueled by media reports based on intelligence leaks, intensified following the 2024 NSICOP report, which criticized Trudeau’s administration for its inaction. Questions remain about whether some of those named in the underlying CSIS reports could be members of Trudeau's own Liberal Party.
Inquiry testimony has focused on the Special Report, compiled by the Privy Council Office’s Intelligence Assessment Secretariat, and a high-level “Targeting Paper” prepared by CSIS. According to The Bureau’s national security sources, the Special Report, drawing on over 100 CSIS reports, broadly relates to a sensitive investigation in Greater Toronto that ultimately led CSIS to seek a technical surveillance warrant in March 2021.
The Hogue Commission has heard that the warrant was delayed for approximately eight weeks—unusually long for such a high-stakes request—raising concerns that Liberal Party officials may have influenced the process, potentially hampering CSIS’s investigation in the lead-up to the September 2021 federal election. The Bureau has reported exclusively, citing multiple sources, that some CSIS investigators believe the most consequential aspect of the warrant was the suspicion of influence on the Prime Minister's Office concerning a specific candidate in the 2019 election.
On Wednesday, Jody Thomas testified that the Special Report she received in January 2022 needed further peer review before distribution. She also believed the report contained inflammatory language.
During cross-examination, MP Michael Chong’s lawyer pressed Thomas on the value of the Special Report, emphasizing that it was based on over 100 CSIS reports and included both domestic and international intelligence insights.
“You'd agree that this kind of report has value above and beyond just the underlying intelligence?” the lawyer questioned, suggesting that Martin Green—a senior PCO official who pushed the report forward to address dissent from senior Trudeau officials who downplayed Chinese interference threats—had repeatedly raised the report with Thomas, seeking to advance it.
Thomas acknowledged, “I know of two instances where he raised it with me, not multiple.”
“It wasn't a priority for peer review and it got stuck there and didn't advance further,” Chong’s lawyer noted. “But Mr. Green certainly would've liked it to, and I was trying to understand why it didn't advance further.”
The Commission then turned to the “Targeting Paper,” compiled in 2021 but only revealed in recent months, which has been withheld from the Commission’s review by Canada’s Attorney General, citing national security. It detailed Beijing’s efforts to cultivate influence among Canadian parliamentarians, and former CSIS director David Vigneault testified that he was shocked that Thomas had not distributed the report to Trudeau, even after CSIS agreed to remove sensitive details, including names of Canadian parliamentarians potentially implicated in China’s targeting.
Previously, in cross-examination from NDP MP Jenny Kwan’s lawyer, Vigneault said that Thomas should have returned to CSIS to discuss her dissenting opinion.
“The NSIA should not have been a gatekeeper or an editor of professional intelligence produced by CSIS,” Kwan’s lawyer said. “Is that fair?”
“I think it is fair to say that,” Vigneault said.
Instead, Jody Thomas, who was serving as National Security and Intelligence Advisor (NSIA), and Janice Charette, then Clerk of the Privy Council, made the decision to pause its dissemination, citing concerns about sensitive information.
“A name of an individual, a politician, a private citizen in a CSIS report—it's masked. We don't see the name. And the names in this report were unmasked,” Thomas said.
Thomas, like other senior Trudeau officials, argued that the report primarily reflected diplomatic activities by Beijing. “I had some questions about whether this was interference or influence, and understanding that that's not a black-and-white line. I wanted to have a discussion about that.”
Both officials maintained that they did not believe the Targeting Paper, even in its sanitized form, required elevation to Trudeau. “I also, as Ms. Thomas said, did not leave that meeting [with CSIS and Jody Thomas] with the impression that this product, once it had been cleaned up and the questions addressed, was destined for the Prime Minister,” Charette added.
The Commission also examined Thomas's handling of a 2021 CSIS report about Chinese intelligence targeting Chong, which Thomas received while serving as Deputy Minister of National Defence. Thomas claimed she did not recall reading the report or taking steps to elevate it at the time, insisting that her first awareness of the issue came only after The Globe and Mail broke the story in May 2023.
Chong's lawyer then focused on a memo Thomas drafted after the media revelations, which appeared to shift responsibility onto CSIS and other intelligence agencies for failing to escalate alerts on Chong to senior officials.
"What I want to put to you is that this document, which the Prime Minister is receiving at this time, puts the onus on the security agencies for somehow having failed to make ministers proactively aware of these threats," the lawyer said. "But we heard from CSIS witnesses that they felt they were already doing this. So the issue here was not actually the security agencies, but it was the departments, the deputy ministers and ministers, and the NSIA."
"I don't actually accept the premise that there was any blame here," Thomas insisted. "This was an explanation of what steps are going to be taken to adhere to a new ministerial directive."
I think we can all agree that Trudeau has been compromised by the Chinese.
The strategy seems to be - Deflect, dodge and point fingers at others.