No sitting MPs knowingly betrayed Canada, but a former lawmaker shared secrets with foreign intelligence, Green Party leader Elizabeth May said Tuesday after reviewing a highly sensitive report that accused lawmakers of treason.
Meanwhile, legislators passed a motion — in a vote of 320 to two — to expand an ongoing public inquiry into foreign interference in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 elections to scrutinize the treason claim too.
The inquiry led by Justice Marie-Josee Hogue was launched last September following intelligence leaks that claimed China and others sought to subvert Canada’s democratic process.
A heavily redacted version of a national security committee report released last week further rocked Ottawa with allegations that some lawmakers had secretly worked with foreign governments.
“There is no list of MPs [in the report] who have shown disloyalty to Canada,” Green Party co-leader Elizabeth May told a news conference, after being granted a security clearance to access the report.
“Having read the full unredacted National Security Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians report for myself, I can say I have no worries about anyone in the House of Commons,” she said.
There were some MPs cited in the report — “fewer than a handful” — she added, that were possibly “unwitting” participants in foreign interference schemes.
In her assessment of the intelligence, she said that none of them “could be described as setting out to knowingly betray Canada in favour of a foreign government.”
She did highlight, however, a “worrying case” involving an unnamed former MP who in the report was accused of having proactively shared privileged information with a foreign intelligence officer during a trip abroad.
“That person should be fully investigated and prosecuted,” she said.
May is the first opposition leader to have been granted a security clearance in order to read the unredacted version of the report, at her request, and to speak publicly about it.
Government officials have declined to say anything at all about its contents.
Last month, Hogue’s Foreign Interference Commission concluded in a first progress report that foreign interference had occurred in the 2019 and 2021 elections that returned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to power.
Hogue highlighted two mechanisms of interference — disinformation and financial support — which included bribery, blackmail, cyberattacks and spreading false messages through social media and mass media.
But this did not impact the outcome of those elections, she said.
Her final report is expected in December.
