Members of Parliament are wondering why Canadian security officials did not inform them that they had been targeted by hackers linked to Beijing, after learning from the FBI that the international parliamentary alliance they are part of was on the verge of look at the Chinese cyberattack in 2021. .
On Monday, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis opened the House of Commons session by raising an issue of privilege, sounding the alarm over what he considered an “unacceptable” failure by the Canadian government to inform MPs that a foreign government had attacked them.
Genuis said that last week, as first reported by The Globe and Mail, he and his colleague Interparliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) Canadian co-president, Liberal MP John MacKay, was informed “about a cyberattack launched against us and 16 other Canadian parliamentarians in 2021.”
IPAC is an international group of cross-party lawmakers “working to reform the way democratic countries approach China.” It is made up of politicians from various political parties and has become, as Genuis said, “a single target” of the Chinese Communist Party.
According to Genuis, IPAC learned of the “coordinated attack” on the email accounts of IPAC-affiliated lawmakers through an unsealed indictment from the U.S. Department of Justice in March.
The accusation said that the PRC state-backed hacking group, dubbed “Advanced Persistent Threat 31” or “APT31,” had “sent malicious emails with tracking links to government officials around the world who expressed criticism of the Chinese government.” the People’s Republic of China”.
According to Genuis, based on monitoring by IPAC, US intelligence officials from the FBI were told that they were prevented from informing lawmakers in other countries about the target, but had issued foreign disclosure requests to all governments with political figures affected in 2022.
“It would have been particularly important for us to be informed, given the progressive nature of the attack. We could have worked with the appropriate authorities to take steps to protect ourselves and ensure the security and functioning of our parliamentary and personal email accounts.” ” said Genuis. “But we couldn’t do it because we weren’t informed.”
While not all Canadian MPs who were targeted agreed to be named, Genuis said the other IPAC members affected included Conservative MPs James Bezan, Stephanie Kusie and Tom Kmiec, Liberal MP Judy Sgro and unaffiliated senator Marilou. McPhedran.
Thanking her colleague for raising the “very important issue”, Sgro stood up after Genuis said she agreed that failure to notify her was a “very serious breach” of MPs’ privileges.
Expressing dismay that Canada continues to “be so naïve,” Sgro said that, like Canadians’ voices when they talk about China or other countries, parliamentarians “have to be able to speak with the necessary protection and not have have to worry about being bullied or hacked.”
“I would hope that our government would make sure that we have the information necessary to protect ourselves and make sure that our systems are protected,” Sgro said. “I think it’s very important that we get some answers here about why we weren’t notified, what happens next and how we can better protect ourselves in the future.”
Genuis asks that the matter be referred to a House committee for further study.
The federal New Democrats have signaled they plan to talk more about the issue later.
“The government takes foreign interference very seriously,” said Kevin Lamoureux, parliamentary secretary to the government’s House leader, briefly noting during the debate that it was the first time he had heard of the situation.
Commons Speaker Greg Fergus, tasked with deciding whether this matter breached MPs’ rights and protections and what the next steps should be, has pledged to speak to MPs again “immediately”.
This is not the first example of Canadian MPs belatedly learning that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government failed to notify them that they were being attacked by China, a country that has been at the center of an ongoing national investigation into foreign interference. in past federal elections.
CTV News has asked CSIS, the RCMP and the office of Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc for comment.