Global Courant
Vincent Rigby, who served as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national security adviser from 2020 to 2021, told MPs on Thursday he fears “important and useful” intelligence was not always sought after during his tenure.
Rigby told a parliamentary committee Thursday morning that he had read between 5,000 and 7,000 intelligence reports during his 18 months in the job.
“But we didn’t have a formal system to flag important bits of intelligence. What we had was ad hoc and it was inconsistent,” he told MPs studying allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian politics.
“I was concerned that important and actionable information was not being marked or acted upon appropriately.”
Rigby said that’s why after he left the public service, he helped write a report calling on the Canadian government to “wake up” and address what he called “systemic weaknesses in our national security system.”
“I was once part of that system and I accept my share of responsibility for those shortcomings. But my point is this – even before the current storm over foreign interference, informed commentators stated that our national security system was in danger,” he said. MPs Thursday.
“A highly politicized debate over one specific area of intelligence, however important, seemingly assigned to assigning individual blame, is not the solution.”
The Procedures Committee and the House Affairs Committee have been investigating an alleged Beijing plot to collect information on the family of Conservative MP Michael Chong in retaliation for his efforts to recognize the persecution of Uyghurs as genocide.
‘Don’t wait for the crisis to come’
The Prime Minister, the current National Security and Intelligence Adviser and other cabinet ministers have all said that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) never informed them of the Chong affair and that they only learned about it through reports in the Globe and Mail.
“I’m not surprised this intelligence hasn’t been brought to the political level,” Rigby said. “This is where the system is particularly weak.”
Rigby recommended that Canada follow the example of its Five Eye allies and create a Cabinet Committee on National Security. The prime minister should chair it and the committee should meet regularly, he said.
“Don’t wait for the crisis to happen,” he said.
“With Russia, with China, with pandemics, with climate change, all these things are national security concerns.”
