CSIS officially directed to alert MPs of foreign threats, Chong says more needed

Conservative MP Michael Chong was invited to testify before the House affairs committee, of which he is usually a member, on Tuesday evening.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino has formally directed Canada’s spy agency to investigate and disclose any foreign threats against parliamentarians, their families, their staff members or Parliament itself, as the MP who was targeted by a Chinese diplomat urged his colleagues to go even further.

Conservative MP Michael Chong was invited to testify before the House affairs committee, of which he is usually a member, on Tuesday evening.

He recommended his fellow MPs obtain documents and records related to his case to better understand the “systemic failure” that led to him learning about threats against his family through the media nearly two years after they were being tracked by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Chong said he was briefed this month on the contents of the 2021 CSIS intelligence assessment that alleges Zhao Wei, a Chinese diplomat in Toronto, was collecting information about his family members in Hong Kong in order to sanction them.

But he said he first learned about it when it was reported in the Globe and Mail on May 1.

“Clearly Mr. Zhao and representatives of the (People’s Republic of China) in Canada have been coercively and corruptly targeting MPs on both sides of the aisle, to put pressure on MPs with respect to foreign policy,” Chong said.

He declined to give details about the specific threats he has faced, telling the committee he did not think they would be useful.

Zhao was declared persona non grata by the Foreign Affairs Department last week.