Former public safety minister Bill Blair says he did not consider partisan politics when it came time to approve a spy service warrant to surveil an Ontario Liberal powerbroker.
There was a 54-day gap in 2021 from when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) submitted an application for the warrant to when Blair eventually authorized it. During that time, CSIS agents grew frustrated with what they perceived as a delay by the minister’s office in the investigation into Michael Chan, a former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister.
Over multiple days of testimony at the foreign interference inquiry — including Blair, his former chief of staff, Zita Astravas, and high-ranking CSIS officials — it is still not clear why this warrant took significantly longer than most CSIS requests to the minister.
But Blair, now the defence minister, testified Friday morning that politics was not behind the delay in approving the surveillance, which was eventually approved just months before the 2021 federal election.
“When this warrant application was put before me, I never considered anything else other than my statutory responsibility to review and if appropriate approve the warrant,” Blair, who said he signed off on the warrant the same day he was given it, told the commission.
“There was no other consideration and certainly no political considerations.”
Three weeks after Blair signed off on the warrant, a Federal Court judge approved CSIS’s request to investigate Chan.
Media reports identified Chan as being under suspicion of working with the Chinese government going back as far as 2015, when Astravas worked in Premier Kathleen Wynne’s office as director of media relations and Chan was a sitting cabinet minister.
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“Michael Chan is a man of sterling character who has served the people of Markham-Unionville, and all Ontarians, honourably,” Astravas told the Globe and Mail, which first reported CSIS interest in Chan, in June 2015.
Chan, now the deputy mayor of Markham, is currently suing CSIS and two reporters, including a former Global News employee, over leaks and news articles.
The delay with this particular warrant has…
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