MPs are questioning why Canadian security officials did not inform them that they were the target of hackers with ties to Beijing after learning from the FBI that the international parliamentary alliance of which they are a member was in the crosshairs of the Chinese cyberattack in 2021 was standing .
On Monday, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis opened the House of Commons session by raising a question of privilege and raising alarm over what he said was an “unacceptable” failure by the Canadian government to inform parliamentarians that a foreign government was targeting them had taken.
Genuis said that last week, as first reported by The Globe and Mail, he and John MacKay, one of the Liberal Party's Canadian co-chairs of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), “disclosed a cyberattack against us and 16 other Canadians.” Parliamentarians were informed in 2021.”
IPAC is an international, bipartisan group of lawmakers “working to reform how democratic countries approach China.” Comprised of politicians from various political parties, it has become, as Genuis put it, “a unique target” of the Chinese Communist Party.
According to Genuis, IPAC learned of the “coordinated attack” on the email accounts of IPAC-affiliated lawmakers in March through an unsealed indictment from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The indictment alleges that the People's Republic of China state-backed hacking group nicknamed “Advanced Persistent Threat 31” or “APT31” sent “malicious tracking link emails to government officials around the world criticizing the government of the People's Republic of China.”
Based on IPAC's follow-up investigation, Genuis said they were told that US intelligence officials at the FBI were blocked from informing lawmakers of other countries about the attacks, but in 2022 made requests for distribution abroad to any government with affected political figures had.
“Due to the progressive nature of the attack, it would have been particularly important for us to be informed. We could have worked with the relevant authorities to take measures to protect ourselves and ensure the security and functionality of our parliamentary and personal email accounts.” Genuis said. “But we couldn't because we didn't were informed.”
Although not all of the targeted Canadian parliamentarians have agreed to be named, Genuis said other IPAC colleagues targeted included Conservative MPs James Bezan, Stephanie Kusie and Tom Kmiec, Liberal MP Judy Sgro and independent Senator Marilou McPhedran .
Sgro thanked her colleague for raising the “very important issue” and rose after Genuis, saying she agreed that the failure to notify was a “very serious breach” of MPs' privileges.
Sgro expressed dismay that Canada continues to be “so naive” and said that parliamentarians, as the voices of Canadians, when speaking about China or other countries, “must be able to speak with the necessary protection, and “Don’t have to worry about being intimidated or hacked.”
“I would expect our government to ensure that we have the necessary information to protect ourselves and ensure that our systems are protected,” Sgro said. “I think it’s very important that we get answers here about why we weren’t notified, what happens next and how we can better protect ourselves in the future.”
Genuis is calling for the matter to be referred to a House committee for further investigation.
The federal New Democrats have signaled they plan to talk about the issue in more detail later.
“The government takes foreign interference very seriously,” said Kevin Lamoureux, parliamentary secretary to the leader in the House of Representatives, briefly noting during the debate that it was the first time he had heard of the situation.
House of Commons Speaker Greg Fergus, who is tasked with deciding whether this matter breaches MPs' rights and protections and what next steps should be, has pledged to contact MPs “without delay”.
This is not the first example of Canadian parliamentarians belatedly learning that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government failed to inform them that they were being targeted by China, a country at the center of an ongoing national investigation into foreign interference in past federal elections.
CTV News has reached out to CSIS, the RCMP and the office of Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc for comment.