Blair’s ex-chief of staff to testify at foreign interference inquiry

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OTTAWA — The foreign interference inquiry issued a last-minute call for former Public Safety Minister Bill Blair’s chief of staff after CSIS executives revealed agents were “very frustrated” that Blair’s office took at least six weeks to sign a warrant to monitor an influential Liberal powerbroker.

Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference (PIFI) staff sent a note to parties Sunday evening advising that it intended to call Zita Astravas to testify as part of ongoing public hearings. Wednesday, Astravas was quietly added to the inquiry’s list of witnesses to testify in coming weeks.

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Astravas was a long-time senior Liberal political staffer who was Blair’s chief of staff when he was public safety minister. Before joining the federal Liberals, she worked as a staffer for the Ontario Liberals under former premier Kathleen Wynne. She joined lobbying group Wellington Advocacy last year.

The call for Astravas to testify two weeks into ongoing PIFI public hearings came days after current and former top Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) officials said agents had been “very frustrated” by weeks of delays to get Blair to authorize an electronic and entry warrant back in 2021.

What was exceptional about the warrant is that it targeted influential Liberal powerbroker and former Ontario minister Michael Chan, who has long been suspected by CSIS of ties with Chinese consulate members in Toronto.

Chan, currently the deputy mayor of Markham, has always denied assertions and suspicions by the spy agency.

The warrant was sought “to enable the Service to investigate a threat to the security of Canada,” CSIS Deputy Director Nicoles Giles said at PIFI on Friday in response to a question by Michael Chong’s lawyer, Gib van Ert.

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But testimony at the inquiry revealed that the warrant was with Blair’s office for at least 54 days before he was made aware of it and signed it, and that Astravas was warned it was coming shortly before that. CSIS said that ministerial approval for such warrants usually takes around 10 days.

In April and again in a statement Wednesday, Blair said that he had signed the warrant authorization within three hours of it being put in front of him on May 11, 2021.

The revelations of the delay between CSIS bringing the application to Blair’s office and his approval raises serious questions as to why he wasn’t made aware earlier and whether the delay had consequences on CSIS’s probe into Chan.

“How could (the warrant) have been in (Blair’s) office all that time, with his chief of staff knowing about it for 54 days and more, and not sharing that with him?” van Ert asked a panel of current and former senior CSIS officials Friday.

Former CSIS deputy director of operations Michelle Tessie responded that she could not explain that.

But the delay in getting Blair’s authorization for the warrant against Chan was a source of frustration for CSIS agents, Tessier told the inquiry privately this summer.

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“Ms. Tessier stated that the CSIS regional office, headquarters, the operational employees were very frustrated with what they perceived as a delay in obtaining the Minister’s approval for this warrant,” reads a summary of interviews conducted by PIFI with senior CSIS officials in July and August.

Tessier told the inquiry that she too was “frustrated” by the delay, but not “alarmed” because she was not under the impression that Astravas “wanted to sit on the warrant or delay the application.”

The interview summaries also say former CSIS director David Vigneault did not recall being concerned about the delays, nor did he raise concerns about them.

Astravas did not respond to a request for comment or confirmation that she would testify at PIFI.

Blair, now the defence minister, said in a statement Tuesday that he wasn’t aware in 2021 that the warrant had been with his office for weeks before it was put to him on May 11. He reiterated that he signed it within three hours of it being put in front of him at a CSIS office in Toronto.

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“I was not advised by my Chief of Staff of a pending warrant application until it was presented for my signature,” Blair said in a statement provided by his office and first reported by Global News.

“While it was appropriate for my staff and CSIS to ensure submissions were correct and complete before it was brought to me, my expectation was and always had been that warrant applications be dealt with properly and promptly,” he added.

National Post
cnardi@postmedia.com

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