Former Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Public Security Denies Approval for Delaying an Espionage Warrant – National

OTTAWA — A former chief of staff to a Liberal public safety minister has denied suggestions that she worked to delay the approval of a spy agency order in early 2021 because it directly affected the Trudeau government’s activities.

Zita Astravas called the accusation “categorically false” during testimony late Wednesday during a federal investigation into foreign interference.

The investigation found that it took 54 days for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s warrant application to be approved by Bill Blair, then the minister of public safety.

The average turnaround time for such applications is four to ten days.

Michelle Tessier, CSIS’s deputy director of operations during the period, told the inquiry there was frustration over the delay.

A timeline filed with the investigation says Astravas attended a briefing on the warrant application 13 days after CSIS sent it to Public Safety.

Astravas told the committee during a closed-door hearing over the summer that the questions she asked during the briefing were typical of the questions she would ask about such an application.

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A newly released summary of that testimony shows that she recalled a separate conversation about the accompanying Vanweenen list — a list of individuals who may be in contact with the target of the order and therefore could be affected.

Federal officials have cited national security concerns in refusing to publicly discuss who CSIS hoped to monitor through the warrant.

Gib van Ert, a lawyer for Conservative MP Michael Chong, suggested to Astravas on Wednesday that after seeing “how deeply this order would involve CSIS in the affairs of your party and your government, you did not want it to go through. and if it had to continue, you wanted to do it slowly.

Astravas responded that she could not provide details about the order, “but I can tell you that your assumptions are categorically incorrect.”

Blair, now defense minister, will testify before the inquiry committee on Friday.

He has already told the inquiry behind closed doors that he first became aware of the warrant application on the date he remembers signing it.

“He was unaware that his office had received it before that date,” reads a summary of Blair’s evidence. “He was not aware of the date his office received it and no one showed him the earlier dates on the documents.”

The summary says that on the date he signed the order, he became aware that there had been some discussion and questions raised by his office with the director of CSIS and the deputy minister of public safety. “However, he did not know how long it had been at his office.”

Astravas testified Wednesday that CSIS Director David Vigneault would mark matters of priority and “we would work with the director and his team” to put an item on the minister’s agenda.

During this period there were a number of contacts involving the CSIS director, the minister and the deputy minister, she said.

“At no time was (the order) filed urgently.”

The investigative committee’s latest hearings will look at federal agencies’ ability to identify and counter foreign interference. A final report is expected at the end of this year.

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