The Globe and Mail hints that Bill Blair, acting, on assumes on the orders of Prime Minister Trudeau's PMO, delayed the investigation of Toronto Liberal politician Michael Chan:
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CSIS agents frustrated by delay for electronic warrant against long-time Liberal politician
ROBERT FIFEOTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF
STEVEN CHASE SENIOR PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER
INCLUDES CORRECTION
PUBLISHED YESTERDAY UPDATED 5 HOURS AGO
It took at least six weeks for Bill Blair, then-public safety minister, to sign an electronic and entry warrant to monitor former Ontario cabinet minister Michael Chan in the lead-up to the 2021 federal election, according to documents tabled at the
foreign-interference inquiry.
Sworn testimony made public Friday suggests that the delay was eight weeks or more.
The public inquiry was looking into a report last year by The Globe and Mail that Mr. Blair took about four months to sign off on the surveillance of Mr. Chan, an influential Liberal Party powerbroker in the Greater Toronto Area.
The lag led to operational frustration from Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers, since it normally takes 10 days to get ministerial sign off.
A national-security source told The Globe then that the delay left little time for CSIS to get the final approval of a federal judge to plant bugs in Mr. Chan’s cars, home, office, computers and mobile phones before the 2021 campaign got under way.
The Globe did not identify the source because they risked prosecution under the Security of Information Act.
Mr. Blair has denied that his office delayed approving the warrant. He told the inquiry in April that he signed the Chan warrant some three hours after it landed on his desk.
Former CSIS director David Vigneault, who left the spy agency in July, and his former second-in-command Michelle Tessier, were interviewed by commission counsel this summer about the delay in authorizing the warrant. The transcripts of those discussions were tabled at the Hogue inquiry Friday.
Although the name of the target is not mentioned in the documents, Gib van Ert, a lawyer for Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong, told the inquiry Friday that Mr. Blair had agreed in earlier testimony that Mr. Chan, now deputy mayor of Markham, was the target of that warrant.
The inquiry heard Friday that the warrant sat in Mr. Blair’s office for 54 days from mid-March to May 11, 2021.
Ms. Tessier told the commission in the summer that “CSIS regional office, headquarters, the operational employees were very frustrated with what they perceived as a delay in obtaining the minister’s approval for the warrant.” She said there appeared to be no reason for the delay as Public Safety did not come back with questions about the warrant.
Ms. Tessier said CSIS provided a briefing on the warrant to Mr. Blair’s chief of staff, Zita Astravas, two weeks after the spy agency applied to the minister’s office for the electronic eavesdropping authority.
But she also testified that she had earlier given Ms. Astravas a head’s up that CSIS planned to submit a warrant on Mr. Chan.
Asked by Mr. van Ert when that notice took place, Ms. Tessier said: “I don’t recall if it was days or weeks.”
“How could it have been in his [Mr. Blair’s] office for all that time, with his chief of staff knowing about it, for 54 days and more – and not sharing that with him? Do you have any explanation?” Mr. van Ert asked Ms. Tessier. She replied: “I can’t explain that.”
Ms. Tessier testified that she wasn’t “under the impression that the warrant would be stalled” and that it was her interpretation of what Ms. Astravas was telling her “that the warrant was moving ahead.”
Ms. Astravas declined comment Friday, saying in an e-mail that “it would be unlawful for me to comment on, confirm or deny specific warrants or cases.”
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There's more but you get the idea. Blair denies it of course; says he signed the warrant as soon as it hit his desk. I suspect that is the literal truth. The 54 day delay was while it sat in his outer office.
This
suffered at the hands of imperialist 
