CSIS Warned About Him for Two Decades. Then a Clean Energy Scientist Allegedly Copied Thousands of Files for Beijing on the Eve of Retirement
An Ontario judge — who once defended Canada's most notorious accused spy — has ordered CSIS and the PCO to disclose sensitive records in the trial of Dennis Lu.
OTTAWA – A senior Natural Resources Canada scientist who court records say collaborated with Chinese counterparts on government energy research has been charged with breach of trust and unauthorized use of federal computers, as an Ontario Superior Court judge has ordered Canada’s national security agencies — including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Privy Council Office — to disclose volumes of sensitive records in a high-profile foreign interference prosecution now heading to trial in Ottawa.
The case has been confirmed by The Bureau through a May 25 court ruling, and was first reported Monday by CBC News, which cited courthouse records containing explosive allegations: that CSIS briefed Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) about Dennis Lu no fewer than three times between 2000 and 2021, and that the department finally launched a covert internal investigation to monitor and search his computer.
NRCan cut Lu’s access to its email and servers in June 2023 — after he had traveled to China and, while there, allegedly sent nearly 2,000 emails from his work account to his personal account. When Lu returned to Canada and asked why his access was blocked, a manager ordered it reinstated so his retirement could be processed. Weeks later, Lu allegedly copied more than 2,600 documents from a departmental shared server.
Those circumstances now form a central part of Lu’s defense, CBC reported. His lawyers, Reem Zaia and Michael Nesbitt, have accused Natural Resources Canada of operating as an extension of law enforcement — an agent of the state acting for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police from the moment its surveillance of Lu began — and have argued that Lu, as an employee, was owed an expectation of privacy in his workplace.
The prosecution, focusing on the future of clean-energy technology, lands in the midst of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s sweeping engagement with China, in which both nations have pledged that Canada will become a major exporter of energy to the Chinese market. In January, Carney traveled to Beijing for the first prime ministerial visit since 2017, and his Energy and Natural Resources Minister, Tim Hodgson, signed a memorandum of understanding committing both countries to talks on oil and gas resource development and liquefied natural gas. Carney declared that by 2030 Canada will produce 50 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas each year, all destined for Asian markets, and Ottawa has set a goal of increasing exports to China by 50 percent by 2030, with Carney and President Xi Jinping discussing two-way investment in clean energy and technology.
Lu, 65, researched clean energy for decades at Natural Resources Canada’s Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology, specializing in carbon capture and decarbonization, and was fired during the week of his scheduled retirement in August 2023.
He is charged with two counts of unauthorized use of a computer and one count of breach of trust. The allegations are unproven. The alleged breach spans from the day Lu began a leave of absence to travel to Taiwan and China in 2023 to his arrest in 2024, shortly after he returned to Ottawa from a year living in China following his departure from the department.
