Minister of National Defence Bill Blair speaks with reporters as he arrives for a meeting of the federal cabinet in Ottawa, on Oct. 7.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

Bill Blair knows how to be a witness. The career cop and former Toronto police chief has even trained other officers on how to testify. He knows how to stick to facts and not let lawyers entice him into speculative testimony in areas where he doesn’t want to go.

And the place he didn’t want to go to when he testified at the foreign-interference inquiry on Friday was inside his own office.

That was the place where, in the spring of 2021, CSIS’ application for a warrant to conduct surveillance on an influential Toronto Liberal, Michael Chan, languished for seven weeks.

Why did it take so long? Mr. Blair does not know. But he’s not upset. Information on what happened in the minister’s office was available on a need-to-know basis, and Mr. Blair feels like he did not need to know.

At the time, Mr. Blair was the minister of public safety, and CSIS had sent up the warrant application to be approved by him before........

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