Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rises during Question Period, in Ottawa, on June 19.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
From the start, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has displayed an alarming lack of urgency about revelations that foreign states meddled in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.
His government kept credible evidence of the meddling from the public, only commenting on it after The Globe and Mail reported on its existence in early 2023. He tried to calm the waters by launching an investigation that was compromised from the start, and only buckled to calls for a proper public inquiry after that fell apart.
And it wasn’t until last month, just weeks before the House rises for the summer, that the Liberals introduced legislation to criminalize and counter election interference – even though the Canadian Security Intelligence Service first warned them of the problem in 2019.
Given all that foot-dragging, it would be absurd for Mr. Trudeau to now try to claim the high ground in the fight against foreign interference.
And yet that is what he is doing in the wake of this month’s release of a heavily redacted report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians that says there are parliamentarians who are co-operating with foreign governments.
This week and last, Mr. Trudeau has been boasting that his government created NSICOP in 2017 over the objections of the Conservative opposition, suggesting that the Liberals care more about this stuff.
But the Conservatives objected to NSICOP because it is a parliamentary committee that answers only to the Prime Minister’s Office, with members and a chair chosen by Mr. Trudeau, and whose reports are vetted and redacted by the PMO prior to their release.
And while Mr. Trudeau boasts of creating the committee, NSICOP itself says in its latest annual report that his government has repeatedly ignored its recommendations on ways to prevent foreign meddling, and regularly withholds relevant information from it.
Those concerns take on a new dimension now that NSICOP’s unredacted report – first delivered to Mr. Trudeau in March – has identified parliamentarians that it says are collaborating with foreign actors.
Worse yet, Mr. Trudeau is now questioning the committee’s competence in assessing intelligence, even though he asked for the report, and said at the time that the committee was “well placed” to look into foreign election meddling.
The smoke screens don’t stop there. After NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh read the unredacted report and said it confirms “criminal activity” by some parliamentarians, but added he was relieved there were no members of his caucus to worry about, Mr. Trudeau responded that, “I would be wary of any party leader drawing any sort of conclusion like that.”
Mr. Trudeau has also criticized Pierre Poilievre for not reading the unredacted version of the report, suggesting that the Conservative leader would rather just not know.
But Mr. Poilievre says he won’t read the unredacted report because the conditions of the top-secret security clearance required to do so would handcuff what he as leader of the official opposition could say. Thomas Mulcair, the leader of the NDP when it was the official opposition from 2012 to 2015, said last week he would have taken the same position.
Mr. Poilievre is furthermore correct when he says that, if the government thinks someone in his caucus is a threat to Canada, CSIS agents are perfectly able to brief him on it.
Why is Mr. Trudeau suddenly attacking NSICOP? And why, too, does he feel it necessary to make sure that MPs in every party remain under a cloud of suspicion?
On Monday, Mr. Trudeau said he is glad that the foreign interference inquiry led by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue has now agreed to examine the allegations in the report. But that, too, is a dodge. The inquiry has no power to name names or make any classified information public on its own, or to come to a conclusion about criminal liability.
Only one person can legally reveal the names involved, and that is the Prime Minister. He has the power to make classified information public: he did it last year when he told Parliament that there was credible evidence that India was behind the assassination of Canadian citizen in Canada.
We’ll say it again: the government should blow away its smoke screens, name names in Parliament, let those facing allegations defend themselves there, and clear the air for Canadians.