David Johnston, Independent Special Rapporteur on Foreign Interference, appears as a witness at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 6.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
There wasn’t much chance going in that David Johnston was going to win over MPs reviewing his report on foreign interference. And when he left, he hadn’t provided much reassurance for Canadians that he got to the bottom of things.
The government’s special rapporteur on foreign interference had to expect that his appearance at a Commons committee would bring more questions about his impartiality, and those of his staff. And it did.
But there was also a new kind of grilling about the contents of Mr. Johnston’s report, and how he put together his findings.
The answers certainly didn’t assure the country that his was the last word on Chinese foreign interference and the government’s response – the matters he referred to in his report as “who knew what, when, and what was done with it.”
That’s a problem, because Mr. Johnston argues his report should be the last word on those things. He recommended against calling a public inquiry precisely because, in his view, it could shed no more light, at least not in public. Instead, he will move on to public hearings into the broad policy and process questions about improving the system.
Yet Mr. Johnston’s answers left the impression that on some important cases, he didn’t have all the information that is available now. He wasn’t particularly clear about whether he’d asked the pertinent questions.
There was a section in Mr. Johnston’s May 23 report on how an e-mail about Beijing’s attempts to target an MP – Conservative Michael Chong – was never read by then-public safety minister Bill Blair, nor his chief of staff, because neither had access to a top-secret network.
But the Prime Minister’s national-security and intelligence adviser, Jody Thomas, testified the minister would have been given such intelligence in a reading package and Mr. Blair said the director of CSIS decided it was not information he needed.
Which is it? Mr. Johnston didn’t seem to know. He didn’t seem to think those details matter. The important thing, he said, is that the minister did not receive the information.
Certainly, it left the impression that the who-knew-what-when and what-was-done-with-it questions were not pursued zealously.
Last week, former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole told the Commons that CSIS had informed him that he and his party were targets of a Beijing-orchestrated campaign, but Mr. Johnston had reported there was no evidence misinformation campaigns were state-sponsored. Which is it?
Mr. Johnston told the committee that he worked with the information he had at the time – which makes you wonder about the shelf life of the report he delivered two weeks ago.
There were a few more examples, and strangely uninformative answers when New Democrat MP Jenny Kwan asked what kind of questions he posed to get specifics.
Perhaps it is too much to expect that Mr. Johnston have all the details at his command. And Mr. Johnston testified that there was an “ocean” of information about foreign interference, and he only had weeks, so he can’t be sure he saw every piece of information he should have.
If only there was a way to have a more extensive review – you know, like an inquiry.
In the end, Mr. Johnston’s testimony seemed to confuse rather than shed light, or at least, it cast doubt on how much light has been shed.
And that’s all while opposition MPs were already insisting he cannot possibly be the person to provide transparency and restore public trust. Those questions aren’t going away. They are just going around in circles.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Conservative MP Larry Brock conducted an over-the-top interrogation about Mr. Johnston’s personal ties to Mr. Trudeau while Liberal MPs attacked the Tories for attacking Mr. Johnston.
Somehow, Mr. Johnston just doesn’t see how those ties, including his friendship with Mr. Trudeau’s father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and the ski outings their kids did together, could be perceived by anyone as chummy, or bias. He didn’t bother to ask his lead counsel, Sheila Block, about her thousands of dollars in donations to Liberals, and doesn’t see why anyone would think it’s a problem.
That hardly seems worth debating anymore. The House of Commons formally declared their lack of confidence. Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals are digging in to defend him. And the substance of Mr. Johnston’s report seems less sure now. After Tuesday’s testimony, it’s harder to accept it as the last word.