Trudeau the Magnificent offers foreign-interference inquiry a master class in redirecting attention

Open this photo in gallery:

The big message of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s testimony this week before the foreign-interference commission was – as it so often is – an elaborate political version of, “It’s not me, it’s you.”

In his telling, information flowed in and out of the Prime Minister’s Office as it was supposed to, and anything that didn’t float up to his eye level mustn’t have met the triage test. His government had been pro-active – not reactive, and definitely not inactive – in combatting malign foreign states who wanted to stick their fingers in the eyes of Canadian democracy, he argued.

And if unresolved – or even unseen – problems with foreign meddling seemed like something worth worrying about, Mr. Trudeau said that was largely because of bad information, misunderstanding or people getting a bit too hyper about things.

But over and over, Mr. Trudeau kept circling back to one underlying theme that drove much of what he was explaining: what we pay attention to and why, and what the effect of that is.

Shantona Chaudhury, lead counsel for the inquiry, brought up a 2023 CSIS document called a “targeting paper” that discussed China’s influence operations in Canada. Mr. Trudeau nodded knowingly as she described it, though it had not found its way to his desk. The lawyer asked whether he thought the report, which he had since read, should have come to his attention earlier.

Mr. Trudeau said he thought the document had generated so much chatter because “the phrase ‘targeting paper’ by China is fairly alarming.”

He played down the significance of the findings, saying it was obvious to him that China classified people as positive, neutral or antagonistic. He likened this to Canadian officials drawing up lists of more or less helpful U.S. politicians when renegotiating NAFTA under the Trump administration.

Here, Mr. Trudeau was arguing that foreboding language had caused everyone to pay too much attention to something that was not a big deal.

At another point, Ms. Chaudhury turned to threats to Conservative MP Michael Chong, an outspoken critic of Beijing, and asked Mr. Trudeau when he first heard about them.

“I learned about them in the media after a criminal leaked that classified information,” he said.

After The Globe reported that information and it caused a massive public furor, Mr. Trudeau instructed Marco Mendicino, then minister of public safety, to issue a directive requiring that any foreign-interference threats against parliamentarians be reported directly to the minister. Ms. Chaudhury asked Mr. Trudeau how he viewed that policy.

With wide-eyed earnestness, Mr. Trudeau said he had “little doubt” that if there had been “direct threats” to Mr. Chong, the information would have been flagged up the chain, regardless.

“But in the messiness of having a criminal leak erroneous information to the media, and the attention and worries that ensued, I asked Minister Mendicino to put out a clear directive,” the Prime Minister said.

He added, in a tone of confessional candour, that he doubted whether it had been needed, “but in the moment and to show Canadians how seriously we were taking this,” it made sense.

So here, the Prime Minister was arguing that there was no threat serious enough to require a warning, or else the warning would have arrived. But since everyone got anxious, it was prudent for his government to be seen doing something, just so people could see them doing it.

Toward the end of his morning testimony, the Prime Minister recalled a moment in which he had been made aware of “explosive” allegations “into a particular political party.” Here he spoke haltingly, then finally emitted a little puff of air and offered a self-deprecating grin.

“I have to be really careful about what I say here,” Mr. Trudeau said. “Because this is all very, very sensitive, and even talking about which party these allegations are aimed at is something I’m trying to avoid doing.”

He forged on, talking about how he is privy to vast amounts of sensitive information, but “I don’t act on that stuff, because I don’t believe in using national-security information for partisan purposes, nor should any prime minister.”

Just 60 seconds later, Mr. Trudeau took a long pause and heaved a deep breath, as though weighing a big decision – or perhaps, as though wanting to offer the impression of doing so.

“Because I am Prime Minister and privy to all these informations, I have the names of a number of parliamentarians, former parliamentarians, and/or candidates in the Conservative Party of Canada who are engaged, or at high risk of, or for whom there is clear intelligence around foreign interference,” he said, slowly and deliberately.

With no prompting from the commission lawyer, Mr. Trudeau went on, talking about how Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was willfully blinding himself and denting the integrity of his own party and how his refusal to take a top-secret briefing was “bewildering to me and entirely lacks common sense.”

Then Mr. Trudeau again paused for a little snort of self-deprecation.

“I’m getting a little more partisan than I tried to in this case,” he said.

At the back of the room where the journalists and members of the public sit, several people emitted little snorts of their own; they sounded like the laughing-at, not laughing-with, variety.

“But it is so egregious to me,” Mr. Trudeau went on. “That the leader of the official opposition, who is certainly trying very hard to become prime minister, is choosing to play partisan games with foreign interference.”

His testimony under cross-examination went on for a couple more hours. But virtually all of the news coverage revolved around unspecified Conservatives implicated, somehow, in foreign-interference schemes.

The man spent an entire day talking about why people pay attention to certain things and not others, and how ginned-up urgency can force a certain reaction to a situation.

And then, like a cruise ship magician, Mr. Trudeau lobbed a smoke bomb into the middle of the room and showed himself off the stage.

We can’t say he didn’t warn us.