… The minister of national defence, Harjit Sajjan, told the House of Commons on July 22, 2020, under questioning from the Conservatives, that the government had made decisions in response to COVID-19 “based on sound intelligence to make sure Canadians are safe.” In a brief exchange on that day, he repeated the assertion no less than four times, while declining to divulge any specifics about the intelligence reports.
It is now clear, thanks to a long-delayed release of records under the Access to Information Act, that the minister’s confident assertion about the quality of intelligence was incorrect.
