Following the preliminary report by David Johnston, the special rapporteur on the controversy over foreign interference in Canadian elections, it is clear that the federal government’s response has been an infelicitous combination of amateurism and flimflam. As I wrote in this space on April 22, Johnston’s title of “special rapporteur” is a pretentious and misleading misnomer, the position is redundant and the prime minister’s motives in creating it and filling it as he has are suspect. And if such a role had to be confected, David Johnson is not the right person for it. Don Martin, the genial, perceptive and venerable CTV News contributor, may have gone slightly overboard when he said that Johnston’s “reputation is but a smouldering ruin.” But he is probably right that “the final chapter of (Johnston’s) report will be ripe for immediate shredding upon publication in many minds outside the inner Liberal circle … Johnston should step aside from this thankless task immediately.”
