“Canada’s China Class”

David Johnston’s position is barely tenable. Can his investigation be salvaged?

As always, multiple things can be true at the same time.

David Johnston can be both a flawed choice to investigate the government’s response to intelligence on foreign interference — and the target of unfair treatment since taking on that task. The prime minister could have been better off asking someone else to be special rapporteur — and Johnston’s reception from his critics may have diminished the number of people willing and able to do the job.

Multiple things can be true simultaneously but this isn’t one of them.

Junior and Special Crony are closer than they are pretending to be, proven by their own statements.

Johnson is a sinophile of the first order with a vested interest in minimizing his own activity as a member of the China Class.

Nothing else explains his report’s exclusion of O’Toole’s evidence.

A July 2021 CSIS assessment warning Beijing was targeting a Conservative MP and his relatives in China was sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national-security adviser at the time, as well as three deputy ministers, but it’s unclear if anyone read the top-secret document, MPs heard Thursday.

National security adviser Jody Thomas, who was deputy minister of National Defence in 2021, was adamant that Mr. Trudeau was unaware of the threat to the MP, who turned out to be Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong, until The Globe and Mail revealed he was a target on May 1. The Globe report cited the Canadian Security Intelligence Service assessment and a national-security source.

“On vacation” is maybe one step above “the dog ate my homework.”

h/t Mauser

OTTAWA — Barely one in four Canadians have faith in former governor general David Johnston’s credibility and impartiality as special rapporteur on foreign interference, a new poll by Léger for National Post shows, while nearly half are unimpressed with the Liberal government’s general handling of the foreign interference issue.

For those who have been involved in politics, there is a handy “rulebook” – “how to defuse a political crisis 101.”

Too bad the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has not read it.

That is the only conclusion one can come to after watching the release of the report from former Governor General David Johnston on Chinese interference in Canada’s democracy.

Former Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole says the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) found an “active campaign of voter suppression” by China against him and his party in the 2021 election.

O’Toole made the comments Tuesday from the floor of the House of Commons, within which MPs are protected by parliamentary privilege from civil or criminal prosecution under freedom of speech provisions. His speech comes after a briefing with CSIS last week.