Against all odds, Special Rapporteur David Johnston defies the near-consensus in favor of a public inquiry into foreign interference in the Canadian electoral process and instead asks the public to take his word for it: no, such an inquiry would not not to draw more material than he himself was able to harvest. Circulate! There is nothing to see !
Since the revelations of recent months by Global News and the Globe and Mail, the foreign interference file got bogged down in a partisan contest which, it must be admitted, eliminated the objective gaze of many observers and key players in this fight, who will continue to demand an investigation public outcry, regardless of the quality of analysis provided by former Governor General David Johnston. Without attacking either the rigor of his work or his intellectual probity, which some grant him from the outset, we can nevertheless maintain that Mr. Johnston’s report will not be sufficient to achieve the objective he had set himself. , or restoring public confidence in government institutions.
There are at least two important reasons for calling for a public inquiry, or at least some other independent review. The first one ? That there is such a thing in the political space as the appearance of conflict of interest, just as momentous as the conflict of interest itself. Mr. Johnston’s closeness to Mr. Trudeau, as well as his time at the Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau Foundation, immediately disqualified him as the grand emissary of an operation to restore public confidence in the Trudeau government, and he He just wasn’t, and still isn’t, the man for the job, no matter what his approach was. The second ? That the content of his report itself encourages an independent fact-finding exercise, for Mr. Johnston not only concludes that foreign interference in the Canadian electoral process is a serious and growing threat, but he adds that all system of transmission and communication of intelligence to ministries and politicians is chaotic and has serious shortcomings.
Many observers, and not the least, believe in the relevance of a public inquiry even if the special rapporteur, after having plunged directly into the intricacies of secret intelligence, considers that this exercise would be futile: too long, too costly, too limited in its “public” portion, because a commissioner would come up against the same confidentiality-related limitations as him. This is to conclude a little hastily that in other times, major commissions of inquiry, admittedly sometimes long, and admittedly sometimes very costly, have had recourse to in camera sessions without this tarnishing either the process or its conclusions. Instead, Mr. Johnston proposes to continue his exercise by holding public hearings and he suggests that his independence and the probity of his conclusions be validated by third parties. Whatever the outcome of this long saga, it must have a sequel that will not be led by Mr. Johnston.
What will be next, exactly? The partisan blindness in which the opposition, and more particularly the conservatives of Pierre Poilievre, got bogged down does not bode well for a peaceful final. But if the objective is to restore public confidence, the opposition groups also bear a share of the responsibility and must do everything to ensure that the debates on this crucial question contain the elevation that the subject requires. David Johnston’s apparent lack of independence does not destroy all of his conclusions, and there is nothing to suggest any “complicity” of Prime Minister Trudeau in Beijing’s interference.
“Democracy is based on trust. These are the first words of David Johnston’s report, but they could just as well constitute its conclusion, or an invitation to do everything so that what follows can restore this confidence. The exercise conducted so far is obviously not sufficient to convince us of this.