(Ottawa) The Commission on Foreign Interference rejects the Bloc Québécois’ request to extend the public hearings in light of certain testimony heard three weeks ago.
Judge Marie-Josée Hogue, who chairs this commission, therefore intends to submit a first report as planned on May 3. This report will focus on foreign interference activities allegedly carried out by China, India and Russia, among others, during the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.
Last week, the Bloc Québécois sent a letter to Judge Hogue urging her to extend the public hearings in the wake of the testimony of Justin Trudeau, his close collaborators and the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), David Vigneault. These testimonies raised numerous questions that needed to be examined, argued Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet and MP René Villemure in the missive.
“Today, it is clear that as the end of the work of the first stage approaches, the Commission is running out of time to fully carry out this aspect of its mandate. While we thought that the time allocated to the hearings would be sufficient, the observation is quite different: the testimonies raised questions and issues that we simply cannot leave in this state,” asserted the Bloc elected officials in the letter.
But Judge Hogue recalled that the decrees adopted by the cabinet to set up the commission do not give it the power to extend the deadlines that were set.
“The work of the Commission and its associated deadlines are dictated by the mandate of the Commission, which is set out in Executive Orders CP 2023-882 and CP 2023-1316. Consequently, the Commissioner does not have the power to extend these deadlines,” said Judge Hogue in her response to the Bloc Québécois.
“It is worth emphasizing that the issues to be considered during the first and second stages of the factual phase of the Commission’s work are, to some extent, interdependent. The work of the Commission is therefore far from finished,” she was careful to emphasize.
The Commission’s public hearings on interference activities by China and other states concluded two weeks ago.