The federal Minister of Public Safety, Dominic LeBlanc, still considers it unnecessary to say publicly whether current elected officials are accused of having lacked loyalty to Canada, even after the leader of the Green Party assured that this is not the case. case.
“I don’t think it’s particularly useful to say: ‘Is there a list, is there no list, who is on the list? was fifteen people, it was three people”. This is precisely the kind of detail [sur lesquels] we have to be very careful,” argued Mr. LeBlanc on Wednesday.
The minister had just answered questions from senators about his government’s response to foreign interference. In particular, he flatly refused to commit to requiring the Hogue Commission to reveal the names of parliamentarians suspected of having “knowingly helped” foreign state actors, under the pretext that the law does not give him this authority.
“You are trying to get me to do indirectly what I cannot do directly,” Dominic LeBlanc told the media who asked him to confirm the revelations of the leader of the fourth opposition in the Commons the day before.
After reading the unredacted version of the Committee of Parliamentarians on National Security, the leader of the Green Party of Canada, Elizabeth May, wanted to calm things down by assuring that there is in fact no list of elected officials currently sitting on the Federal Parliament who allegedly collaborated with hostile states.
Other Parliaments affected
This accusation rather concerns a former elected official, she said, while other names contained in the report would be those of provincial or municipal politicians, or even candidates in a leadership race. Less serious allegations would only affect a handful of current MPs.
The Conservative Party of Canada began the week accusing the Liberal government of keeping secret the identities of elected officials “doing the dirty work of hostile foreign regimes” but changed the subject to focus entirely on its criticism of earnings taxes in capital. The Bloc Québécois passed a motion on Tuesday asking to expand the mandate of the commission of inquiry into foreign interference so that it can investigate these parliamentarians whose names appear in the unredacted version of the report.
Liberal MP and lead author of the report in question, David McGuinty, insisted Wednesday that he really can’t say more than what’s in the report. Not only did he make this commitment, but revealing the contents of the secret report could compromise the country’s intelligence sources.
“There is no reference in the report to a list of traitors in Parliament! Go look for the words that are there, that are deliberate, that have been well placed, well written,” Mr. McGuinty still dropped, pressed for questions in his capacity as chairman of the committee of parliamentarians on national security and the information.
Singh also delivers the report
The credibility of Elizabeth May’s remarks will be put to the test Thursday, after the confidential version of the report passes into the hands of a second opposition party leader in Ottawa. Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP), promises to “share whatever[il] can” about the report.
“ [Il ne faut] not ignore the true reality of people who live here in Canada, who face interference in their lives, who are threatened by foreign governments, who fear for their families. This is the lens with which I will look at the documents and share what I have learned,” Mr. Singh pledged. He is scheduled to speak to the media again Thursday afternoon.
The leader of the Bloc Québécois, for his part, is in the process of obtaining the security clearance necessary to read the unredacted report. Elizabeth May and Jagmeet Singh already have this accreditation, as do Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or his Minister of Public Safety, Dominic LeBlanc.
The leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre, is being urged by his political opponents to also pass sufficient security checks to read confidential information from the security services, something he has still not committed to doing.