A week ago, Canadians were informed that our National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians had released a heavily redacted document that apparently alleged some of our members of parliament have been actively helping foreign governments like India and China to meddle in our politics.
Now, this particular can has been kicked around back and forth for the last... year? If my memory serves?
We initially had accusations stir up a bit of a storm and to alleviate that we created a special commission headed by Marie-Josée Hogue to look into these allegations. That was done in September of 2023 (Source).
In May, she came back with findings and reported that in the case of the allegations of Liberal party members willfully turning a blind eye to Chinese interference because it aided the party, she had found:
"In my opinion, the evidence I have heard to date does not demonstrate bad faith on anyone's part, or that information was deliberately and improperly withheld," Hogue says at page 150.
In assessing the impact of foreign interference during the 2019 and 2021 elections, Hogue states clearly and unequivocally that she does not believe any meddling undermined the integrity of the electoral system or affected which party formed government. It could have affected the result in a specific riding, she says, although she also concedes that she cannot say so with certainty.
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/hogue-inquiry-foreign-interference-china-1.7193727
And then, a week ago we suddenly got new information from NSICOP saying that:
Last week, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), a cross-party committee of MPs and senators with top security clearances, released a heavily redacted document alleging some parliamentarians have actively helped foreign governments like China and India meddle in Canadian politics.
Which is... interesting. Two different Commissions with two different results, which either means someone didn't do their job correctly, or someone had more/less scope to look at and that affected the results.
Either way, it leaves us in an interesting place.
Canadians are, rightly so, calling for the names of MPs who are implicated in actively assisting foreign agents - or as most people call it: Treason.
Now, of course, everyone has shut that idea down hard. We can't have the names of alleged MPs, because that would violate the Security of Information Act.
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nsicop-opposition-motion-hogue-foreign-interference-1.7230292
So, instead, the Government has decided that what we should do is pass this information back to Hogue, and have her Commission investigate it. Which, feels a little foolish to me. Didn't she already have all this information when she was supposed to initially investigate the claims of foreign interference?
Why are we giving this back to her, when she clearly was incapable of finding these issues out the first time? And, what happens if this time around she finds that the NSICOP findings are correct? Are the names of those MPs released then?
Answer: Probably not.
Text reads:
"The step still again falls on the party leaders — all the party leaders — to come up with some mechanism by which they can all agree how to proceed, they can look at the evidence and come up with some set of criteria that they will apply to their own parties so Canadians can have confidence in how the House of Commons is managing this."
Which is just great. Lovely. Awesome.
Because I'm sure that what we can totally count on is a powerful organization policing itself.
It works so well with police forces around the world, why not also just trust that our government will take that information and actually do something with it to ensure this won't happen again? I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong with that idea.
With all of that said, it is relevant that Hogue's final report isn't actually due until December. So I guess in some ways, it makes sense to kick this all back to her and see what shakes out when everything is done.
Concerningly, LeBlanc, our Liberal MP of Internal Affairs (among other titles) has said that the government is willing to work with the commission if asked and would even be willing to extend the deadlines for this final report.
Our former Canadian Security Intelligence Service director has stated that he's opposed to this idea, given that she's already been given an unreasonable timeframe to begin with.
Now, that's from former director, so it holds little actual weight... but it does I think reflect what the majority of Canadians are thinking. Any extension to this will float into an Election year, where the government could very well be changing hands anyhow and would then make it 'someone else's problem'.
Whatever happens, it's going to be a lot of news-worthy chatter and I'm willing to bet almost zero actual consequences. It'll gain a lot of press but nothing will change because we're allowing the people committing crimes to make their own rules.