I’ve just begun the work of devouring Foreign Interference Commissioner Madame Justice Marie-Josée Hogue’s seven-volume, 858-page
mordvåben of a report, released this morning in Ottawa. Everybody will be spinning this to one purpose or another, and my own guess so far is that the report won’t contain much of substance that hasn’t come to light already, although “political implications” should be expected.
My colleagues in the journalism racket seem to be settling on versions of this line:
No 'traitors' in Parliament, foreign interference inquiry finds. That’s about as low a bar as it gets: ‘Hey, at least they’re not traitors,’ and strictly speaking, that’s a fair opinion.
Having followed the “foreign interference” file as closely as any journalist in this country and for longer than almost everyone else, I can barely bring myself to find this particular conclusion newsworthy, even. There are reasons.
As I noted last June in the National Post, in
Trudeau's Chinese collaboration has been in broad daylight all along: The treason provisions in the Criminal Code are antiquated and barely enforceable, and in any case, treason by way of collaboration in foreign interference operations requires that the conduct be clandestine.
The thing is, Justin Trudeau’s postnational Liberals never saw anything untoward about open collaborations with Beijing’s United Front Work Department operatives in this country. And so Trudeau and his ministers have tried to make a secret of it (
to the point of perjury) only when their conduct attracts unfavorable attention.
Besides:
It isn't 'foreign interference' if the culprits are willing MPs. As for the “Traitors on Parliament Hill” scenario, see this edition of the Real Story newsletter:
NSICOP: Enemies On Parliament Hill; You want names? You've come to the right place.
I’ll have more on Hogue’s findings later. I’ll also be speaking on
this panel next Monday - Transnational Repression in Canada: Digital Threats from the Indo-Pacific. The event is sponsored by the Asia Pacific Foundation and the Montreal Institute for Global Security. I’ll be joined by former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh,
Joanna Chiu and local hero and Port Coquitlam mayor Brad West. Moderated by the APF’s tremendous Vina Nadjibullah.
