The refusal of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to release unredacted documents requested by the inquiry investigating foreign meddling in Canadian elections and democracy is part of a disturbing pattern of retaining an unjustified level of secrecy in these matters, since some of the proportions of Chinese interventions in Canadian elections came to light last year.
As if in a perfect counterbalance of the irrational
haste with which the prime minister startled Parliament and the country by
accusing the government of India of prompting the assassination of a Canadian
citizen, he has conducted a prolonged foot-dragging and dissembling operation
in respect of the role of the People’s Republic of China in certain recent
Canadian elections.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/conrad-black-feds-should-quit-stalling-and-release-all-secret-docs-to-foreign-interference-inquiry-5661981?utm_source=ref_share&src_src=ref_share&utm_campaign=op-cc&src_cmp=op-cc
Obviously, there is an argument for confining the
most sensitive of these intergovernmental abrasions to the discretion of
diplomacy, at least up to the point where it is necessary in the national
interest to inform and arouse public opinion about the unsatisfactory state of
affairs that may have developed. However, there is no excuse that has been made
public up to now for the prime minister’s outburst against
the government of India.
The whole question of Canada’s relationship with
the Sikhs is very complicated and not easily understood by those who are not
knowledgeable of the intricacies of the question. The Sikh separatist element
is very much a minority of the Sikh community in India, but is much more widely
embraced in the Sikh community of Canada.
There is no equivalence of community of interest or
political compatibility between Canada’s relationships with India and with
China. India is a substantially English-speaking country, and despite its
uniqueness because of its size and traditions, it is a democracy that changes
governments in free elections and generally accepts freedom of expression and
assembly.
The People’s Republic of China, on the other hand,
is a totalitarian dictatorship, and practically nothing officially stated by
the regime or any statistic published by it can be believed. The nation of
China commands respect as the only country in the world that has been a great
power, ceased to be a great power through decadence and dissipation, and
returned to that status, and it has done this several times. We desire
excellent relations with that country, but we cannot overlook the fact that the
current regime is explicitly challenging the presence of the West generally in
the world and conducts its foreign and strategic policy with a conspicuous
disregard for interstate civilities such as are normally and consistently
practised between Canada and its co-founder of the Commonwealth of Nations, India.
Readers will recall that when revelations came to
public notice of Chinese regime-directed interventions in several Canadian
parliamentary elections and in a mayoral election in Vancouver—and that there
were attempts to influence Canadians politically by visiting various
inconveniences and harassments upon their relatives resident in China—the
federal government finally, and with inexplicable or at least unexplained
reluctance, agreed to green-light the investigations of committees and agencies
charged with these matters. It also attempted to establish a former governor
general as, in effect, a censor who would determine what it was appropriate to
reveal to the public. This wheeze was shot to pieces by the other parties and
even some Liberals as inadequate public airing of a serious question involving
the sovereignty and political integrity of this country.
A new inquiry was set up under the Foreign
Interference Commission chaired by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue last September. At
that time, the public safety minister, Dominic LeBlanc, said that the
commissioner would have full access to secret
documents, and specifically “to all relevant cabinet documents as well as all
other information she deems relevant for the purposes of her inquiry.”
However, we recently learned that a substantial
number of requested documents have been redacted to reduce materially their
significance, and an additional number has been withheld completely in the name
of retention of confidentiality of cabinet papers. That is a well-established
guideline for non-disclosure, but it is contrary to what the minister on behalf
of the government promised. And presumably there would be a method of releasing
all of this material to Justice Hogue, who could, in discussion with the
government, determine where it was appropriate to have a seal of
confidentiality over explicit disclosure to a broader readership.
All of the opposition parties, and therefore a
majority of members of Parliament, have taken issue with this government
backpedalling. The commission and the government are negotiating, and Justice
Hogue has a strong position both in requiring specific performance with
Leblanc’s promises and in having at her back an apparent parliamentary
majority. This begs the question of what would possess the government to box
itself in like this, and it invites the supposition that it has something to
hide that it had promised to reveal.
Unearthing this sort of information is the purpose
of establishing the commission. The greater the gap that there appears to be
between the strongly asserted public interest in learning of foreign
interference in our political process and the government’s desire to conceal a
full knowledge of that subject, the greater the level of public skepticism that
will arise about the government’s conduct and motives.
It has been necessary at every stage to drag the
government, grumbling and dissembling and now backtracking with very feeble
excuses—and this from a government which, as its outburst against the Indians
demonstrated, is elsewhere not only loose-lipped but trigger-happy. Everyone,
including sensible Liberals, should encourage Madame Justice Hogue to get all
of the facts and then release to the public a summary of them, withholding only
those matters that she and her commission by non-partisan criteria consider
should remain confidential in the national interest.
The longer the government continues with this
evasiveness, the more damage it will do to its own credibility.