MPs spend three hours grilling David Johnston on foreign interference findings

Hello,

The smoky, yellow-tinged sky here in Ottawa is a vivid reminder of the areas of the country that are directly in danger and tremendously stressed by a record-breaking wildfire season. Here’s hoping for rain and helpful winds to make things easier for the fire crews.

Inside the parliamentary precinct, a continuing search for clarity of the literal sort was underway, as MPs spent three hours grilling David Johnston, the special rapporteur on foreign interference, in the procedure and House affairs committee (PROC).

One of the key findings of his interim report was that misinformation campaigns against Canadian politicians couldn’t be traced back to Beijing – information that directly contradicted what former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole was told by the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Pressed repeatedly on this disconnect, Mr. Johnston said his conclusions were based on what he knew at the time.

“We reported on what was available to us,” he said. “What transpired between the director of CSIS and Mr. O’Toole, I don’t know.”

He also faced repeated questions about why he is continuing his work as special rapporteur, even after the House of Commons voted that he should step aside. NDP House Leader Peter Julian asked Mr. Johnston why he was ignoring the will of a minority Parliament in which all opposition parties voted in favour of his resignation.

Mr. Johnston responded that he is standing firm because he believes the vote by parliamentarians was “based on allegations that were false.” At another point, he said he has “deep respect” for the House of Commons, but he denied that his work with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation constituted any conflict of interest.

“These allegations are, put simply, false,” he said.

Mr. Johnston kept emphasizing that not only was he perfectly fit to investigate foreign interference in Canada, but in his opinion, fixating on him at all is a mistake because Canada has much bigger and more worrying fish to fry.

“Let’s move with urgency on dealing with a problem which is very, very serious and is affecting not simply our national security, but our citizens in very direct and immediate and difficult ways,” he said.

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