Commentary
So it looks like there’s going to be a public inquiry into Chinese communist meddling in our elections after all. At least Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc is
hinting as much. Who saw that one coming?
Not David Johnston, evidently. He finally stepped down from his untenable position, which I greet with the same grace he exhibited in announcing it. Namely in resigning as depressingly ordinary rapporteur
he blamed “the highly partisan atmosphere around my appointment and work,” not the real conflict of interest that made him unsuitable from the word go and the shabby initial report that made his position untenable.
Or the prime minister who put him there, because arguably it was untenable from the outset. Johnston may well now be regretting he ever accepted Justin Trudeau’s assignment. But he’s not innocent, because neither seems able to grasp why Johnston was a questionable choice or that, given the very real negatives, he had to take care not to present a flippant exoneration of his buddy and his class. Instead, he stomped off saying we were unworthy of him.
I realize Cassandra had significant difficulty winning friends and influencing people. But yes, I told you so. When he was appointed I gave him the grudging benefit of the doubt, but wrote (
in Loonie Politics): “here’s what Johnston should do, and can do, to dispel all doubts about his appointment. Instead of dragging and spreading it out, issue an immediate public statement reading, in full, ‘We need an investigation by a commission with full power to subpoena and indict to be undertaken into (i) whether the Chinese Communist Party tried to interfere in the last two federal elections, and if so (ii) how and with what success, and (iii) whether senior public servants or Executive Branch officials were informed of the attempt, and if they were, (iv) what they did with that information and why.’”
It’s still where we are, and still what we need, and nobody is any better off for this tragicomic detour to it, least of all the principals. Instead, it reminds me of Robert Conquest’s Second Law, never formally stated but of various people’s recollections. I prefer
John O’Sullivan’s “The behavior of an organization can best be predicted by assuming it to be controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”
If you were running the PMO and wanted to make this issue a massive headache for Trudeau, you’d pick an old family friend connected to the Trudeau Foundation to interview only the PM’s friends and colleagues, believe everything they said, be condescending when questioned, then storm off in a huff when reproached for transparently inadequate work.
OK, you cry, enough already. He’s gone, in exactly the opposite manner to the Thane of Cawdor. Let him be. Why dwell on his chief investigator being a generous donor to the Liberal party? Because his whole performance reflected the style and pretentions of our Laurentian elite, which is now in a heap of trouble on this issue. As I added in Loonie Politics: “There. Had I been chosen as ‘rapporteur’ despite my lack of cozy Establishment ties, I’d already have done my job.”
Despite? Try because of. My Order of Canada or invitation to Davos won’t be arriving any time soon. So why were all these unctuous pundits and power brokers so clueless while this ragged loon nailed it in the wilderness?
Well, when you look at pillars of the Canadian Establishment who leaped to defend Trudeau and his pet rapporteur, it’s amazing how few of them would withstand scrutiny of their own ties to China. And how little any of them seem to understand it, since everyone they know socially is in a similar position, and extremely comfortable there.
Terry Glavin
has done tireless work exposing it all. Or you could get yourself
a copy of Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg’s “Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World,” which sits on my shelf near Jean-François Revel’s “How Democracies Perish” and Whittaker Chambers’ “Witness.” It’s all there. And now it’s going to come tumbling out.
It has to. The public is onto it, and we’re in no mood to be shushed or talked down to after eight years of Trudeau’s habitual combination of smarmy and vicious. (Like
blasting a degree of caution in New Brunswick’s school gender policy by calling its premier and cabinet “far-right political actors” imposing “cruelty and isolation” on the vulnerable.)
So listen to me slowly, people, as Sam Goldwyn once said. We need a real inquiry, empowered to subpoena witnesses and impose legal penalties for non-cooperation or perjury. Which must be headed by someone without unseemly ties to the Liberal Party, the Trudeaus, or the Chinese Communist Party.
If finding such a person proves hard, it only shows how deep the rot and how urgent the need. And yes, I am available.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
