In ‘Flip Flop’ on Liberals, NDP Says Trudeau’s Top Adviser Should Testify on Interference

NDP MP for New Westminster-Burnaby Peter Julian rises during Question Period in Ottawa on Nov. 18, 2022. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

In a reversal causing concerns in Liberal ranks, the NDP has announced on March 1 it wants the prime minister’s chief of staff to testify in committee on the issue of foreign interference.

NDP MP Peter Julian signalled the change of stance during a meeting of the Commons procedure and House affairs committee.

The NDP had in recent weeks twice helped the Liberals defeat sections of motions from the Conservatives calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s top adviser Katie Telford to testify.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was the first among the main opposition parties to call for a public inquiry on Feb. 27. Leaders from the Conservative Party and the Bloc Québécois joined the call on March 1.

The NDP will push the committee to recommend to the House of Commons that a national public inquiry be held.

Bloc Québécois MP Christine Normandin also gave notice to the committee that she would table a motion asking for the House to call upon the government to launch an independent public inquiry into Beijing’s interference in elections.

The NDP and Bloc motions came after Conservative MP Michael Cooper tabled his third motion asking Telford to testify and for the production of records on the foreign interference.

His motion also calls upon Morris Rosenberg to testify—the former public servant and former CEO of the Trudeau Foundation who released a report on Feb. 28 assessing the government’s protocol for addressing interference in elections.

Cooper said he brought the motion amid reporting from Global News on Feb. 24, which said that Liberal MP Han Dong was a “witting affiliate in China’s election interference networks.”

“Given that Global News reports that senior staff in the Prime Minister’s Office were briefed about this interference, and did nothing about it, it is all the more important that the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Katie Telford testify before this committee,” Cooper said.

With the three opposition parties siding on the issue in committee, Telford will likely be called to testify at the next committee meeting on March 2 after the pending motions are voted on.

Liberals Protest

Liberal MPs reacted negatively to this new turn of events, deploring the “flip-flop” from the NDP and the breaking of a parliamentary tradition.

“Including political staffers and public servants does not reflect a long tradition in the parliamentary system, the British parliamentary system that is, of a tradition of ministerial accountability,” said Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister Greg Fergus.

“Mr. Cooper has gone down that road again, and now, Mr. Julian has switched sides and is also going down that same road of wanting to bring in staff instead of the accountable ministers and those that are in charge,” said Liberal MP Ruby Sahota.

Liberals also referenced earlier testimony at committee from security officials about foreign interference to push back on the opposition parties.

Liberal MP Ryan Turnbull said he takes seriously the allegations circulating in the media, but qualified the latest moves as a “partisan attack” against the prime minister and a Liberal MP.

He said that based on the testimony of an official, he wondered whether the allegations were true or not.

Deputy Minister of Public Safety Shawn Tupper told the committee that there were no RCMP investigations into allegations of foreign interference in the 2021 elections.

The committee also heard that the process is complicated to transfer intelligence to evidence.

Hence it would not be an automatic process for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to pass its collected information in raw form to the RCMP to launch a criminal investigation.

Fergus also said that Conservatives were repeating allegations not based on facts.

“If I listen to the speech of my colleague over in the official opposition, it’s truly unfortunate but over and over members of the official opposition are repeating allegations that are not backed by facts, not backed by the facts revealed in expert testimony today,” he said.

Security officials were asked to comment on the specific allegations of Beijing interference revealed by Global News and the Globe and Mail in recent weeks, but refrained from doing so.

“Will you acknowledge that the allegations that are contained in those reports are factual?” MP Julian asked National Security and Intelligence adviser Jody Thomas.

“I am not going to comment on information that was inappropriately obtained,” she said.

Julian asked the same question to the second panel of security officials.

“Today, we’re not prepared to validate any of the reporting that’s been in the media or the alleged leaks,” said Adam Fisher, director general of Intelligence Assessments at CSIS.

Trudeau has rejected the calls for a public inquiry, saying there are many current mechanisms in place to shed light on foreign interference.

But the committee meeting again showed the limitations of discussing sensitive information in a public setting, with little to no key information being revealed.

Thomas also made that point about the benefit of a public inquiry.

“A public inquiry will have the same limitations that this committee does in that we cannot talk about national security information in a public forum,” she said.