David Krayden: Election Interference Inquiry Reveals Ottawa’s Great Credibility Gap

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears as a witness at the Foreign Interference Commission in Ottawa on April 10, 2024. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Commentary

The public inquiry into foreign interference has been defined by gross discrepancies in testimony over the last two weeks.

This investigation has evolved into two competing narratives of Chinese interference in Canadian elections.

Sixty years ago, at the agonizing end of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson’s tenure, American media discussed the “credibility gap” that had dogged Johnson over his conduct of the Vietnam War. Johnson had won 61 percent of the vote in the 1964 presidential election, but his popularity was plummeting and ultimately, he decided not to run again in 1968.

It wasn’t just the left-wing protesters on the streets who were demanding Johnson’s resignation; average Americans were beginning to question the storyline that the administration offered about America winning the war, about how they could see light at the end of the tunnel and victory would be achievable with just another deployment of 10,000 troops.

But at least Johnson and the U.S. military were saying the same thing.

As Canadians demand answers about China’s nefarious activities on Canadian soil, there is a growing credibility gap within the federal government. It’s just a question of whose credibility is at stake.

This might be called a bifurcation of both purpose and testimony.

On the one hand we have CSIS and its director David Vigneault, who is substantially reinforcing what a whistleblower leaked to media outlets over a year ago: that China posed a clear and present danger and had directly interfered in Canadian elections by targeting candidates for victory or defeat.

On the other hand we have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who assiduously claimed in his testimony before the inquiry on April 11 that he was not aware of China intervening in federal elections and firmly believes these contests were decided entirely by the Canadian electorate.

As is clear after a car crash in which two parties describe the event in entirely different ways, and ascribe blame not to themselves but to the other party, either Trudeau and Vigneault are both wrong in their retelling of this story or one of them is not telling the truth.

Many Canadians had their doubts when Trudeau appointed Justice Marie-Josée Hogue to lead the inquiry last September. It was a reluctant response to what was clearly a national crisis, especially after Official Opposition foreign affairs critic Michael Chong revealed how China had been spying on his family members in Hong Kong—apparently with the full knowledge of the Trudeau government, which had opted not to tell Chong anything about this harassment.

You may recall that Trudeau’s initial reaction to the CSIS whistleblower’s allegations was to appoint former Gov. Gen. David Johnston as a “special rapporteur” to examine the escalating scandal.

A  majority of MPs in the House of Commons rejected Johnston after he released a report that was little more than a collection of media articles, and after revelations that he had been a longtime friend of the Trudeau family and closely associated with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

During his four hours of testimony, Trudeau was cagey to say the least, tight-lipped about details which he said might compromise national security. But he did bring clarity to the issue of what he knew about Chinese election interference: little to nothing because he claimed he simply didn’t receive the information from CSIS agents or his own national security flunkies.

He assured us that the two previous federal elections had been “held in their integrity” and “were decided by Canadians.”

Those statements directly contradicted the documents and testimony from CSIS that the inquiry revealed.

According to the top secret documents released by Canada’s spy agency, the People’s Republic of China “clandestinely and deceptively interfered in both the 2019 and 2021 general elections.” This interference affected the electoral outcomes of up to 18 different constituencies in the Greater Toronto Area.

Moreover, CSIS revealed that it had briefed the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on 34 different occasions since 2018. That almost sounds like the agency was working overtime to get its message across.

But apparently, you can assiduously brief the PMO until hell freezes over but it won’t reach the ears or eyes of the prime minister. Whether he thought it was clever or not, Trudeau told the inquiry that he simply doesn’t read briefing notes. We might nod knowingly and consider this just another confirmation of Trudeau’s natural indolence, but it is difficult to believe that someone in his office did not ensure that information of this calibre, affecting national security to this degree, informed the prime minister’s decisions.

But in another statement of contradiction, Trudeau Chief of Staff Katie Telford said in testimony before the Commons Procedure and House Affairs Committee last April that Trudeau does read those important memos.

So it wasn’t entirely clear after Trudeau’s marathon testimony whether the prime minister was blaming his staff for not finding the proper means with which to communicate vital matters, was suggesting CSIS was exaggerating the level of threat posed by China, or was suggesting he was simply left in the dark.

The hole was so gaping that the inquiry decided to recall CSIS director David Vigneault on April 12.

Vigneault told the inquiry that he had personally met with Trudeau twice and that he arrived with a dossier of classified material for Trudeau to peruse. Vigneault did not specifically reveal what that material was about but he said the documents reflected a theme that he had delivered both privately and publicly to the federal government: that Canada has not taken the foreign interference—read China—threat seriously and believes that there are “no consequences, either legal or political” for the state actors engaging in foreign interference.

“I can say with confidence that this is something that has been conveyed to the government, to ministers, the prime minister, using these words and other types of words,” he said.

Vigneault actually described this warning as something that had been said so many times that it didn’t need to be said again.

So who’s telling the truth here? Well, dear reader, you can decide. Who is insisting on running again for re-election in 2024?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.