Dispatch from the Front Lines: The prime minister must lead. Only he can.
The PM has a job to do, and now would be a good time. Also: more bad news from Calgary.
Hello, Line readers! Happy Father’s Day, dads! Sorry this week was so quiet. As you’ll know, we had a lot of developments on the foreign interference front that needed covering, but we’re also down an editor (Jen’s on vacation) and Matt also had to miss two days this week for meetings. We will throttle down to a more sustainable summer schedule in a few weeks, but we aren’t quite there yet, so we’ll get back to a more normal publication this week, assuming our freelance contributors can stay off the patios and golf courses and keep filing. And that might be a big if!
We did record a podcast this week, but keen viewers/listeners will note — we hope with amusement — that we had some technical issues. Jen is on a gorgeous island on the Pacific for a family event, and that’s fantastic for all the obvious reasons, but her internet connection was awful, and it showed. Line editor Gurney, at home in Toronto and positively bathed in glorious bandwidth, is musing about crowdfunding her a mobile Starlink system. It was that difficult to connect with her today. In any case, check out our podcast below. It ain’t the prettiest, but we suspect it’ll hit all the right notes.
This episode of The Line Podcast is brought to you by Unsmoke Canada. Canada can be a global leader in reducing the harm caused by smoking, but it requires actionable steps, including giving adult smokers the information they need to choose potentially less harmful alternatives. Learn more at Unsmoke.ca.
As always, the audio version of the podcast (along with a bunch of ways to subscribe to it) can be found here.
Like, subscribe, share it with your friends, share it with your enemies, leave us glowing reviews, and all that jazz. Send Jen a satellite phone! Or dig a landline through the ocean floor to her island! The Line counts on your support!
And now, on with the dispatch. Email, at least, still works.
The lead story this week, clearly, was the continuing fallout from the NSICOP report last week. Because of this report, even though there is much that we do not know, there are absolutely some things that are clearly established. Let’s run through some of the key points that are uncontested and draw some very modest and safe conclusions from them.
Here are facts.
There are multiple parliamentarians, meaning members of the House of Commons and the Senate, who have been deemed by eight of their colleagues to be engaged in activities with hostile foreign powers on either a witting or semi-witting basis.
The prime minister and the PMO have been aware of who these individuals are for at least a month, if not longer. That is when NSICOP filed its unredacted report to them for review, as required.
The above facts are unchallenged. Now let’s draw a few conclusions.
The phrasing of the NSICOP report, as well as both Elizabeth May's and Jagmeet Singh's press conferences this week, led us to believe some of these individuals are still sitting in both the House of Commons and the Senate. We acknowledge that Elizabeth May and Jagmeet Singh differ considerably on the severity of what these individuals are alleged to have done, but both seem to agree that the relevant parties, in at least some cases, remain in Parliament.
The prime minister, as the person responsible for the administrative and legal apparatus of government, could call the Clerk of the Privy Council, the Director of CSIS, the minister of public safety and others as necessary into his office today, and inform them that he would be making the names public, and that it would be the responsibility of those individuals to figure out how that could be accomplished while protecting intelligence sources and methods. At this time, there is no indication that he has done so, or has any interest in doing so.
So we got the grotesque theatre that was the House of Commons this week. The government has spent the last week and change challenging various opposition leaders to obtain security clearances so that they could view information that the prime minister has had for at least a month, and perhaps longer, even though both the Security of Information Act and the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act (depending on the auspices under which their security clearances were issued) prevents them from disclosing what they read.
And, therefore, doing anything about it. Because to remove a caucus member would be to reveal it, and if a leader has no caucus members that are implicated, there is no urgency to their reading the report.
Protecting the national security of Canada, and the democratic institution of parliament itself, is the prime minister's job before it is anyone else's. And the prime minister has had this information for at least a month.
It's worth repeating that because we want you to envision something. Imagine there are three U.S. Senators accused of aiding and abetting a foreign power, and Joe Biden knew about it for a month.
When do you think impeachment proceedings would start?
Boris Johnson was unceremoniously dumped by his party for lying about throwing a party during COVID lockdowns (and we have no problem with that). Our prime minister has known that there are people currently sitting in parliament that have turned themselves into intelligence assets for hostile foreign powers for a month, and ...
… the government would like you to know that it thinks Pierre Poilievre should get a security clearance so that he can read the documents.
We think Poilievre should, too. Because here's the thing. The Security of Information Act says right there in Section 24 "No prosecution shall be commenced for an offence against this Act without the consent of the Attorney General."
That reads to us like so: Pierre Poilievre can read those documents, release the names, and then dare Justin Trudeau to prosecute him. Indeed, anyone with the names could.
Your Line editors have raised this before on the podcast, but it bears repeating. Canada's international reputation has taken a lot of hits lately. So imagine if you would, gentle reader, a situation where Justin Trudeau's Attorney General signs off on having his political opponent arrested for revealing that hostile foreign powers have coerced sitting MPs into becoming intelligence assets ... especially if one or more of those MPs is revealed to be a Liberal.
That's a front page international news story. We'd look like a banana republic. Our international reputation would take decades to recover.
Your Line editors try to err on the side of caution, especially regarding intelligence and national security matters, but the current situation is Ottawa is untenable and corrosive to what remaining confidence the public may somehow have in our democratic institutions. We are attracted, somewhat against our better judgment, to the thought of Poilievre getting the security clearance specifically to end the online conspiracies about his inability to do so, and also to finally just end all the speculation by naming the names.
And, not for nothing, in so doing, remove this last-standing moronic excuse that the prime minister has for not doing his job.
Because that's what we're talking about. The prime minister has a job. He is quite literally the only person that can do it. And he’s clearly working very hard not to.
It fits a pattern. A year ago, the last time the prime minister tried to handle foreign threats to our democracy by having David Johnston do his job for him, friend of The Line Paul Wells accused Justin Trudeau of trying to "outsource his credibility by subcontracting his judgment." Wells’ conclusion at the time, in another piece, was that if the prime minister was that intent on outsourcing his job to David Johnston, it was an indication that he should perhaps no longer be prime minister.
We agreed then. We agree now. The PM has to do his job or vacate it. Trudeau has known for better than a month that multiple members of the current House of Commons and Senate have likely turned themselves into intelligence assets for hostile foreign powers. Those parliamentarians continue to hold their seats. Only one person can make their names public and begin the process of having them removed from office.
And in the meantime, foreign intelligence assets can sit in Parliament for one more day. Represent Canadians for one more day. Have access to information and decision-makers for one more day. Potentially inform on their constituents and fellow parliamentarians to their intelligence handlers — if those handlers would find that information useful — for one more day.
One person — only one — has the power to stop this, right now.
And your editors think that the prime minister should get not a moment's rest from our colleagues in the parliamentary press gallery until those names are made public.
Canadians, without question, have a right to know.