The Cloud of foreign interference still hangs over Parliament the chair of the committee that wrote that shocking intelligence report spoke to reporters one day after green party leader Elizabeth May gave her public assessment of the secret report David McGinty can’t say too much he’s Bound by secrecy laws but he said today that focusing solely on unnamed members of parliament is missing the bigger picture this review addresses Federal provincial Municipal politics IT addresses universities boardroom tables Community associations NOS right across the entirety of Canadian Society we’ve told the government to bring the political party leaders together and have an adult conversation about what we can do here we’ve told the government to look at the ethics commissioner and the role of the Senate ethics commissioner to see whether we can tighten up or not tighten up responsibilities on foreign interference we’ve told the government to actually conduct detailed briefing for parliamentarians so they can protect themselves and understand the difference between foreign influence and foreign interference we’ve told the government to criminalize for an interference in nomination processes we’ve told the government to look at elections candada as a possible organization to oversee nominations and Leadership campaigns the stakes are huge our democracy is on the line our rule of law is on the line transnational repression is on the line our diaspora communities are on the line and being victimized all of this is called out it’s a major maor Clarion call for action there’s a lot to discuss from that report and here to help us with it today Ward Elco he is the former director of the Canadian Security intelligence service and he’s here now in the studio Ward it’s good to see you again pleasure you heard what David McGinty said there he is limited in what he can say but like Elizabeth May yesterday he said we’re overwhelmingly focusing on the unnamed members of parliament and we’re missing the bigger picture how do you see that I think they guaranteed that by putting it in in that with with that level of of detail that was inevitable in the sort of fevered atmosphere we’ve had for the last year and a half on this subject or longer um that that was inevitable um I thought it was unwise at the time and I the the further we go the more unwise I think it was to say what they said they could have alluded to issues that needed to be discussed without having going into having gone into all these details well why was it so unwise to say that I I think the argument from Mr McGinty and other parts of his conversation today with reporters is that it was important to give Canadians a full sense of just what’s happening here and if there were members of parliament compromised the public should know but they’ve they’ve varied between the two they didn’t obviously go to the issue of giving people’s names that would have been improper and I would have been surprised if they done that but they gave such a level of detail they could have avoided that and said that there were issues that needed to be discussed I don’t think Canadians are any better off as a result of the information they’ve got um and it’s just created confusion and and more une ease about the whole system so this seems to be the motivation in what Elizabeth May did yesterday right she was the first opposition leader to get the security clearance to get the briefing and because she said she was worried that she was sitting in a House of Commons where people may have been disloyal to the country and she gave this reassurance saying she’s still very worried about foreign interference but she has confidence in everybody who is elected in the House of Commons that they are not the truly Bad actors that are pointed to uh in the report uh does that in any way help Canadians reassure them like how do you view that move by the green leader I think it’s I think it probably is helpful from the government’s point of view although the government made a similar less pointed illusion when they released the report I think it was I think it was the the minister Public Safety uh so that message has kind of been there on the table and Miss May has gone further partly I suspect because she’s a she’s an MP not part of the government uh the government’s stuck is in a sense is ministers they’re obliged to tow the line and if they didn’t tow the line on secrecy the first thing the opposition would do would would beat them over the head for not being adequately secure in their Communications so they’re always going to be more careful in what they say than say the than Miss May or any of the other party leaders well you mentioned that this what she had to say sort of align with what dominic Leblon had to say about politics being what it is and you’ve been on show many times talking about this over the past year it seems as if there’s not even there’s there’s no willingness in in some quarters to take the government at its word on this given the way it’s rolled out over the last little while so we saw David McGinty there talking about the need for an adult conversation to bring all the party leaders together are you getting any sense that that’s where this is going to go I I don’t see it going in that direction at this point um everybody in a sense has punted and and turned it over or said which should be turned over to to Mr Madam Justice the problem is it’s hard to see what Madam Justice hul will do with it she’s a judge herself she’s not going to name individuals she could review the cases and come to a similar conclusion to Miss May and maybe that would lower the temperature but that’s about as much as she can do she can’t name individuals she can’t she can’t reveal the information any more than than Miss Megan I wonder if she you know dick faden who’s often here with you in these conversations he’s made the point that there’s just not enough time right like this is already a pretty um ambitious mandate and a pretty limited time frame that that the judge was given I mean could you even possibly throw all of this in there and expect any kind of a reasonable assessment from her in the time frame that that’s available it’s it’s not clear I to me that that couldn’t be couldn’t be done Miss May had a I I don’t think you’re she’s not going to hold a full hearing so it’s not going to add add to the process in that in that respect misma saw the information relatively quickly and came to conclusion relatively quickly I’m not sure that m madame Justice hog is really going to find it all that much more difficult to do in terms of time although her time is tight I con seeed uh but she can’t do a full process anyway so it’s got to be a kind of quick and dirty to some extent so where does that leave us though because because Elizabeth May and Mike Morris the other green party MP they were the only MPS to vote against the idea of sending it to the inquiry be recognizing the limitations on the judge but also saying that this is really a problem for par to solve which is something we’ve heard from from other people like Philip lag you know who who who studies this where do you think this needs to go at this point given sort of the public focus on it and the political uh frenzy around it it is something that and I think dick fadon alluded to that at some point that that that this is something Parliament could settle and it it may be that there is a way for Parliament to do that I guess the reality of like most national security discussions in this country it’s not really carried out in an intellectual or grown-up fashion um so so it’s highly unlikely that that’s going to happen uh and the and the parties will continue to to particularly the opposition parties will continue to to take their position to Simply beat the government over the head so this is I go back to the clip of David McGinty we opened with and he is a liberal MP and he was going in the liberal caucus when he said this but he’s the chair of a committee that has new Democrats that has a conservatives on it and Senators so he is speaking this report is their consensus voice and they’ve all called for that like an adult intelligent approach to this and some leaders are are getting to the point where they’re going to get briefed so they can read it get the clearance to read the report Mr PF has said he’s not willing to do that can Parliament fix this if not everybody is fully informed on what’s in there so that they’re operating from a common set of facts uh if it depends to some extent I suppose on on where the MPS actually which which caucus they fall into uh if there is nobody in Mr pv’s caucus and I don’t know the answer to that question then it may be possible to settle without Mr pv’s participation but if he if there are conser if is a conservative member in that involved in this or previous or or whatever um then if he’s not in it then I don’t see how you come to a conclusion that that really go takes us anywhere useful right well the conservative leadership races were implicated as as China and India trying to meddle in them in the last few times so that’s not that’s that’s not a thing that is specific to Parliament but it is something the political parties need that doesn’t mean that that that that that the conservative leadership involved particular MPS who were participating with foreign government so whether those two things are are the same issue or different issues is not entirely clear to us we we’ve been talking about this for about 15 16 18 months uh now to this point and we had this report come out from nsic cop which which which repeated a lot of warnings in earlier uh reports that McGinty rightly pointed out that the media kind of ignored with this exception of some some National Security reporters like cat Tony who works here with us um but do you get the sense there’s a real urgency to deal with it in Parliament this is what I wonder about I read this most recent report it got me alarmed on the full state of things that this would be the consensus view of a multi-party committee and and now it seems that they’re shipping it off to the inquiry and there doesn’t seem to be a real move inside Parliament to deal with things I mean what’s your sense of the truth is in my view frankly that that if you if you’re talking about foreign interference probably the least crucial part of foreign interference is whether or not any nmps have been involved in improper discussions with with foreign governments I’m not saying that’s unimportant I’m not saying it’s an issue that shouldn’t be dealt with but I would say frankly the foreign interference in terms of the pressure put on individual Canadian citizens from whatever origin by foreign governments uh and harassment by other governments of of Canadian citizens is ultimately far more Insidious and far more oppressive than what appear to be relatively in uous not saying they’re un utterly in important but appear to be if we believe Miss May relatively innocuous probably not things you should do and you ought to get educated but not so serious that anybody necessarily ought to be charged with with a criminal offense or whatever well this brings me back to I guess where we started cuz McGinty kind of said that that we’re missing the bigger picture and he talked about every level of the political process provincial governments Municipal governments NOS media um boardrooms uh universities all have been affected to some degree and and you know we’re guilty of this I guess as journalists focusing on what’s Happening Here on Parliament Hill but it’s the problem is so much larger than that and that is not where the the conversation of focus and the solution search has gone no it hasn’t um some of that some of the things you describe a registry will help so that’s in process and ultimately that will come through um I assume uh although people are raising some issues about about the registry or concerns about the regy but I think that’s a useful thing to do there will be other things to do but the reality is it’s going to be very hard it’s very hard to see how one resolves the specific problem that was created by the en ancop report which I think to go back to what I said at the beginning probably put too much detail in on a relatively less important issue not one that doesn’t need to be addressed but not but by doing that they they covered everything else in with this one particular issue okay seems to have been over overblown entirely so on that point just as as a final uh question jug meet Singh is going to read the report tomorrow Mr Blanchett is is going to get briefed in at some point he started that process it seems um what do you want to see next from Parliament or what what are you watching for next from Parliament to see if if this is going to move in a direction to to sort of get to the root of the larger challenges well ultimately if they’re going to deal with the the issue this has created in the public they’re really going to have to come to some conclusion collectively about what they do about the various individuals who have being described as having carried out activities with foreign foreign governments at some level none of it appears to rise to the level of I mean people have tossed around the word treason which has seemed to me from the beginning to be inappropriate but people have tossed that around that clearly is not where we are that clearly is not the problem is there a problem that some MPS are too Cavalier and dealing with foreign governments and too incautious in dealing with foreign governments too uneducated in dealing with foreign governments yes so how do you education is one part another part is frankly finding a way collectively among parliamentarians um in the process of the house I suspect to deal with individuals who are seen to have carried out these activities and it may ultimately be that it may Simply Be each for each party to deal with individuals within their own party Ward elcock former CIS director I always appreciate the time thank you sir a pleasure the chair of the committee responsible for that shock in intelligence report that has dominated conversation on Parliament Hill spoke to reporters today while David McGinty can’t say much because of secrecy laws he did say partisanship on the issue of foreign interference needs to be put aside we need to park the partisanship at the door and that’s why I think it might be a very productive thing to have all leaders to come together and have this conversation and look at some of the recommendations we put forward and consider whether elections candidates should play a role we have pointed out that nominations and leaderships are weak Link in the system we’d like to see that tightened up one of those weak links mentioned in the report are allegations that China and India interfered in the conservative party leadership race something NDP leader jug meet Singh says he would want to know about if it happened in his party if any suggestion AR arose that my leadership race was interfered with in that manner I would want to know it is outrageous to me and deeply irresponsible that Pier POV has no no desire to read the report to learn about what happened concerning the way he was selected as leader all right it’s time to bring in the power panel to talk about this Jordan likeness is a former NDP strategist Tim Powers is a former strategist for conservative parties cherelle Eveland is the managing editor of the Hill times and Jonathan kis is a former Quebec adviser to prime minister Justin Trudeau uh hello gang I’m sure no one here has been R in on the NSI cop right no one’s seen the redacted the non-reacted version not this week anyway Tim we’re getting people talking about it publicly Elizabeth May came out tried to reassure Canadians there’s no one in the parliament right now that could you know be considered a traitor based on things but she also said we’re kind of missing the bigger picture by focusing just on UNS David McGinty said the same thing today where are we a week after this I find myself in the strange place of agreeing with Elizabeth that we are I think missing the bigger pitcher I I think there there is a balance to be struck and to be fair to her I guess she tried to do that in her way yesterday by revealing what she could reveal about finally we know that f is apparently five current less less than five well five if you count the former parliamentarian that really should be the government doing all of that uh if Elizabeth May can speak to it the way that she did why can’t the government do do that I think it’s still a bit convenient to push it all off on the opposition you know Mr Singh I don’t think was particularly helpful I get why he’s making the point that Mr PV should read it but then throwing in as he does well we saw how he got elected like that’s what David McGinty is saying we shouldn’t do um you know Pier pv’s rationale is what it is people will accept it or they won’t accept it I think that is also a bit of a distraction from the issue and maybe the suggestion that PV and others are making it’s not just PV that um the Justice that’s running the commission of inquiry look into this and and find a way to blend these two together is the way forward but I think as we’re seeing we can’t just keep keep pushing this away pushing this away Jordan it seems that this is something parliament’s got to deal with right like the judge has a lot on her plate she’s already got to be and she can’t name names and and find findings of guilt you know without due process any more than you know the NSI cop could well and and also any process that just pushes This months down the road is going to do nothing to dispel the cloud that’s hanging over Parliament Hill right now so I think that’s another issue with the idea of tossing it over to the Justice because it’s it’s not going to solve what is fundament a problem that that I think begins and ends within parties around nomination processes and and frankly with leaders who have to make some decisions about what’s going on inside of their parties and I think that we’re seeing a lot of circling around that you know sing was out and and he was pretty clear about what he would do if if he see something there but there really hasn’t been that level of clarity either from uh Pier POV because he hasn’t wanted to to be read in and so hasn’t made any conclusions about what he would do with that information because he he isn’t seeking to get it um and we don’t know what what Mr Trudeau is doing either because he’s had that information in his capacity as prime minister but we don’t know if there’s been any involvement of the liberal party or any decisions that have been made uh with that information and so I think that it’s really for me all of this is driving back for the need to parties to get their hands around this and leaders to think carefully about what the applications are for their own caucuses well so so Jon on that uh nominations leadership race all come up in this we got a statement today from the liberal party not really saying they’re going to change the nomination rules despite this being exposed as a as an area of vulnerability I mean what do you make of the overall political response when we got McGinty and may saying set partisanship aside and deal with the issue set partisanship aside like sorry but that that’s just like it’s it’s really pretty damn naive like it’s not going to happen we all live in the real world they’re all they’re both members of parliament and they say that and so I’m not like we need to find out about this I’m a Canadian I’m always looking for the scoop I want to hear what’s happening so I want to know but you know it’s been a week now I haven’t heard anybody actually give me an idea that I can get my head around and say you know what that’s a good idea I haven’t heard it so maybe you know the five us can figure it out today but like what is the solution and for the committee Fran side cop to come up with this data dump they throw it out there there’s allegations there aren’t names like did they not see this coming and so they just throw it out there and then mgti then says today well let’s do this in a nonpartisan partisan way like what what like where is he like I so I I don’t understand what he expected to happen when they threw this out there so I’m not any smarter than all these other people that I have some magic solution but like just revealing the names and not actually understanding what is evidence and what is just little bits of intelligence that’s not a solution and then there’s allies and where the where the intelligence came from that’s a problem but we can’t keep this secret people are entitled to know so that’s not a solution to just sit on it so you know we’re just sitting there in this conundrum but no one’s actually come up with a solution get into the partisanship and we’ve seen it on all sides but what’s the solution I’m not hearing any charl I got a crazy idea all the party leaders get briefed and meet together and come up with a plan to protect Canadian elections that seems like something Party leaders would would want to do I don’t know well hasn’t I don’t know if the past has given us any indication but that is something that they’d want to do and you know just to disagree a little bit withd I mean the the enop report it’s didn’t just say oh by the way there’s some people that you know might have done some bad things it was a whole you know 90s something page report where they did lay out you know some recommendations and they did offer some and a ly of inaction a Litany of inaction there are so many things that the government has been told and briefed on and warned about and they’ve highlighted in their report a pattern of here are all the times the government didn’t act or took years to get uh something done with this and in the meantime we’ve had more elections and things um and there was still interference and all of those things but the some of the main things are that people don’t seem to want to look Beyond on the political scorecard right they don’t want to do something that might potentially disadvantage them if they happen to act on it and do I don’t know the quote unquote right thing because their opponents are not going to do change anything you about their nomination races or any of those things all of these things that people have said these are real problems so by not by choosing to remain ignorant of the facts by choosing to not get briefed on the report it’s not just about the names in the report I think that’s it’s important but also a little bit of a red herring but sorry you’re done no let me just say finish let me say there are it’s not just about the names because it’s a whole democratic system and there are things that as party leaders they should want to want to know where the holes are in the system that they could plug within their own parties even outside of the house of Comm no I was just going to pick up where Charelle uh was was skating there uh putting the puck in the net of course I know he lik sports are um the what what I found fascinating about May’s comments was the acknowledgement from her anyway that Canada was a soft target to chelle’s point so what does that mean what how vulnerable are we because that’s part of how you get at bringing forward a solution because are we so soft that every um you know key areas are malleable are we soft in one area can we Bo brush up bone up there improve nsic Cops been saying this for years mult going back to the India trip where they did an assessment of what happened with the Prime Minister trip to India they basically said there is there are no consequences there’s no foreign registry we haven’t criminalized certain Behavior even now you can mess around in a nomination and until the legislation before Parliament passes now it’s not a criminal offense but as you would assess in anywhere else what’s the materiality right like what is the impact going to be so nominations is an interesting one are we suggesting to get very conspiratorial for a moment we’re electing Manchurian candidates all over the place who going to come together maybe we I don’t think we are I don’t think we ever been near that but but what kind of buffers do we need to address it is it one or two MPS that’s still serious but it’s not as serious as 320 being targets I think part of the discussion starts with um where do we fix things Beyond nysop and party leaders can involve themselves in that and can I just say one thing you you I said about PV to be fair I just did hear him this morning on interview with cfra radio saying that if somebody in his caucus were found to wittingly be acting with uh a foreign power that they would be kicked out yeah but there’s context on that there’s context on that it’s not him reading the information and coming to that conclusion it’s if Justice o delivers a finding and we don’t even know if she’s going to do it so if she convicts them he’ll act but I mean we’re long from that that’s a really I think kicking the can down the road and I and I just want to come back to I think something Jonathan rais about the Comm and putting up this report and what did they think would happen well I think this is actually exactly what they expected would happen and if you look at the report and the recommendations to me this was the committee raising the alarm within the scope of what they were able to do with their powers to say that we do have a problem here and I think that the scope of the problem whether it’s five people or 300 it’s still like this Cloud can’t be allowed to stay it is it is a huge issue and it’s a huge leadership issue and I think that when it comes to the question of nominations there is uh there are weaknesses like we know that there are weaknesses in these processes and there’s really material things that could be discussed and I know that Mr McGinty was out talking about getting elections candidate involved in nominations today I’m pretty sure that’s the last thing any party would want to have happen but look like each party does nominations differently but I think we can all agree that there’s there’s a standard that they should they should hold to around protecting Democratic institutions and parties are part of of our Democratic institutions and so if for example International students are being allowed to vote what are the rules around that that’s not the case in every party like these are some of the things that could be looked at concretely but I do just to go back to Mr PV because I think to me it’s it’s really surprising like he has not really gotten his hands on this issue and he wants to be prime minister he wants to be prime minister and this issue is going nowhere and so I think there’s an opportunity for him to actually get on top of this to be seen to be active and not reactive and not just trying to use this as a wedge but actually to do something kind of for the good of the country and he’s missing that opportunity right well jonno I mean I I know people may not want elections candidate involved in nominations but you know the Chinese Consul in Toronto is apparently involved in nominations and maybe elections candidate might be a more benign entity but you know we talked about this on the show last night I got a phone call when I got off the air from a a well-connected federal conservative who doesn’t understand their position because they basically said the good politics and the good policy are the the same here get informed and attack at headon don’t Outsource your response well if you want me to comment on why Pier pavas decided not why why do you think this isn’t new but I agree with you it would be one of the things that he’s clearly lacking that that people still are unsure about is is he Prime ministerial is can he rise above the fry show the maturity the statesmanship and playing this game demonstrates that he’s not ready sorry to steal that cliche but you know I see an ad coming we’ve heard that we’ve heard that before popped in my head but that he’s avoiding this and you know again my my cynicism about keeping this you know away from partisanship I mean yes this is the first example I think all the parties to varying degrees are playing partisan games or at least trying to protect themselves from you know political interference making them look bad and so it actually is deflecting from the bigger issue which is whether there are four or five MPS current or four more or there are other government institutions being attacked but it’s bigger than that it’s media it’s boardrooms it was all the other sort of areas where they were talking about and no one’s talking about those things so no one’s in solution mode now everybody’s sort of trying to deflect and say well it’s them it’s it’s somebody else’s fault so okay elections candidate getting involved in in in you know party operations no one really wants that but some standardization might be a nice idea and you know I think James Moore has been on this for months maybe it should be that citizens of 18 years old and older should be the ones able to vote no one else it’s not a crazy idea political parties want to be exempt from privacy laws they want to be exempt from elections Canada I mean they set the laws and they don’t want to live by the laws it is an it’s a conversation for another day but Charelle just as a final point on this jugg me sing is either reading this report right now or has finished reading it by now and he’s going to speak tomorrow I mean where do you think this goes uh if the NDP leader comes out and if he agrees with M May or has a totally different version of of interpretation of what he read yeah well that’s really interesting if he says comes out and says something interesting uh something different from what Elizabeth May said kick someone out of caucus kick somebody out of we imagine um you know she came out and said I am not she said there was a problem but she’s not concerned you know that you know she needs to be looking over her shoulder worried about the issue but not her colleagues right is basically it so if uh Mr Sing comes out and says no man this is a real issue and we’ve got to clamp down on it I think that’s going to take it somewhere else they did have um similar responses the last time they both had um secret briefings so I I don’t know if I’m necessarily expecting them to you know diverge but also Mr Blanchette is supposed to be now you know now that Elizabeth may you know tookes a woman to get things the ball rolling now that Elizabeth May has done it and he saw what she did M Mr Blanchett says he’s going to go get briefed and that will just leave um Mr PV as as kind of the outlier there but if they all kind of say the same thing then that’s really interesting but it was a block uh motion to get the um uh issue punted over to the H commission so I don’t know if they’ll be yeah well it’s was interesting to see the block coming out and saying they were acting in the best interest of Canada and you know and finding a compromise solution but we still haven’t heard uh from the inquiry uh yet EX L how that’s going to go
Liberal MP David McGuinty, chair of the Parliament’s national security committee, says that focusing on unnamed parliamentarians in the foreign interference report misses the bigger picture. Ward Elcock, former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, reacts to McGuinty’s comments, and the Power Panel discusses if the point of the report is getting lost in all of the noise.
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