Justin Trudeau and his desperate band of Liberals want to distract you.
They want you to believe that the biggest threat to Canada when it comes to foreign interference is that Pierre Poilievre won’t get his security clearance to read a secret report on the issue.
It’s not that China and other countries have been interfering in Canada’s democracy for years without the Trudeau government taking any action to deal with the issue.
“Why is the leader of the Conservative Party not getting his security clearance?” Trudeau asked in response to a question from Poilievre on Wednesday.
Poilievre hadn’t asked Trudeau a question about foreign interference, he asked about the green slush fund and the $400 million in contracts “directed by Liberal appointees to their own companies.” It’s a serious issue, one found to have seen 186 conflicts of interest in a program that the Liberals shut down after a scathing audit.
Trudeau didn’t want to talk about that issue though, so he raised Poilievre and his security clearance. In fact, the Liberals raised the issue 16 times on Wednesday with Trudeau raising it eight times himself.
Since then, the Liberals have been playing to the conspiracy theorists in their ranks and online, claiming in statements and social media videos that Poilievre won’t get his security clearance because he can’t pass. It’s a claim without any merit, Poilievre has had top secret clearance in the past, but it is popular with the TruAnon base that the Liberals are courting online.
Poilievre has been clear, he believes that taking the full briefing on the foreign interference report by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians would silence him. That’s not an unreasonable view and one that has been supported by Tom Mulcair, former leader of the opposition and the federal NDP.
But let’s get real about the issue of foreign interference, if there is one leader who is a problem, it’s Justin Trudeau and not Pierre Poilievre.
Trudeau, as prime minister, has had access to all of the information on foreign interference for years and has not acted on it. In September 2019, he was even briefed on concerns raised by CSIS that one of his candidates had received help from China to secure his nomination.
Trudeau didn’t act on that information. He didn’t stop Han Dong, who has denied knowing anything about assistance from China, from running as a Liberal. Trudeau never followed up on the allegations at all and Dong ran again as a Liberal in 2021.
We know that no one in the Liberal government thought to brief Conservative MP Michael Chong that he was the subject of interference by China. Chong only found out due to media reports that Chinese officials in Canada were collecting information on his extended family in Hong Kong and feeding it back to security officials in Beijing.
During all of this time, the Trudeau government never once expelled a Chinese diplomat over foreign interference. The Liberals simply took the help from Beijing and looked the other way.
When CSIS wanted to get a warrant to tap the phones and vehicles used by Liberal fundraiser and former Ontario Liberal cabinet Minister Michael Chan, the Trudeau government sat on it. It took 54 days to get the warrant application approved by then Public Safety Minister Bill Blair despite most warrants being signed in 4-8 days.
The Liberals claim there were no partisan considerations in the delay, but that’s simply not believable. That delay seriously impeded the investigation by CSIS and may have helped protect key Liberals.
While Trudeau and his team claim Poilievre is the problem and he can’t pass a security check, the telling difference between the two men is how they are reacting to this issue.
Trudeau is doing all he can to stop the public from knowing the full truth. Poilievre is demanding the names of all MPs involved in foreign interference be made public.
What more do you need to know?