Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been put on blast for not cooperating with the ongoing investigations into Chinese election interference.
The two agencies probing how the Chinese Communist Party may have interfered in Canadian elections are the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) and the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA).
In a media statement on Monday, NSIRA said the Trudeau Liberals have only provided them with a “limited number of documents.”
NSIRA chair Marie Deschamps addressed her statement to Trudeau himself.
“In order to ensure the integrity of our review and not limit or influence our evidence base, NSIRA must have access to all documents contained in any class of documents provided, rather than a subset of these documents,” she said.
“Therefore, NSIRA respectfully requests that all cabinet confidence documents related to our review be released to us, and that all documents provided during the course of this review be without redaction for cabinet confidence.”
Moreover, NSICOP has already stated that they were unable to fulfill their task over the Liberals’ refusal to hand over relevant documents.
Questionable reviews
In order to evade a public inquiry into the matter, Trudeau tasked two of his personal connections with studying Chinese election interference in Canada.
Back in March, Trudeau appointed his family friend and ski buddy David Johnston to investigate the issue as “special rapporteur.” Johnston predictably absolved Trudeau of wrongdoing and advocated against the need for a public inquiry before resigning amid conflict of interest accusations.
Trudeau also had former Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation CEO Morris Rosenberg investigate the 2021 election interference allegations, who of course cleared Trudeau.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre mocked Trudeau’s shameless selections.
“Out of 40 million people in Canada, there’s no one outside of the Trudeau Foundation qualified to look into this foreign interference scandal. This is ridiculous,” Poilievre said last month.
Chinese interference saga
Opposition parties have been calling for a public inquiry since February, after several leaks to the media from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service indicated the Chinese Communist Party interfered in Canada’s 2015, 2019, and 2021 elections with the intention to help Trudeau form government.
In March, Trudeau vetoed a majority vote from parliamentarians wishing to hold a public inquiry. He has continually refused a public inquiry, even lying to international press about it.
Later, two leaked intelligence reports indicated that Trudeau lied about his awareness of the interference.
Trudeau’s Chief of Staff, Katie Telford, further admitted under oath that “it’s quite possible” Trudeau was briefed on the issue of election interference.
