Roundup: Showboating at PROC over allegations of Chinese interference

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The Procedure and House Affairs committee met yesterday to vote on a motion around expanding their study on election interference to include the recent revelations from the Globe and Mail about alleged Chinese interference in the past two elections. Despite some arguing, particularly with Conservatives demanding both the appearance of Katie Telford (once again, for those of you at the back, you do not summon staff to committee because ministers are responsible!), and they were going to demand classified documents, which is becoming just part of the show these days, but they were eventually talked out of both of those demands and have instead summoned a few ministers, plus CSIS, the RCMP, and Elections Canada to discuss these particular allegations.

But of course, there was showboating. And the Liberals, who usually try to pretend that they’re the grown-ups in the room, were all-in on it as Jennifer O’Connell responded to the allegation that the Liberals were covering up what happened because it benefitted them (allegedly), saying “This is the same Trump-type tactics to question election results moving forward,” and that created a giant stir. She’s not entirely wrong, and the Conservatives have dealt in enough bad faith that they could start going down that particular road (and still might), but she wasn’t helping.

Amidst all of this, the Star obtained documents from the Conservatives showing that they were considering going public about the alleged interference over Chinese-language social media they were seeing during the last campaign but decided not to for fear of political backlash. Instead, they sent it to the committee overseeing the integrity of the election, but didn’t get much response from them at the time, who are now complaining that their concerns weren’t taken seriously.

Throughout this, I keep going back to my misgivings about the way in which the original Globe and Mail story was framed, particularly in giving the impression that the Chinese were trying to engineer a minority parliament, which is impossible to do. The piece should have simply stated that the Chinese preferred it because of chaos, but there is no interference they could do, short of stuffing ballot boxes in certain regions, to hope to achieve it, and that’s not going to happen in our system. Likewise, with the allegations around campaign financing, which don’t make any sense as written. Of course, the Globe has a well-known tendency of producing a lot of smoke for very little fire, but all of that smoke is just fuelling the MPs’ showboating, and it’s making it difficult to demonstrate that we have a serious parliament as a result.

https://twitter.com/mrmubinshaikh/status/1628216781901905922

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 364:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian forces are holding positions on the front lines in the east, while Russia claims that they are advancing in the Donbas region toward Bakhmut. Here is a look at five significant battles over the past year. Meanwhile, Ukraine is asking Canada to lend rail expertise and parts to help keep its crucial system running (but seriously? We’ve not been good to rail in this country).

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1628137356556439585

Good reads:

  • At a meeting with a carpenters’ union in Vaughan, Ontario, Justin Trudeau pointed out that Poilievre is using Trump’s failed playbook with his “broken” rhetoric.
  • Here is a deeper dive into the recommendations made by the Rouleau Commission in the final report.
  • The federal government has been sitting on an invitation from Japan to re-join the International Tropical Timber Organisation for several months now.
  • The government is appointing Chief Cadmus Delorme of the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan to chair the residential school document advisory committee.
  • The Canadian Consulate General in New York was ordered to deactivate its TikTok account because it’s a security and privacy nightmare.
  • Pierre Poilievre is demanding the federal government have a plan to close Roxham Road within thirty days. (Good luck with that).
  • Ontario Green Party leader Mike Schreiner says he’s not going to run for the provincial Liberal leadership, but he took twenty days to think about it. Yikes.
  • A new report shows that Alberta and Saskatchewan are releasing four times as much methane as they report, which is Very Bad for climate change.
  • Matt Gurney reads deeper into the Rouleau Commission report and declares that it wasn’t a failure of federalism, it was Doug Ford wilfully ignoring his job.
  • My column looks at the issue of Roxham Road, and why it may be time for the government to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement.

Odds and ends:

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One thought on “Roundup: Showboating at PROC over allegations of Chinese interference”

  1. Again Poilievre is using the naivete of Canadians by super simplifying how Canada can stop legitimate asylum seekers under the current international treaty. But, this is nothing new. For Polly it is all about the criticism without explanation{convenient for him} with no solution.

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