Canada

Now that David Johnston has stepped down, the serious work of putting in place a commission of inquiry can begin.

Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc embarrassed himself by saying the Liberals were never opposed to a public inquiry. But at this stage, who cares?

The important thing is that Canadians will finally have a chance to know what really happened with Chinese government interference in our elections.

He’s a delusional wee tyrant, far too much the narcissist to ever consider stepping down.

So it looks like there’s going to be a public inquiry into Chinese communist meddling in our elections after all. At least Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc is hinting as much. Who saw that one coming?

Not David Johnston, evidently. He finally stepped down from his untenable position, which I greet with the same grace he exhibited in announcing it. Namely in resigning as depressingly ordinary rapporteur he blamed “the highly partisan atmosphere around my appointment and work,” not the real conflict of interest that made him unsuitable from the word go and the shabby initial report that made his position untenable.

It was the right decision for David Johnston to resign from whatever his job was, whoever’s decision it was.

Still, amongst the things for which there will have to be a reckoning when this is all over is why he was appointed in the first place. Mr. Johnston himself never seemed to understand what he had walked into or why he should not have walked into it – to the last, in his letter of resignation, he put the opposition down to the “highly partisan atmosphere” – but the Prime Minister and his people did. They appointed him not in spite of his unsuitability, but because of it.

The old saw about crisis management is that the goal is to figure out where the crisis ends and get there as quickly as possible.

But when Liberal cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc met reporters on the Saturday morning after the resignation of David Johnston to talk about next steps, he was back where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was three months ago, on March 6.