OTTAWA – NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says it’s very disturbing that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre won’t get the top-level security clearance needed to view classified documents on foreign interference.
Singh said party leaders need to be briefed on top-secret information, noting the allegations this week that Indian agents played a role in the extortion, coercion and murder of Canadian citizens on Canadian soil.
Love him or hate him, you’ve got to give Justin Trudeau credit. He is the political equivalent of a cockroach. You can spray him with invective, stomp on him with slogans, drown him in bad polls, and still he scuttles along, fighting to survive. And not only survive, but attack, accusing his opponents of the greatest sin in politics: being traitors to their country.
Once again, Justin Trudeau showed there is no issue so serious that he wouldn’t use it for his own political advantage.
While testifying before the Foreign Interference Commission, Trudeau accused the Conservatives of harbouring people involved in foreign interference and Leader Pierre Poilievre of looking the other way.
In 1989, when reports surfaced that Ottawa had expelled Indian diplomats for spying, then foreign affairs minister Joe Clark did not hold a press conference to lecture the Indian government or express righteous indignation at its alleged Vienna Convention violations.
Instead, Mr. Clark rose in the House of Commons to respond to charges from the Liberal immigration critic Sergio Marchi that India’s government had engaged in “elaborate and covert operations … to discredit and destabilize the Canadian Sikh community” and manipulate Canadian officials. India had grown frustrated with Canada’s coddling of Sikh separatists and the RCMP’s botched investigation into the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight that originated in Canada.
"We have klled 2,700 police officers of various ranks. We have killed the PM, CM, and generals" — Khlistani extremist Shamsher Singh who is sitting with Jagmeet Singh pic.twitter.com/jjQQsUdFcb https://t.co/84YaM9zrG2
— Āryā_Anvikṣā (@Arya_Anviksha_) October 17, 2024
Justin Trudeau brought a twist to the tale.
The Prime Minister appeared on the very last day of witness testimony at the foreign-interference inquiry to push back against the political damage it has caused. And to hurl a grenade at his opponent.
Mr. Trudeau, as is customary at this inquiry on secretive national-security matters, had already been interviewed behind closed doors. And as a summary of that testimony showed, he said he has seen “explosive” information about foreign interference in a political party that he did not name
Trudeau may be lying outright but even if he isn’t for a change he and his party are up to their necks in foreign interference.
Release the names. pic.twitter.com/lbuBZtpC6f
— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) October 16, 2024
Former public safety minister Marco Mendicino says he is very worried the public conversation about some parliamentarians being complicit in foreign interference is becoming a “kangaroo court.”
Mendicino said at a federal inquiry into foreign meddling today that it’s important to follow due process under the law before leaping to conclusions about the conduct of parliamentarians.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had to make then-Public Safety Minister Bill Blair feel “comfortable” with a request for surveillance powers on an Ontario politician, a former top Public Safety official told the Foreign Interference Commission.
The commission has been probing why it took Blair 54 days to approve the 2021 warrant application against a subject whose identity was not revealed during proceedings.
Things went missing in Bill Blair’s office in the spring of 2021. Important things.
Mr. Blair was, after all, the public safety minister, responsible for the intelligence agencies, the RCMP and the border agency, among other things.
Yet a CSIS intelligence note addressed to the minister didn’t make it to Mr. Blair’s eyes. And when CSIS sent a warrant application to the minister’s office seeking to conduct surveillance on an influential Ontario Liberal and former provincial cabinet minister, Michael Chan, it took 54 days before it got to Mr. Blair’s desk.
Russia’s intelligence agency has been on a mission to generate “sustained mayhem on British and European streets”, the head of MI5 has said.
In a rare public speech, Ken McCallum warned that the UK was facing the most “complex and interconnected” threat it has ever seen.
MI5 has also responded to 20 Iran-backed plots since 2022, the director general said.
He said the complex mix of terror-related threats and threats from nation states meant that MI5 had “one hell of a job on its hands”.
If it were a movie, it might feel a little too cliched: Russia funnelling money through a maze of shell accounts, a ploy to push stories favourable to a foreign power, and a supergroup of telegenic stars of the right wing media-sphere.
At least, that’s if the allegations laid out in an explosive 32-page American indictment are proven true. The claim is this: that a fledgling Tennessee-based media company took $10 million (U.S.) — provided by Russians who they all claimed was a fictional European businessman — in order to recruit a gaggle of high-profile YouTubers and post videos that, at best, inflamed existing American social divides and in some cases pushed untrue version of news events designed to paint the Kremlin in an advantageous light.
A majority of Canadians believe illegal foreign money is influencing federal elections, according to in-house research by Elections Canada.
Blacklock’s Reporter says the agency’s study found that more than two-thirds of voters suspect such interference is commonplace, with concerns particularly high among immigrants and British Columbians.
The federal government plans to convene a meeting of foreign ambassadors next month to warn them not to interfere in the next election.
Testifying before the inquiry into foreign interference in Canada, David Morrison, deputy minister of Foreign Affairs, said his department is preparing for the next federal election and wants to make sure that diplomats from other countries know where Canada draws the line between attempts to influence and attempts to interfere.
An RCMP official appearing before the foreign interference inquiry today refused to say whether any Chinese government “police stations” are still operating in Canada.
Asked by lawyers and later by journalists whether any of the so-called police stations are still active here, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Mark Flynn cited an ongoing investigation.
“That again falls into part of our ongoing investigation and I’m not speaking about it at this time,” Flynn told reporters.
