Things to do in Ottawa when you're not calling an inquiry into Chinese election interference
Things to do in Ottawa when you're not calling an inquiry into Chinese election interference
Plus: Sometimes you go around the biased media, sometimes you go through them
To me, Artur Wilcynski is the interesting name on this list.
Reporters for Global and The Globe and Mail, the news organizations that have been breaking most of the stories on CSIS leaks about alleged China interference in Canada’s 2021 election, have been building out lists of people in Canada’s national-security establishment who think Justin Trudeau’s denials aren’t sufficient to the task of finding out what’s been happening.
Some of the names are — I mean this in the best sense! — the very definition of the usual suspects. Richard Fadden was a national-security advisor to both Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau. He’s a first-call talking head for every news organization, precisely because he knows what he’s talking about. He sees “no compelling reason” to put off a public inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian elections.
One of the names is perhaps more surprising than it should be. Gerald Butts used to be Trudeau’s principal secretary. He is still widely presumed to be a sort of arms-length Svengali to this prime minister. I don’t think that’s true. I think Butts is seen in his old shop as a generally friendly outsider, in a world where “outsider” is a pejorative, or at least a qualifier, that outweighs any amount of friendliness. But still, he’s quoted in both the Globe and Global stories directly contradicting the PM, which happens rarely enough that it does count as news.
But I was surprised to see Artur Wilczynski in the mix. I know him as a former Canadian ambassador to Norway. I didn’t know he went to the Canadian Security Establishment afterward. He doesn’t really market himself as a source or pundit on these matters, so I read this as coming from the heart.
So now we’re left to wonder why Justin Trudeau isn’t calling some kind of inquiry into election interference. Here I may disappoint some readers by resisting the urge to write, “Because he’s wicked” or “Because he owes China his office and his soul.” I mean… maybe?… but there are often more mundane reasons for rejecting a proposed course of action. Often, with many leaders, it’s simply enough that a proposed course of action be proposed for it to be disqualified. Leaders get enough bad ideas pushed on them that a blanket policy of rejecting all ideas will leave you more free time in your day than a blanket policy of accepting many of them.
So I take the Fadden-Butts-Wilcynski comments as attempts to urge a second look. This echelon of the Ottawa establishment is saying, in effect, We’ve worked with you, we share your objectives, but it may be time to rethink this.
Why might Trudeau still resist?
William Safire used to have a device in his New York Times column called “Reading [so-and-so’s] Mind.” It would be written entirely in first person in the voice of a public figure — Bibi Netanyahu, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Bush 41 campaign director James Baker. The conceit was: “I am this person, at least for the length of this column, and I’m going to tell you what goes through their head as they stare into the mirror.” The columns were a mix of uncredited reporting and speculation, and they sought to answer a common question about a given public figure at a crucial moment: What must they be thinking? I swiped the format a couple of times at my old National Post column — a Joe Clark staffer once flattered me by saying he’d read a Reading-Joe’s-Mind column and wondered, how does he know?! — but I find the format too clumsy to reproduce well. Not enough readers get the concept immediately. So instead of writing a Reading Justin’s Mind column, I just wrote a really long paragraph about old Bill Safire columns. That’s three minutes you’re not getting back.
Having said all this, let us now read Justin Trudeau’s mind. Why not hold an inquiry into election interference? These are my best guesses at the PM’s arguments.
1. It’s a mountain out of a molehill.
Trudeau has actually been fairly consistent in saying other governments try to influence Canadian elections, and it’s pretty clear he means China. “Unfortunately we're seeing that countries, state actors from around the world, whether it's China or others, are continuing to play aggressive games with our institutions, with our democracies,” he said in November.
“The world is changing, and sometimes in quite scary ways, and we need to make sure that those who are tasked with keeping us safe every single day are able to do that, and that's why we'll continue to invest in some of the tools and resources necessary to do that.”
It’s hard to know how to score a statement like that. There’s some awareness that it’s an “aggressive” (yet playful!) and “quite scary” world. There’s also the awesomely undying Trudeau certainty that “investing” in a problem solves the problem.
Parsing some recent statements by Trudeau and other government figures, it seems they absolutely believe China has opinions on Canadian elections. There’s a level of background noise — social-media campaigning for starters — that’s not going away. To some extent this is just a constant, like the weather. In 2018 I asked Jonathan Vance, then the Chief of the Defence Staff, whether Canada was a target of antagonistic state action by China. “I would say we have been for some time,” Vance said.
I’ve also heard that “influencing” elections and “interfering” in them are two different things and that to some extent, everybody is constantly seeking to influence everybody else’s elections. Including Canadians. The question then becomes: what’s the threshold of acceptability? I know of several Canadians who had held senior positions in Stephen Harper’s government who campaigned, in person, for the Leave side in Britain’s 2017 Brexit referendum. And plenty of Canadians who head to New Hampshire or Iowa every four years to try and make somebody president of the United States. So to some extent, I think the rationale is: sauce for the gander. China can’t be the only country that isn’t allowed to weigh in on other countries’ large public processes. Especially since some of the specific claims for China — they wanted a minority Liberal government and by God, they delivered one! — attributes gifts of electioneering sorcery to China that are beyond the reach of actual Canadian campaigns. Watch the NDP and Conservative pundits on Herle’s podcast laugh at that one.
2. China is a tremendous pain in the ass.
China sometimes commits evil on a vast scale, as in its organized system of detention camps for Uyghurs. But at a more mundane level, I don’t know whether people understand how much energy China puts into making officials in other governments regret making any critical statement. Not even just other governments. The NBA has also tasted China’s wrath.
At a foreign-policy conference last year I ran into a diplomat from a European country who was still miffed because at a previous edition of the conference, his country’s foreign minister had learned at the last minute he would be on a panel about China, not a panel about Russia. This person said there’s no particular cost to slagging Russia, because they can’t even keep treads on their tanks. The Chinese, on the other hand, “are extremely vindictive, and they hear everything.” For evidence of this, consider how often companies and even entire countries close to home find themselves apologizing to China for T-shirt designs that displeased the regime.
Trudeau just got out of a three-year fight with China over Meng Wanzhou and the two Michaels. China’s head thug feels perfectly free to tear a strip off Trudeau in public for simply repeating Trudeau’s side of a previous conversation. (This is still the recent Canadian news event that’s likeliest to become a topic of conversation in Ottawa diplomatic circles. It’s a perfect Rorschach test. Never mind Trudeau — what was Xi thinking?) The thought of opening up a brand-new, high-profile debate about Chinese attacks on Canadian democracy — which China would certainly loudly construe as a Canadian attack on China — may be simply exhausting to the prime minister. I mean, this is a guy who’s so confrontation-averse he can’t even get his own house fixed, and come to think of it, the same paterfamilias floating through the hallways of the old residence haunts the kid’s China policy as well.
3. Liberals do not want to campaign for their own downfall.
The only Conservative leader to defeat a Liberal government in a federal election since I graduated from university was Stephen Harper. I don’t think enough people remember the role that blanket saturation coverage of the Gomery Inquiry into the Liberal sponsorship scandal had to do with that victory. Gomery heard witnesses for nine months. It was a rare night when the inquiry’s latest revelations didn’t lead the evening news. I know Liberals (OK, one) who still insist that calling the inquiry was a tactical masterstroke that won Paul Martin the 2004 election. But I’ll tell you who doesn’t want to rub some of that tactical masterstroke pixie dust all over himself, is Justin Trudeau.
Part of the secret to Trudeau’s success is that on TV he does a decent job of pretending he’s not utterly consumed by thoughts of electoral success. But sometimes the mask falls. Jody Wilson Raybould said she was repeatedly told that the reason she needed to rethink a special deal for SNC-Lavalin was the prospect of looming Quebec and federal elections. We’re probably about as far from a federal election today as we were when Trudeau’s PMO started pressuring-not-pressuring Wilson-Raybould. Does he want to launch a process that will lead to months of devastating headlines? That’s a big “No.”
So those, I think, are his reasons. It has been tremendously rewarding to see that they don’t cut it with an ever-growing number of Canadians. The people calling for an inquiry into foreign interference are trying to remind Trudeau that there are bigger considerations here. They’re trying to tell the Liberal leader that he doesn’t get to define “healthy democracy” as “we win.” That’s what autocracies do, and he doesn’t ever get to take back his remarks admiring an autocracy at an event organized by two friends to whom he remains loyal. Justin Trudeau may be the only Canadian who thinks “Trust me” still works for him on this file.
Poilievre’s super-genius 3D media chess
This is deep.
This is Christine Andersen, a member of the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party who has become tremendously popular among supporters of the Freedom Convoy, tweeting her disdain for Conservative MP Colin Carrie after she met Carrie and two of his caucus colleagues last week. And then deleting the tweet. I know nothing about the guy who tweeted the untweeting of the tweet and offer no endorsement of any of it. But I have questions.
Colin Carrie, Dean Allison and Leslyn Lewis met with Andersen, who may today have more of an adoring public in Canada than in Germany thanks to her steadfast support of the Freedom Convoy protesters and her disdain for Justin Trudeau. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs really didn’t like this, because of Andersen’s “Islamophobic and anti-Immigrant views.” So they tweeted their concern.
This led Poilievre to say Andersen’s views are “vile” and “have no place in our politics.” The three MPs “regret meeting her.” He wishes Andersen had stayed home. “Her racist, hateful views are not welcome here.”
Here’s the thing. The Conservative leader didn’t say this on Twitter or Instagram, where I’m given to understand he is something of a regular. He had his comms guy send a few quotes to Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley, who tweeted them out. The comms guy, Sebastian Skamski, has in fact been busy working closely with “legacy media” and “corporate media” and “state media” outlets Poilievre usually disdains, telling the Globe and CTV and the Great Satan CBC that the boss wouldn’t know Andersen if he tripped over her, but that he wouldn’t mind tripping over her. (I paraphrase.)
On Poilievre’s social media accounts, not a peep about his brave work protecting Canada from racist, hateful views. Just a happy note about a Black History Month event he attended with Lewis, after she made it clear she won’t follow Colin Carrie down the path of forced contrition.
Two things about all of this. First, which of Andersen’s views are beyond the pale? It’s a rhetorical question; Justin Ling lists some of the many possible answers. But which views so recently applauded by Canadians coast-to-cast does Pierre Poilievre want to contest? Or Colin Carrie, for that matter?
The answer, of course, is that Poilievre really doesn’t want to answer that question, because some of his support comes from people who like Christine Andersen just fine. Which is also why he’s keeping this whole matter off his social media. It ensures that the people who trust only stuff they get directly from him will be able to believe he hasn’t just cut them loose in a panic damage-control exercise. When that’s precisely what he’s done. The replies to Lilley’s tweet of Skamski’s statement include a lot of people who are sure Lilley made those lines up, because the corroborating material they trust most — Poilievre’s own self — is absent.
Poilievre used to fund-raise for help to “go around” the terrible corrupt corporate blah-de-blah media. Turns out that on odd-numbered days, he’d rather go through them.
Thus is loyalty rewarded. Lilley’s a very good journalist whose news sense I trust, and he’s done nothing at all wrong here, but he’s also solidly conservative and would vote for Poilievre’s party over Trudeau’s five times out of five. If his credibility has to come into question because Poilievre needs to thread a needle, well, that’s life.
As Robert Caro wrote, power reveals. The people who thought Poilievre was bringing them donuts a year ago because he wanted them to have donuts now discover they’re Falstaff to his Henry. And those of us who wish a leader would turn one-fifth as much ingenuity to the real challenges facing the country as this one has spent to curating his Twitter account, well, now we know what we’re getting too. ’Tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation, as Falstaff also said.
I’m in the last week of writing this short book about all of that. It has been a welcome challenge and it’s gone well, but I’m also aware that it’s kept me from meeting you here as often as I’d like. I plan to come roaring back in March. Thank you as always for your support.
I should repeat here what I wrote last week: I don't see the need or the utility for a full-blown public inquiry that would in any way resemble Gomery. I suspect Wilczynski used the word "independent" with care. This could be something as simple as asking Dick Fadden, who probably has the necessary security clearance and who was considered good enough to work closely with Trudeau and Harper, to look into the question.
As for "Let's wait for Rosenberg before we decide everything's gone to hell," sure, fine, but let's wait for Rosenberg before we buy a government's bland denials as anything but self-interested.
Lilley! Brian Lilley! Not Lilly. Man, book deadlines make me sloppy. Fixed.