A new twist on the interference inquiry

Or, have we reached a reckless red line?

Reasonable people can disagree about the value and objectives of some kind of public inquiry into election interference. I don’t see the value and am opposed, but others—such as Dick Fadden or Gerald Butts, have reasonable arguments in favour.

What I do think needs to give us all pause are the ways in which political invective has corrupted the question. Alongside this, we should be concerned about the ways in which key mainstream media outlets would like to steer the debate. We expect politicians to try to steer, but is this the role we want the media to play?

Pressure from the media for a public “independent” inquiry may have peaked, or not. I have respected friends who say a “tipping point” has been reached. The Prime Minister clearly doesn’t think so, but he may be forced to change his mind by more leaks, or opposition political pressure, or even party advice. But some journalists are intent on stoking the fires in ways that are looking increasingly reckless.

I am sorry if I seem to be singling out Andrew Coyne, whose views I often respect, but he currently leads the charge on the election inquiry and has a “bully pulpit.” In an longish opinion column published in the Globe and Mail on March 3, he begins by telling us that we don’t need a public inquiry to determine that states are interfering in our elections and we don’t need a public inquiry to conclude that foreign state interference has not ‘substantially altered' (his words—not quite the language of the Rosenberg report) the outcome of recent Canadian federal elections. For good measure he adds that we don’t need a public inquiry to tell us how best to erect defences against future attempts at foreign interference. We know all this already.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-we-dont-need-a-public-inquiry-into-foreign-interference-in-canadian/

I am with him on all three points.

But turns out he was only winding up for his real pitch, which is that we need a public inquiry into “domestic complicity in foreign interference.” (Not, to be clear into the harms done to diaspora communities by foreign interference tactics of intimidation, blackmail and efforts to silence critics, and not on the subject of the harms done to national security, research, and our economy by foreign espionage—which are the biggies).

Coyne is after the “collaborators” and, in Lenin’s famous phrase, the question of “who stands to gain” (butchered by ‘“the dude” in the film “The Big Lebowski”). He thinks the media leaks to his organisation (and Global News) have given us “plenty of evidence” about passive and active collaboration. He charges on to assert that the Liberal government “chose to do nothing about it” and effectively engage in a cover-up. This, of course, mirrors the language of the Conservative party leader, Pierre Poilievre.

He does acknowledge, bless him, that “the credibility of the allegations is likewise uncertain: Intelligence officers can get things wrong, or have their own agendas.”

But then comes a big contradiction. Because Mr. Coyne basically insists that we must have an independent public inquiry because of the leaks, whose veracity he clearly trusts. Why trust? Because whoever leaked them was putting not just his/her career on the line, but facing jail time (though I think a prosecution would be unlikely—have a look at the record of prosecuting leakers in Canada). I find his depiction of leakers a tad on the naive side. Leakers leak for complex motives. Few are white knights.

His other and lesser line of argument, that the Prime Minister was briefed about foreign interference threats and chose to do nothing about them is, I think, weak. We can debate what has been and what more needs to be done. I am firmly on the side of arguing for the ‘more needs to be done’ side, and I will make some brief suggestions below. But as Coyne himself admits, policy on countering foreign interference needs to be crafted by governments, not by public inquiries run by retired judges.

The column ends (what journalist can resist) with a neat metaphor about bank robbers. The question, he says, is not whether the robbers exist but “whether the robbers had inside help.” Let’s be clear, by “inside help” he means collaborators working for a foreign state (let’s call them agents, although the Australian security service prefers the term “lackeys”). He also suggests that a story line coming out of a public inquiry might be that the Liberals were “prepared to accept China’s help” to get elected.

Does he really think a public inquiry would pin-point collaborators, or reach a finding that a government in power stooped to accepting help from an adversarial power.

Watching out for collaborators is the task of a security service. Its spelled out in the CSIS Act at s2 (b), which includes a mandate directed at:

foreign influenced activities within or relating to Canada that are detrimental to the interests of Canada and are clandestine or deceptive or involve a threat to any person

Naming collaborators is a matter for criminal investigation and court room proceedings, with all the legal protections of due process.

A suggestion that an elected government stooped to accepting or winking at foreign help to remain in power is, in my view, simply outside the pale of democratic discourse. Sorry if that sounds too Canadian.

Part of our national story is that we prided themselves in never stooping to the kinds of excesses that imperilled the United States during the brief and incendiary career of Senator Joseph McCarthy. (Though there is some historical revisionism about that as we have learned more about RCMP security service-inspired purges)

Maybe we all need to pause amidst this remarkable Canadian furore and remind ourselves of the moment that brought Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunt to an end. It happened in 1954 during televised hearings called by the Senator, based on false accusations he had made about lax security at a US army facility. The US army decided to put up a fight and hired a lawyer, Joseph Welch, to appear before McCarthy’s bear-pit sub-committee. When McCarthy charged that one of Welch’s legal team had secret Communist ties, Welch responded with what is described on the US Senate’s web site as “immortal lines:” “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or recklessness…You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency.”

https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/have-you-no-sense-of-decency.htm

Maybe our sense of decency is also dangerously eroded. Maybe we all need to reflect, especially those with a bully pulpit.

No, we don’t need a public inquiry to expose collaborators. Imagine how such a thing would tear at our public fabric, and if imagination is not enough, think historically.

Where evidence of collaboration exists (and let’s not be naive about that), what we need is a Canadian Security Intelligence Service able to use its counter-intelligence powers and lawful threat reduction measures to mitigate their impacts. CSIS in turn would need the trust and support of Canadian diaspora communities in this work. If intelligence is available that can be turned into evidence, then the RCMP needs to get to work on developing cases for prosecution. Recent testimony from the RCMP Deputy Commissioner in charge of federal policing stated that no such actionable intelligence emerged from the 201 federal election.

If we identify Chinese embassy officials engaged in unfriendly activities that target diasporas communities, then kick the buggers out (the polite diplomatic phrase is declaring them ‘persona non grata’—hence to PNG). We need to use diplomacy to name and shame as appropriate.

Our security agencies must do more to enhance the public’s literacy on national security threats by more proactive publications and public speeches, as outlined in the government’s 2017 national security transparency commitment. (Sorry if dedicated readers are finding me repeating myself a bit).

If I am following Andrew’s argument, we know all this already. Who gains from a public inquiry? (Sorry Big Lebowksi).