Just over 26 hours to go before….Johnston, who released his first report on foreign interference last month, will appear before the committee on procedure and House affairs Tuesday in Ottawa at 10:00 A.M. He is expected to answer questions for no less than three hours. The committee has been studying interference by China that may have threatened Conservative MP Michael Chong and his family.
However, MPs could also ask Johnston to address a
CBC News reportFriday that he had retained the crisis-communications firm Navigator at the start of his mandate, at taxpayers’ expense. Navigator said it provided “communications advice and support.” Johnston has been facing an onslaught of bad press after his appointment to investigate Chinese election interference that may have benefited the governing Liberal party, due to his personal connections to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
At a press conference Monday, Trudeau was asked about Johnston’s contract with Navigator but said he would not comment on decisions that Johnston and his team made “to manage the toxic climate that they’re operating in.”
“We shouldn’t have to hire a rapporteur who is a cottage neighbor, a family friend, ski buddy and member of the Trudeau Foundation and then have him try to reverse the reputational damage that that obvious conflict has caused by paying expensive consultants to do damage control,” Poilievre said Monday.
“So, we think we can skip all this, save all this money by going straight to a public inquiry.”
Special rapporteur David Johnston is expected to answer questions for three hours from the committee on procedure and House affairs
apple.news
Meanwhile, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is expected to replace the NDP’s usual member on the committee, MP Rachel Blaney, to question Johnston personally.
Singh did the same thing when Loblaws CEO Galen Weston appeared at a different committee earlier this year.
Johnston has argued that a public inquiry is not advisable because it would duplicate the work he’s already done as special rapporteur and much of the evidence collected by intelligence agencies could not be made public for reasons of national security.
This has been repeatedly proven false by current & former members of these intelligence agencies, & the fact that other public inquiries dealing with sensitive & secret matters are a thing that exist.
He (Johnston) instead has said he will ‘personally’ oversee public hearings with Canadians, government officials, experts and other interested parties to ‘discuss’ foreign interference, its effects on diaspora communities, and policy measures that could improve the government’s response.
The public hearings that David Johnston would personally oversee are not intended to examine foreign interference in the past two federal elections.
A string of leaks to news reporters from intelligence sources over the last several months has alleged that China targeted Conservative MPs in recent federal elections, because the party was seen as unfriendly to the communist regime, while it worked to help the Liberals, including allegedly collaborating with some individual Liberal MPs.
Special rapporteur David Johnston is expected to answer questions for three hours from the committee on procedure and House affairs
apple.news
(the term “Independent” seems to have been dropped from David Johnston’s title in the link above also)