EDITORIAL: PM waited too long to fight interference

Published Oct 15, 2024  •  2 minute read

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at the change of command ceremony for Defence Staff General Jennie Carignan at the War Museum in Ottawa, July 18, 2024. Photo by Jean Levac / Ottawa Citizen /Postmedia Network

Imagine how much safer Canadians would be today had Prime Minister Justin Trudeau taken years of warnings from Canada’s intelligence and security agencies about foreign interference by China, as seriously as he’s taking those same warnings about India today.

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Imagine how much more robust our safeguards against foreign interference would be had Trudeau enacted the recommendations contained in a 2019 report by the all-party National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) — that Trudeau created.

Granted security clearance to review secret intelligence documents and interview Canada’s top security officials in private, NSICOP reported to Trudeau that foreign interference by hostile states was going on at every level of government in Canada — federal, provincial, municipal and Indigenous.

It warned him that politicians and political staff, regardless of political party, were being targeted, as well as government bureaucrats.

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It said Canadian citizens with origins in those countries campaigning for human rights for their homelands were being forced into silence by agents of those countries threatening to imprison their families back home.

What did Trudeau do in response? By his own admission at the time, he buried NSICOP’s report, ignoring its recommendations.

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Compare that to Trudeau’s hair-on-fire, all-hands-on-deck warning to Canadians on Monday alleging deadly foreign interference by the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, charges Indian officials have described as “preposterous”.

Trudeau said Canada’s security and intelligence agencies have incontrovertible proof agents of the Indian government — including top diplomats assigned to Canada that the Trudeau government has now expelled — facilitated extrajudicial killings, home invasions, drive by shootings, extortion and coercion against Canadian citizens of Sikh origin living in Canada.

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In an remarkable news conference, RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme outlined some of the evidence that arose from the RCMP’s investigation of the June, 2023 fatal shooting of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in Surrey, B.C., a complete about face from the RCMP’s traditional practice of revealing almost nothing about its investigations prior to trial.

Why has transparency (which we agree with) suddenly replaced secrecy as the best way to fight foreign interference?

Nijjar was an Indian-born Canadian citizen who advocated the creation of a separate Sikh homeland, whom India classified as a terrorist.

Four Indian nationals living in Canada have since been charged with his murder.

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