National
Committee Hearing Exposes Trudeau’s Political Spin on Foreign Interference
In a Circus of Leaks, Double Standards, and Evasions, Conservatives Call Out the Trudeau Government for Putting International Optics Over Canadian Sovereignty
In Canada’s recent hearing with the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU) on alleged interference by Indian government-linked agents, what should have been a serious inquiry into national security turned into a Liberal-led circus of deflections, double standards, and selective outrage. The Trudeau government trotted out high-ranking officials—representatives from CSIS, the RCMP, the Privy Council Office, and Global Affairs Canada—who were there to answer for the alleged interference tactics targeting Canadians. And to top it off, they were asked why, instead of informing Canadians directly, they’d chosen to leak the intel to The Washington Post. Why were Canadians the last to know about threats on their own soil? And why did a foreign newspaper get the scoop on a story affecting Canadian sovereignty?
At issue were allegations that Indian agents had been involved in intimidation tactics and organized criminal activities targeting Canada’s Sikh community, particularly those sympathetic to the separatist movement. The committee also questioned why the Trudeau government’s response has been to selectively leak this information to American media, while keeping Canadians in the dark about similar threats from other foreign governments—particularly China.
The Leaks to The Washington Post: Information for Foreign Press, Silence for Canadians
Instead of informing Canadians directly, the Trudeau government decided it was a better idea to leak details about alleged Indian interference to The Washington Post, claiming it was to combat “misinformation” internationally. Let’s pause for a moment—this is Canada we’re talking about, and the government feels it’s necessary to share news about threats to Canadians with foreign media instead of Canadians themselves. That selective leak didn’t go unnoticed by Conservative MPs, especially Raquel Dancho. Dancho took the PCO to task, asking why, when it’s Indian interference, they rush to get the word out to American media, but when it comes to Chinese interference, they hide behind “national security.” Canadians watching this hearing saw the hypocrisy plain as day.
Then enter Jennifer O’Connell. She wasn’t there to press for answers—she was there to protect the government narrative. Instead of holding the PCO accountable, O’Connell fed them a lifeline with soft, scripted questions. She was practically giving them cue cards. She asked them to “explain” the reasoning behind the leak to The Washington Post, letting the PCO offer up the excuse of “controlling the narrative.” Controlling the narrative? You don’t say. Jennifer O’Connell might as well have been reading from a Liberal Party talking points memo, trying to dress up a blatant international PR stunt as a move to protect Canadians.
But here’s where it falls apart. Dancho’s challenge was clear: if the Trudeau government had no problem leaking intel on India to The Washington Post, why do they stay silent on the Chinese interference claims that have rocked our elections? Why are Canadians kept in the dark when it doesn’t suit the Liberals’ image? This isn’t national security; this is political convenience, plain and simple.
Conservatives Call Out Liberal Spin and Selective Transparency
Raquel Dancho didn’t mince words, asking why the government leaks intelligence on Indian interference to American media yet hides CCP-related interference under a “national security” guise.
“I wish that the Liberal members would apply that same energy to holding their own Prime Minister accountable for failing to stop interference into our elections,”
She said, calling out the hypocrisy point-blank. Dancho’s comments exposed the Liberals’ inconsistent approach to foreign interference and questioned why the government continues to treat Canadians like afterthoughts.
Glen Motz zeroed in on the glaring gaps in Canada’s vetting process for foreign diplomats, particularly those from India. He pointed out that expelling diplomats means nothing if their replacements are allowed to enter without adequate security checks. Motz’s questions cut to the core of the Liberals’ “tough on interference” stance, revealing it as hollow when diplomats allegedly linked to interference can come and go unchecked.
Dane Lloyd challenged the government’s decision to leak information to The Washington Post rather than informing Canadians directly, highlighting a fundamental question: Why does the Canadian government prioritize international press over its own people? His frustration echoed what many Canadians feel—that their government is more interested in protecting its image on the world stage than ensuring Canadian sovereignty and safety.
The Bottom Line
This SECU Committee hearing confirmed the worst fears of Canadians: the Trudeau government is more interested in international optics than national security. The Liberals pick and choose which foreign threats to publicize, conveniently spinning some stories while keeping others under wraps—all based on what best serves their political agenda. If this is the government’s idea of protecting Canadian sovereignty, it’s no wonder Canadians are left questioning their safety.
And here’s where the Liberal hypocrisy hits new lows: instead of owning up to their failures, they tried to spin it, suggesting that Pierre Poilievre is somehow responsible for the foreign interference threats that have emerged on Trudeau’s watch. But let’s be real—if the Liberals had names of Conservative collaborators in interference plots, we all know they would be the first to name or leak them to the press. Instead, the Privy Council Office’s actions and The Washington Post leak were backed by none other than Trudeau’s own Prime Minister’s Office.
Conservatives like Raquel Dancho, Glen Motz, and Dane Lloyd came prepared to call out this hypocrisy. They demanded transparency and accountability—the very things Trudeau’s government seems reluctant to provide. This wasn’t a hearing on foreign interference; it was an exposé on the Trudeau government’s shameless double standards and lack of genuine concern for Canadian sovereignty.
In Canada’s darkest hours, when it comes to defending our sovereignty, it’s clear that it’s the Conservatives—not the Liberals—who are standing up for Canadians, demanding the truth, and holding this government to account. Trudeau’s Liberals have shown they’ll trade Canadian security for political optics, undermining everything Canada stands for. And Canadians deserve so much better.
Invite your friends and earn rewards
From the Fraser Institute
By Bruce Pardy
In British Columbia, property rights are in turmoil. The B.C. Supreme Court recently declared that Aboriginal title exists on 800 acres of land in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver. Aboriginal title, said the court, is “senior and prior” to fee simple interests. In the shadow of the decision, given the implications, Aboriginal title claims are receiving more attention. Kamloops and Sun Peaks ski resort are targets in one such claim. Meanwhile, the B.C. government has been conferring Aboriginal title across the province too. It continues to make agreements, such as on Haida Gwaii, to transfer control over land use in the province.
Courts and governments have caused this problem. The framers of Canada’s new constitution, adopted in 1982, excluded rights to private property. But at the last hour, they guaranteed existing Aboriginal rights and title. Over decades, the Supreme Court of Canada has expanded the scope of those rights. The recent decision about Richmond is a culmination of its work. That decision is under appeal, first to the B.C. Court of Appeal. After that, we may find out if the Supreme Court approves. But that could take years.
It’s not just the courts. In 2015, the Trudeau government agreed to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). UNDRIP says that Aboriginal groups have the right to own, use, develop and control any lands that they traditionally occupied or used. In 2019, the B.C. legislature incorporated UNDRIP into BC law. Known as DRIPA, the statute requires B.C. law to be consistent with UNDRIP. The NDP government has been granting Aboriginal title and control across the province accordingly.
What can be done? The Canadian constitution has an onerous amending formula. Repealing the section on Aboriginal rights would be next to impossible. So would adding private property guarantees to the Charter. But last week, Dwight Newman, professor of law at the University of Saskatchewan, suggested an alternative in the Post. Rather than attempt wholesale change, he proposed an amendment specific to B.C.
Section 43 is one of the ways to amend the Canadian constitution. It allows changes “in relation to any provision that applies to one or more, but not all, provinces.” The requirements are simple. The legislature in one province and the federal Parliament must both pass a resolution declaring the amendment. That’s it. Such a resolution, Newman suggests, could guarantee that private property in B.C. has priority over Aboriginal title.
He might be right. Section 43 has been used, for example, to alter constitutional denominational school rights in Quebec and Newfoundland. In 1993, New Brunswick used Section 43 to add a provision to the Charter about linguistic rights in the province.
But Section 43 might be narrower than hoped. The New Brunswick amendment was not challenged in court at the time of its enactment. So, yes, Section 43 was used to change the Charter, but not with judicial benediction. Moreover, the Supreme Court has not considered the ways in which Section 43 can be used. Section 43 amendments so far have been minor, mere “tweaks” to the constitutional order. We do not know what meaning the Court might give to “any provision that applies to one province.” It could mean any new provision, but more likely it means any existing provision that applies only to the province. Which would rule out using Section 43 to protect property rights from Aboriginal title in B.C. If the Court allowed Section 43 to be used for that purpose, then Section 43 could theoretically be used for anything, including amending the Charter wholesale until each province had its own version.
Even if Section 43 could be used to fix the property mess, it requires both the province and Ottawa to act. In addition, B.C. legislation requires that such changes be first approved by referendum. The B.C. and federal governments have helped to cause the crisis and continue to do so. They seem intent on undermining the system of land tenure in their own society. They are not likely to disrupt the constitution to frustrate their own work.
Moreover, there are other, simpler places to begin. The federal government could reverse its support for UNDRIP. The B.C. legislature could repeal DRIPA. Neither sitting government will do that. Few political actors will step out of line on Aboriginal questions, even to defend the country’s land, economy, and people. Will we discover whether there is anything more Canadian, after all, than acquiescence? In Canada, truth and reconciliation has morphed into fiction and capitulation.
Canada’s property crisis runs deep, and not just in B.C. Aboriginal rights are widely regarded as the natural and proper order of things. Special status for Aboriginal people is deeply ingrained in Canadian culture as well as the constitution. But it is dead wrong. Legal rights should not depend on lineage or group affiliation. Everyone born in Canada is native to the place. In a free country, laws apply not to distinctive peoples, but to individual people and their private property.
Bruce Pardy
Professor of Law, Queen’s University
“Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city who made this movement their own. I speak of Yemeni Bodega owners and Mexican abuelas, Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses, Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties”.- new NYC mayor Zohran Mamdami
The new mayor’s effusive tribute to immigrants is very on-brand for the Woke Left. Coming as it did on the week where Canadians’ remembered the sacrifice of the over one hundred thousand who “died to make the world free” in WWI, WWII and Korea— even as their homes are squeezed between hereditary land rights and Justin Trudeau’s holiday camp.
For Boomers that battle sacrifice has underpinned their lifestyle for most of the past 75 years or so. No matter how cynical or hipster the Boomer, the phrase “They died to make the world free” was the Gorilla Glue holding Western civilizations together. Whether you agreed or not, you acknowledged its pre-eminence in society.
Those who annually recall family members who’d made the ultimate sacrifice underscore that “they died to make the world free” is foundational in their national myth making. For example, our younger son placed roses on my uncle’s grave in the Commonwealth war cemetery near Hanover, Germany. He then delivered the petals to his grandmother to acknowledge the loss of her brother.
These rituals of sacrifice were everywhere till the early decades of the twenty-first century when the demographics of declining birth rates in the West combined with aggressive immigration— both sanctioned and illegal— to create the Beirut described by mayor Mandami upon election. He was talking about NYC, but it could have been Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. But you are free to ask what freedom means in this context.
North America in particular has long encouraged immigration. It was typically combined with assimilation in the doctrines used by governments of the day. People from around the globe arrived in the West and aspired to the cultural and financial modes they discovered. For one young Ukrainian boy we knew the figure of Frank Mahovlich, son of Croatian immigrants, on the Toronto Maple Leafs was proof that he could belong in his new society.
But somewhere along the way the suicidal empathy of progressives— combined with a need for low-income workers for corporations— loosened the expectations for those arriving in the West. In Canada, prime minster Justin Trudeau adopted Yan Martel’s diversity model of Canada as a travellers’ hotel. No longer would newcomers need to assimilate.
They could live side-by-side with ancestors of original inhabitants while still recreating their former homelands. In time the bureaucracy— and revenge of the cradle— would replace the cranky white people with a more malleable electorate. It was Replacement Theory.
The Canadian boys going over the top at Vimy or taking off in their Lancaster bombers would never have foreseen this as they risked their lives. They couldn’t countenance the people they’d fought for throwing away their sacrifice on a pandering scheme like DEI (diversity, equality, inclusion) which replaced merit with settler guilt in hiring decisions.
When government admonitions to accept their societal revolution failed to produce enough newcomer guilt, social media filled the gap. Remember the drowned Syrian boy on the beach in 2015? The uproar about Canada’s immigration policies helped unseat Steven Harper and install a trust-fund puppet in the PMO. And it opened the floodgates that sent Canada from 35 million to 42.5 population in a decade.
As Mark Steyn observes, “Winston Churchill said we shall fight them on the beaches; his grandson Rupert Soames set up the highly lucrative business model whereby we welcome them on the beaches …and then usher them to taxpayer-funded four-star hotels with three meals a day and complimentary cellphone. That’s the story of the post-war west in three generations of one family.”
Recent reports show that many top American corporations are moving away from DEI back to merit-based hiring. But Canada’s government, led by its Woke academic and culture sectors, remains stubbornly fixed on the DEI model. That obsession keeps the corporate side from emulating their American counterparts.
The tell that DEI is far from dead can be seen in how the advertising world has doubled down on the orthodoxy of majority male whites bad/ everyone else good. In what is clearly a political, not profitable approach, minorities, mixed-race couples and women are featured in commercials in numbers far disproportionate to their percentage of the population.
A blend of LGBTQ and Rousseau’s The Noble Savage has produced The Church Lady come to the 2020s. Upper-class blacks are portrayed as authority figures while white males are hillbilly figures of ridicule. This is not to placate those communities but to assuage the guilt felt by educated white liberals.
Mixed-race commercials now mandate that virtually no same-race figures be allowed to be paired on-camera. (Having the ironic effect of white liberals telling the minorities they worship that they are not worthwhile unless in combination with the evil settler demographic.)
It’s the same in movies and TV which used to complain about cultural appropriation but now suddenly place racial and gender-inappropriate actors in period roles that are clearly specific to whites and males. For example, Netflix’s new series Death by Lightning is set in Chicago, 1880 – and this foreground establishing scene pops up.:
•an Asian woman,
•two Black men,
•and a one-legged man
-
all walking together. @StutteringCraig estimates the odds of this DEI dream at roughly 1 in 640,000. No matter. Authenticity is so yesterday.
The DEI obsession has pilled over into traditional Remembrance Day ceremonies that were marred by land acknowledgements and slavery references (slavery was banned in Canada 45 years before it became a nation.) Which led to CBC running a story on the Palestinian flag being raised at Toronto city hall on Remembrance Day.
In B.C. premier David Eby has declared that Canada now needs a power-sharing with the Cowichan and their confederates. American politics is also loath to give up their DEI dogma. In one real-life example leftist radio host Stephanie Miller kissed the feet of unhinged Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett. “Why, yes I DID kiss the sneakers of @JasmineForUS and I DO worship the ground she walks on! And she was LOVELY about it!” The laces fetishists think this performative theatre will always be thus. It won’t.
“The Venetian Republic lasted 1,100 years – and ninety-nine per cent of North Americans have never heard of it. But, on present demographic and fiscal trends, that’s four times longer than the United States is likely to make it,” Steyn observes.
“Walk around New York: The Yemeni-Mexican-Senegalese-Uzbek-Trinidadian-Ethiopians are the future. And you’re not.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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