For a few weeks in June, concerns ran high on Parliament Hill about unnamed MPs or senators possibly being compromised, perhaps even consciously, by foreign states — fears raised by a startling but opaque report by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians.
“We cannot and must not remain indifferent in light of such a revelation,” Bloc Quebecois MP Rene Villemure said.
“The allegations that MPs knowingly received help from a foreign government are deeply disturbing,” NDP MP Alastair MacGregor said. “No one with those interests in mind should be sitting in this House of Commons.”
“Members who willingly, knowingly and wittingly assisted a foreign government to the detriment of members of this place and their privileges, as well as the interests of Canada and its people, need to be expelled from the House,” Conservative MP Michael Chong said.
There were loud demands to “name names.”
Four months later, no names have been named. There is no longer even an agreed-upon process for naming names.
So what happens now?
In June, MPs voted to 320 to 2 to ask Justice Marie-Josée Hogue to look into NSICOP’s findings as part of the ongoing public inquiry into foreign interference. But last week, Hogue said she was not capable of adjudicating the matter — at least not in the way MPs might have hoped she would.
“Because the allegations contained in the NSICOP report are based on classified information that cannot be disclosed to the individuals in question, those individuals would not be in a position to be heard in respect of any potential findings that the Commission might consider making against them,” she wrote.
“Thus, as a result of its dual obligations to respect national security confidentiality and the rules of procedural fairness, the Commission cannot make any findings that might identify the individuals involved in the allegations.”
Separately, NDP MP Jenny Kwan had asked Speaker of the House of Commons Greg Fergus to find that the suspicions raised by NSICOP’s report constituted a question of privilege for all MPs. But on Monday, Fergus reported back that he could not find a prima facie breach of privilege.
Had Fergus ruled in Kwan’s favour, she could have had the matter referred to a House committee for further study. But a House committee could still choose to pursue the matter of its own volition. If they were so motivated, MPs could try to design a process for investigating the allegations contained in the NSICOP report and deciding whether further action needs to be taken (up to and including expulsion).
But there’s also no guarantee the House won’t be dissolved for an election in the next few weeks or months. And political attention has clearly moved on — the NSICOP report has not been the subject of a single question in question period since MPs returned to Ottawa earlier this month.
Four months ago, Parliament suffered a paroxysm of suspicion and fear — perhaps for good reasons, given the allegations levelled against unnamed parliamentarians. But now, the intrigue seems like it might just fade away without any obvious resolution.
Simply naming names was never the answer
The calls to “name names” were always short-sighted. Without some kind of due process, naming names would have turned the very real issue of foreign interference into a witch hunt.
But as Hogue concluded, the confidential nature of the information underpinning NSICOP’s findings also makes it difficult to create a fair process for reviewing and testing any evidence.
Given those challenges, it’s fair to ask whether NSICOP erred in levelling allegations against unnamed parliamentarians. As Kwan said in her submission to the Speaker, “the report did not provide any names, and as such, all 338 members of the House, including those who have since left this chamber, are under a cloud of suspicion.”
The members of NSICOP might still argue that they were justified in sounding the alarm — that the cost of leaving a cloud of suspicion over Parliament was outweighed by the need to focus public and political attention on a serious problem. Without knowing what evidence or intelligence the committee saw, it’s hard to judge their decision.
To justify the bombshell NSICOP dropped, the subsequent explosion has to lead to tangible improvements in the way Canada’s political institutions deal with the threat of foreign interference.
The parties agreed in June to expedite new legislation that would implement several measures, including a foreign agents registry. But more could be done — particularly when it comes to party nomination races.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc says he takes the comments of leaders who have read the unredacted NSICOP report very seriously but also wishes Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had taken steps to obtain security clearance so he could read it as well. LeBlanc also said ‘by law’ the government cannot release the names of MPs implicated in the documents.
“We came face to face with the troubling intelligence that nomination processes and leadership races are particularly vulnerable to foreign interference,” David McGuinty, the chair of NSICOP, said last spring.
But what of the allegedly compromised parliamentarians, still unidentified, who could be sitting in the House or Senate?
If neither Hogue nor the House is ready or willing to take up that question, that leaves an idea suggested by two national security and governance experts in June. They suggested that party leaders ask to be briefed on the relevant intelligence and then, if necessary, take action within their own parties and caucuses in response to what they learn. While that approach might be unsatisfying to outside observers, it might allow for some kind of response to any lingering threats.
But Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre previously refused to get the security clearance necessary to review an unredacted copy of the NSICOP report.
Beneath the sensational headlines, the allegations of foreign interference in Canadian politics revealed a political culture and institutions that were not fully ready to deal with the challenges presented. Some of that might be chalked up to the relative novelty of the problem, the questions raised by leaked intelligence and the relative infancy of some of the federal bodies (including NSICOP) established in recent years to counter interference.
One can only hope our political system responds better going forward.
