It's a shame we didn't have Trudeau's testimony on foreign interference earlier. Much earlier
CBC
A half-hour into his appearance before the public inquiry into foreign interference, Justin Trudeau arrived at a dramatic moment, from 2019, that would reverberate three and a half years later when Canadian journalists began reporting on a series of intelligence leaks.
In the midst of the 2019 election, security officials briefed a Liberal party official about "concerns" related to the Liberal nomination contest in the Toronto riding of Don Valley North. Those concerns were passed on to Jeremy Broadhurst, the party's campaign director, who then ventured to the government terminal at the Ottawa airport on a Sunday in late September to meet with Trudeau, who was returning after a week of campaign travel, Trudeau recounted on Wednesday.
The prime minister and Broadhurst spoke there for 20 or 30 minutes. Broadhurst explained that intelligence officials had concerns that Chinese officials had potentially been planning to interfere in the nomination contest, specifically by transporting either students or Chinese-Canadians via bus to the polling station to vote for Han Dong, who had won the nomination. He later became the Liberal MP for Don Valley North.
In Trudeau's telling on Wednesday, it wasn't clear whether this plan had actually been carried out. The Liberal party's internal process had raised no red flags about the vote. And the mere presence of buses at a nomination contest was not, in Trudeau's view, evidence of something questionable (apparently it's rather common).
Though it was reported in February 2023 that CSIS officials "urged" the Liberals to revoke Dong's nomination, both Trudeau and Broadhurst have now told the commission — under oath — that no recommendation of any kind was made. Trudeau also testified that what he and Broadhurst heard was to remain secret.
So what to do?
Trudeau and Broadhurst both concluded there were not sufficient grounds to overturn Dong's nomination.
"Overturning a democratic event, like an official party nomination … must have a fairly high threshold," Trudeau told the inquiry. "In this case, I didn't feel that there was sufficient, or sufficiently credible, information that would justify this very significant step."
No doubt there will be those who second-guess Trudeau's decision — or who believe something more should have been done to get to the bottom of what may or may not have happened in Don Valley North.
But that half-hour at the Ottawa airport seems to crystallize something important about both the problem of foreign interference and the political drama that has played out since. And it is perhaps a shame that Trudeau's testimony only came on Wednesday.
The biggest problem at hand remains the undisputed (and now widely known) fact that hostile foreign states are trying to covertly meddle in Canada's democratic process. It might be debated exactly how much of a problem it is, but the threat — both real and perceived — is now apparent.
But it is incomplete and closely guarded information that is central to many of the issues, disputes and headlines that have recently defined the debate around foreign interference.
It has been said repeatedly that what is commonly referred to as "intelligence" is not "evidence." But it might be more accurate to say that intelligence is not always proven fact.
In the case of Don Valley North, that seemingly put Trudeau in the position of having to decide whether to dismiss a candidate on the basis of uncorroborated suspicion. Perhaps he should have. But it might at least be agreed that the decision isn't a slam dunk.
