Trudeau, ministers to testify at foreign interference inquiry today
CBC
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a handful of cabinet ministers will take questions today about what they were told about — and how they responded to — allegations of foreign interference in the past two federal elections.
The commission will hear from Government House Leader Karina Gould, Defence Minister Bill Blair and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc during the first half of the day.
Trudeau is expected to start testifying mid-afternoon.
Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue is investigating allegations that China, Russia, India and others meddled in one way or another in the 2019 and 2021 elections. She's also assessing the flow of information within government related to alleged meddling in the previous two federal elections.
One of the allegations stems from a media report that claimed that in 2019, security officials told senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) that then Liberal candidate Han Dong "was part of a Chinese foreign interference network" and that the party should "rescind Dong's candidacy."
Testifying Tuesday, Jeremy Broadhurst — the Liberals' national campaign director for the 2019 federal election — disputed those claims.
"They weren't making a recommendation that the party should do anything," he said. "They weren't advising that the prime minister take any specific actions. They just wanted us to have the information that they had at that time."
Broadhurst added that "it would have been very, very surprising to" him if "intelligence officials had felt it was their place to advise a party on whether or not to drop candidates."
Trudeau's high-profile appearance comes as the first stage of public hearings draws to a close.
Hogue's interim report is due in early May.
Run 3 Space | Play Space Running Game
Traffic Jam 3D | Online Racing Game
Duck Hunt | Play Old Classic Game
Councillors in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality have called for a full review of volunteer and career fire services over concerns about the number of departments and the cost of staffing and equipping them.
A New Brunswick RCMP officer testifying at a drug trafficking trial this week was questioned by the defence about theft charges he himself faces in an unrelated case.
At precisely noon, the casket welders, sanders and paint sprayers are turned off and a quiet hum settles over the Magog Caskets factory floor in southeastern Quebec.
Edgar Spence keeps a folded bundle of receipts for meal expenses his family has had to cover out-of-pocket since they were forced out of their home community by wildfires in northern Manitoba.
A man accused in a series of north-central Edmonton arsons is guilty of starting fires that damaged or destroyed several homes in 2020 and 2021, a judge ruled Thursday.
Residents of Ward 8 in Hamilton are likely to be back at the polls once again after city councillors voted Wednesday to hold a byelection there to replace former councillor John-Paul Danko, who was recently elected as a member of parliament.
Work on Windsor's large Banwell Road interchange and corridor construction projects is currently on hold after Butler's gartersnakes were discovered.
Etched on a poster board the size of her body, Mary McPherson held up a pencil-drawn portrait of Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
One of the largest old elm trees in Toronto — possibly in all of southern Ontario — is on its last legs.
It's graduation week for many University of Guelph students, but it's a particularly special day for one 68-year-old whose walk across the convocation stage was 49 years in the making.
Scientists on Prince Edward Island have created a new warning system to help Maritime farmers avoid a costly disease called fusarium head blight, which can decrease grain yields while contaminating the crop with toxins.
An N.W.T. deputy minister says the territorial government is hoping to use federal housing money to clear derelict homes from communities.