The unanswered question at the heart of David Johnston’s foreign interference report
was based on “unprecedented” access to raw intelligence, Canadian national security officials and their political masters.
“I recognize this report, its conclusions, would be met with skepticism by some, especially by those who in good faith have worked to raise legitimate questions around these issues,” Johnston told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday.“The challenge is this: what has allowed me to determine whether there has in fact been interference cannot be disclosed publicly. A public review of classified intelligence simply cannot be done.
But while Johnston tells us in general who and what his sources are, his report does not directly quote those sources or provide the evidence he’s using to support his arguments. It’s also impossible to say from Johnston’s report the nature of Canadian intelligence on foreign interference, or how in-depth Canadian authorities investigate that activity.
“There’s a whole different level of investigation that could be taking place that we just don’t know about. So it could have just been dismissed out of hand, or it could have been properly investigated, and we just have no visibility on that whatsoever. And that’s true for the entire foreign interference investigations,” Davis added.Another key question is who knew what, and what they did about it.
On the Globe and Mail’s February 2022 report that “an orchestrated machine” was operating ahead of the 2021 election to try to re-elect a Liberal minority, Johnston found “no indication that the PRC had a plan to orchestrate a Liberal government in 2021 or were ‘determined’ that the Conservatives not win.”
But even presented as criticism of the media reporting, Johnston’s report is some of the most detailed publicly-available evidence yet about Beijing’s intentions and methods for attempting to covertly influence Canadian politics.
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