2831 replies to this topic

[LJ]

Thank goodness we had a leader like Justin Trudeau to handle the pandemic. Can you just imagine how a clown like PeePee would have dealt with it.

There are several clowns in the HOC, but they all sit on the governing side of the house.

[todd]

“David Johnston will recommend Tuesday whether Canada needs interference inquiry”: https://globalnews.c...mendations/amp/


Espionage & Foreign Interference- CSIS:
English: https://youtu.be/73eXrfx-m1M
French: https://youtu.be/alg3L_a0PsQ

[spanky123]

^ What do we think Trudeau told him to report? Any bets one way or another? Perhaps he will split the middle and admit to foreign interference but that only NDP and Cons worked with the Chinese.

[Hotel Mike]

David Johnston is a man of integrity. It's unfair to suggest otherwise.

[todd]

The “penniless man” https://www.victoria...ur Johnston.pdf

[spanky123]

David Johnston is a man of integrity. It's unfair to suggest otherwise.

 

The report is out. 

 

David Johnston rules out public inquiry into China’s interference in Canadian politics - The Globe and Mail

[Nparker]

...David Johnston rules out public inquiry into China’s interference in Canadian politics...

"I'm shocked" said no one with a pulse. 

[Mike K.]

No inquiry required, but serious shortcomings were identified:

While he isn't recommending a public inquiry, Johnston said in his report he did find "serious shortcomings in the way intelligence is communicated and processed from security agencies through to government."

Johnston said he'll continue his work as special rapporteur through to October by holding hearings to find ways to fix those shortcomings. He said he will produce a second report later this year.

- https://www.cbc.ca/n...eport-1.6851735

[spanky123]

Former governor general David Johnston says China’s interference in Canadian politics is an “increasing threat to our democratic system” but ruled out a public inquiry on the matter, saying intelligence on Beijing’s activities is highly classified and could never be openly discussed with Canadians

 

So why even bother with the review and further investigations if that is the case?

 

He said he learned that CSIS sent a note to then-minister of public safety Bill Blair, the minister’s chief of staff and his deputy minister in May 2021 alerting them of intelligence “indicating the PRC intended to target Mr. Chong, another [unidentified] MP and their family in China.”

But, Mr. Johnston said, neither the minister nor his chief of staff received this note and that neither have access to the top secret e-mail network on which this message was sent.

 

So the message was sent but somehow not received. Convenient.

 

He is a long time friend of the Trudeau family and served as a member of the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation after he left the governor general’s post. While head of the University of Waterloo and McGill University, he forged close ties with Chinese institutions

 

Sounds like an upstanding person to me.

 

Mr. Johnston decried the leaks, calling them “destructive and dangerous” and saying it is a “matter of urgency” that the leakers be caught.

“I recognize that absent the leaks, I would not have been appointed to undertake the work. However, that does not justify the leaks, which risk great harm to the Canadian interest

 

Rather than address the problem, target the person who provided the info to the G&M. 

Edited by spanky123, 23 May 2023 - 09:24 AM.

[dasmo]

Clown World ethics edition….

[Mike K.]

In the dying days of a government, stuff like this no longer matters. It’s more a race to get loose ends tied up, and to place land mines wherever possible.

[Hotel Mike]

"Dying days of a government" Lol. Trudeau and his government aren't going anywhere thankfully.

[Nparker]

Thankfully? 

[dasmo]

Some people love rainbow authoritarianism….

[Mike K.]

"Dying days of a government" Lol. Trudeau and his government aren't going anywhere thankfully.

Maybe they can ask the Cons to prop them up for a little bit longer? The NDP is getting tired of it.

[Stephen James]

"Dying days of a government" Lol. Trudeau and his government aren't going anywhere thankfully.

Admire the bravado...

Tough call tho. Lots of blows (and embarrassment) accumulating and starting to look indifferent, which is often a sign of the end.

If PP can avoid saying too stupid things... we're certainly getting desperate enough for some real leadership to try almost anything, lol

[Nparker]

I am not sure if this is the best place to post this, but I thought some VV members might be interested in the Reclaiming Canada Conference taking place this coming weekend in a couple of locations in Victoria.

https://www.weunify.ca/conference

[AllseeingEye]

An entirely predictable outcome. A complete waste of time and energy. All the while China and the CPC continues to laugh at Canada's (read the Liberals') beyond weak attempts to formulate whatever it is that passes for national security protocols in the PMO these days.

 

This was nothing but an exercise in misdirection and deflection lumped in with a healthy dose of 'hoping the issue goes away'. Johnston went on at some length about the CSIS/security 'leaker': sorry Mr Johnston try to stay on point here - the actual issue here is CHINA. And the CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY. Not some anonymous leaker who like much of the Canadian intelligence community, not to mention our closest allies, is probably sick and tired of the Liberal leader not even so much as bothering to read his daily intelligence briefs (or at least conveniently being unable to remember them!), and fumbling and bumbling and stumbling their way across the national security landscape.

 

I have a close friend who worked in CIDA, among certain other activities at the time which had nothing to do with CIDA or foreign aid, who is now in the diplomatic corps, and who like all others in the shadow world portion of that arena just shakes his head at Skippy & Co. Beijing must be just thrilled that he stands a fair to good chance of eventual re-election so that the CPC can continue its activities here essentially unabated.

 

Rosemary Barton, one of the redeeming elements of the CBC in 2023, hosts the excellent "At Issue" show featuring some of the best most incisive political commentators in Canada, including Andrew Coyne and Chantal Hebert, both of whom I respect very much.

 

Last night all of them and Hebert particularly just skewered the entire Johnston report as nothing more than a smoke and mirrors attempt to look like the government is "doing" something - anything - but, you know....it isn't actually really doing anything. At the core of the tory objections to Johnston's appointment to this role - a perceived lack of impartiality given the ties between him and Trudeau - was this simple yet startlingly coherent comment from At Issue:

 

"......Even if one does not think Johnston himself is incapable of objective judgement in this case, it would be entirely fair to wish Prime Minister Trudeau had somehow managed to find someone else for the task — preferably someone he had never met. And Johnston's lengthy defence of himself on Tuesday might not persuade a single Conservative MP to drop their objections.

 

The entire affair smacks of a smoke screen calculated hopefully to toss buckets of wet sand onto the political flames. In matters of military and global strategic affairs, and considerations of national security which are entirely bound up in the former, JT is so far underwater and out of his element its worse than laughable, its inherently dangerous.

[Nparker]

...JT is so far underwater and out of his element its worse than laughable, its inherently dangerous.

As it has been since 2015.

[todd]

Why would anyone be concerned with what a measly roughly 40 million people think?