Canadian appointee: Reports of China interference too sensitive for public inquiry

TORONTO — The man charged with recommending how to deal with leaked intelligence reports that China interfered in Canada’s federal election said Tuesday that the leaked material is too sensitive for a public inquiry.

Opposition parties have demanded a full public inquiry on the alleged Chinese interference since reports about it earlier this year by the Globe and Mail newspaper. It cited unidentified intelligence sources that China preferred to see Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals re-elected in the 2021 election and worked to defeat Conservative politicians considered unfriendly to Beijing.

Trudeau appointee David Johnston announced recommendations Tuesday saying that a public inquiry into the leaked materials could not take place because of the sensitivity of the intelligence. However, he recommended public hearings on broader issues, including on foreign influence in Canada’s political system.

Trudeau appointed Johnston, a family friend and a former governor general, to study the issue in March, and Trudeau said at the time he would abide by Johnston’s recommendation.

Johnston said the government had not ignored nor failed to act on the intelligence and said media reports on the leaked intelligence lacked context and in some cases were wrong.

“The leaks are based are on partial information. In some cases documents don’t tell the full story,” he said.

He also said it was troubling and damaging that intelligence was leaked. He said he couldn’t speculate on who leaked the intelligence or what their motives were.

The governor general is the representative of Britain’s monarch as head of state, and holds a mostly ceremonial and symbolic position. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Johnston governor general in 2010 and his term was extended under Trudeau until 2017.

Johnston is also a former member of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

Trudeau has said that all political leaders agree that the election outcomes in 2019 and in 2021 were not affected by foreign interference.

Earlier this month, Canada expelled a Chinese diplomat whom Canada’s spy agency alleged was involved in a plot to intimidate an opposition Conservative lawmaker and his relatives in Hong Kong after the Conservative lawmaker criticized Beijing’s human rights record. China then announced the expulsion of a Canadian diplomat in retaliation this month.

China regularly uses threats against family members to intimidate critics in the Chinese diaspora.

China-Canada relations nosedived after China detained former diplomat Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor, shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of telecoms giant Huawei and the daughter of the company’s founder, at the behest of U.S. authorities who accused her of fraud.