When the word came that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was going to make an announcement about foreign interference in Canadian elections, speculation mounted about what new thing this would be.
The answer was that there wasn’t much new, except for an unnamed new person, in the unfamiliar new role of “special rapporteur,” who would be empowered to recommend what should be done next. Including whether there should be an inquiry.
Make no mistake, this was a scrambling stall tactic, a way to hold off the critics baying for a public inquiry into Beijing’s interference in Canada’s elections. Those critics include the NDP, Mr. Trudeau’s partners in a parliamentary alliance that keeps his minority government in power.
And you know it’s a scramble when the Prime Minister strides into a news conference belatedly to tell us that in the coming days he will appoint an independent, eminent Canadian whom he can’t identify right now but, don’t worry, there are lots of folks like that in Canada.
The rest of the stuff Mr. Trudeau announced, such as reviews by bodies known as NSICOP and NSIRA, were already in the realm of business-as-usual, and already rejected by opposition parliamentarians as not transparent enough.
NSICOP, for example, is a committee of parliamentarians but not a parliamentary committee – it is a body that reports to the executive, sworn to secrecy and under the security rules set by the government.
We were told that Public Safety Minister Minister Marco Mendicino is tasked with launching consultations on creating a foreign-agent registry, which is a good thing and, as it turns out, something the government had already announced in December.
In fact, the first 10 minutes of Mr. Trudeau’s news conference was an exercise in running over old news about what the government has done in the past about foreign interference, or national security, or oversight of national security, before getting to the appointment to come of an unnamed person.
But let’s not miss the thing that has happened here: Mr. Trudeau made a half turn.