The federal government considers it unnecessary to specify whether or not a list of disloyal elected officials exists

Photo: Patrick Doyle La Presse canadienne Le ministre fédéral de la Sécurité publique, Dominic LeBlanc, se préparait à témoigner devant le Comité des parlementaires sur la sécurité nationale, à Ottawa, mercredi.

The federal Minister of Public Safety, Dominic LeBlanc, still considers it unnecessary to say publicly whether current elected officials are accused of having lacked loyalty to Canada, even after the leader of the Green Party assured that this is not the case. cas.

“I don’t think it’s particularly useful to say: “is there a list, is there a there is no list, who is on the list, it was fifteen people, it was three people”. This is precisely the type of detail [on which] we must be very careful,” argued Mr. LeBlanc on Wednesday.

The minister had just answered questions from senators about his government's response to foreign interference. In particular, he flatly refused to commit to requiring the Hogue commission to reveal the names of parliamentarians who would be suspected of having “knowingly helped” foreign state actors, under the pretext that the law does not give him this authority. .

“You're trying to get me to do indirectly what I can't do directly,” Dominic LeBlanc told the media who were asking him to confirm the revelations made the day before by the leader of the fourth opposition in the Commons.

After reading the unredacted version of the report from the National Security Committee of Parliamentarians, the leader of the Green Party of Canada, Elizabeth May, sought to calm things down on Monday by assuring that there is in fact no list of elected officials currently sitting in the federal Parliament who have collaborated with hostile states.

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Other Parliaments Affected

This accusation rather concerns a former elected official, she said, while other names contained in the report would be those of provincial or municipal politicians, or even candidates in a leadership race. Less serious allegations would affect only a handful of current MPs.

The Conservative Party of Canada began the week by accusing the Liberal government of keeping the identity secret elected officials “doing the dirty work of hostile foreign regimes,” but changed the subject to focus entirely on his criticism of capital gains taxes. The Bloc Québécois passed a motion on Tuesday asking that the mandate of the commission of inquiry into foreign interference be expanded so that it investigates those parliamentarians whose names appear in the unredacted version of the report.

Liberal MP and lead author of the report in question, David McGuinty, argued Wednesday that he really couldn't say more than what's in the report. Not only has he made this commitment, but revealing the contents of the secret report could compromise the country's intelligence sources.

“There is no reference in the report to a list of traitors in Parliament! Go look for the words that are there, that are deliberate, that have been well placed, well written,” Mr. McGuinty still dropped, when pressed for questions in his capacity as president of the Committee of Parliamentarians on National Security and the information.

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• Canadian media targeted for foreign interference, report says

For Singh to read the report

The credibility of Elizabeth May's remarks will be tested on Thursday, after the confidential version of the report passes into the hands of a second opposition party leader in Ottawa. Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic Party, promises to “share everything he can” about the report.

“[We must] not ignore the true reality of people who live here in Canada, who face interference in their lives, who are threatened by foreign governments, who fear for their families. This is the lens with which I will look at the documents and share what I have learned,” Mr. Singh said. He is scheduled to speak to the media again on Thursday afternoon.

The leader of the Bloc Québécois, for his part, is in the process of obtaining the security clearance necessary to read the unredacted report. Elizabeth May and Jagmeet Singh already have this authorization, as do Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Minister of Public Safety, Dominic LeBlanc.

The leader of the Conservative Party of Canada , Pierre Poilievre, is being urged by his political adversaries to also pass sufficient security checks to be able to read the confidential information of the security services, which he has still not committed to doing.