Rex Murphy: David Johnston Takes Responsibility for Trudeau's Attack on Democracy (2023)

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Friends do not allow friends to call public inquiries
(From the Holy Book of Major Liberal Discussion Points)

There have been so many liberal scandals that the store of legitimate public outrage has run out. David Johnston should never have had the (questionable) power to make the decision he does. Only in a broken parliament - stripped of central power by a confidence vote due to the cynical and ill-fated deal between Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau - would the farce of recent days have been possible.

The Singh-Trudeau Pact itself is undemocratic.

The only scandal comparable to the lack of reaction to Chinese intervention, and perhaps greater, is the massive abuse of power by the government, the imposition of the state of emergency and the repression of the democratic protest during a convoy of trucks. It also resulted in a pointless, trivial and completely inappropriate "investigation" by the government representative assigned to investigate the matter.

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There are so many considerations to be made about Johnston's decision that there is no need for a public inquiry into the Chinese Communist government's machinations in the Canadian election.

I suppose in the first place it must be an absolutely wrong decision - wrong in every way that a decision of this size and weight could be wrong. evil in the new, hitherto expanded, "evil" itself, an evil that set a limit to the very notion of transgression.

In the future, people will ask if something is wrong or is David Johnston wrong (horror)? So the very decision not to carry out a public consultation was wrong, is wrong and will always be wrong.

The second observation must be that the wrong person is making this extremely wrong decision.

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Out of a group of thousands or tens of thousands of prominent Canadians, no link to Mr. Trudeau, no loyalty to the Trudeau family foundation, no long-term relationships and friendships with the entire Trudeau family... to take on this role?

David Johnston has had too many interactions with the Trudeau apparatus, and even the Trudeau family and the Prime Minister himself, to be considered one person, one mind, deciding on a larger (perhaps somewhat successful) covert effort. . The invasion of Canada's democratic integrity by the world's largest communist state merited a thorough, personal, neutral, thorough and public investigation.

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The third observation is that it was wrong, deeply wrong, that a leader whose (non)carrying out of warnings and warnings about Chinese CSIS interference is actually the deep and central subject of such an investigation - that is Justin Trudeau - should let the man , friend, veteran Trudeau Foundation (The foundation is part of history) will decide whether or not there will be a public inquiry.

David Johnston, Dean of the University, former GG, friend of the family for many years, was the last person to take on such an important task and had the right to say "yes" or "no" to a full public inquiry. In that sense, who was David Johnston - not even a Member of Parliament - to be asked to make the most crucial decision to overthrow Canadian democracy. Who should decide whether a public inquiry is the only way forward? The answer is starkly clear and inescapable.

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The Chinese intervention was a malicious attack, in the strictest sense of the word, on the Canadian parliament. Our parliament as the highest institution of our democracy - our entire parliament should make this decision.

Another observation. Consider one person's timid, ambiguous and most candid "investigation" into this attack on Canadian liberties and Canadian democracy - an inquiry remembered for massive violations of civil liberties, expressed in the redundant statement of the Extraordinary Powers and Emergency Powers Act he provided.

What kind of clothes was that? How shallow, how deep is the complacency in destroying all the rights that should be enshrined and inviolable in our sacred Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Trudeau government brought the major powers closer to the war - it never made any sense as to why it did this, it never revealed the key documents it claimed to be relying on - and the harmless investigation that followed barely carried a shadow of real responsibility. He was never particularly bossy about the state's hijacking of citizens' bank accounts - certainly a grim first for Canada.

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The last observation sums up all the others: what the hell is going on in this country? Trudeau and his cabinet mates run the government like it's a club for their pets, impose mandates, shorten the parliamentary process, retract the most horrendous laws to quell legitimate protests, decide Alberta's energy from above, always push the program on watch, and whenever they are caught about a conflict of interest, breach of ethics, or abuse of power, he dismisses them with relentless contempt. Made possible by the cunning or cynical - or perhaps both - Jagmeet Singh.

Finally, David Johnston's name comes up in a recent scandal. But whatever his failings, it was Trudeau and Singh who actually blocked and quashed a full public inquiry. Johnston is just a blocker who takes the blame.

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