Canada has lost its mind.
In fact, much of official Ottawa has left the remnants of his already questionable abilities. A bogus scandal crafted by the combination of scoop-thirsty reporters and hyperbole-addicted politicians – is there another kind? – has gripped the capital like a drug-resistant psychosis.
These fulminating reporters and politicians have been reduced – figuratively speaking – to parading through newsrooms and parliament in a critical-thinking-undermining state, with placards reading: The end of democracy is near.
Little by little, Chinese agents and their proxies have surreptitiously eaten away at the fragile foundations upon which Canada’s democratic institutions rest, they say.
All that stands between apocalypse and possible rescue are the patriots working within Canada’s always law-abiding spy services who apparently shout “O Canada” at breakfast and at bedtime with hands on maple leaf-forever-tattooed hearts.
That, discerning international readers, is just a slightly exaggerated portrait of the hysteria that has paralyzed a once staid city for months. I wouldn’t be surprised if more than a few of the nervous residents who hold public office have looked under their desks to see if a Beijing-compromised fifth columnist lurks there.
I live in Toronto. So luckily I was able to avoid succumbing to the madness caused by the “yellow peril”. Yet I have tasted more than a disturbing taste of it in recent weeks as I appeared three times as a witness before two House of Commons committees investigating Chinese influence campaigns.
Given my long history of reporting on Canada’s cavalier security services and Chinese influence efforts, I reluctantly agreed to attend via Zoom in the faint hope that my testimony might put a damper on the prevailing panic and rampant McCarthyist accusations of guilt by Poison Association Ottawa.
How wrong I was.
I came away convinced that China poses less of a threat to Canada’s democratic institutions than the mournful, pedestrian MPs — with one exception — I encountered, who claimed to defend those ever-so-fragile institutions now reportedly under siege.
My overarching message didn’t get through. While I agree that Chinese interference is a nuisance, a witch-hunt-like fever has infected legislators and reporters bent on “exposing” so-called “incendiary” Canadians, reminiscent of the shameful purge of officials just a few generations ago as a result. of their leftist politics and homosexuality.
It’s dangerous and corrosive. People’s lives, livelihoods and reputations are being damaged by inept spies and their grateful leaders in the media and on Parliament Hill.
Indeed, I watched, sometimes with bewilderment, often with disgust, as a series of parliamentarians humiliated themselves and the country they supposedly represent, looking for a “gambling moment” that might attract the momentary attention of a reporter or the approval of their party leaders they are more interested in stirring up fear and suspicion than in encouraging sobriety and the truth.
In this regrettable regard, members of the opposition Conservative Party, the separatist Bloc Quebecois (BQ) and Canada’s purported socialist party, the New Democrats (NDP), have distinguished themselves.
Tory MPs have unfailingly channeled every unpleasant aspect of Pierre Poilièvre, their stunt-prone, smug demagogue of a leader who believes anger and ignorance are essential prerequisites for becoming prime minister.
Each of these rabid partisans tried to outdo the other to ingratiate themselves with a jejune politician who makes the Borg-esque former Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper seem almost non-Jewish by comparison.
The nadir of this ugliness occurred when a Conservative MP early a witness and publisher of Sinophobic tracts whether former Governor General of Canada David Johnston was an “elite capture” of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “based on its ties to China”.
Predictably, the conspiracy-consuming couple forgot that Johnston had been named Canada’s titular head of state in 2010 by none other than Harper.
Oh, nevermind.
Anyway, the witness said that Johnston was, of course, an “elite prisoner” since “throughout his 40-year career [Johnston] has had a positive disposition for China and the PRC.”
It was a disgraceful question and answer and I said so. Incidentally, the regretful exchange somewhat suggested that the Conservative Party email address these days should be conservatives@inthegutter.ca.
Johnston is in the crosshairs of the Conservatives because he was appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “special rapporteur” to investigate a slew of selective leaks about Chinese meddling in Canadian politics and two recent elections.
In an interim reportJohnston found that China’s influence campaigns had no bearing on those elections, that media reports of the scope and nature of that interference were exaggerated or “false,” and that loyal Canadians were, as a sinister by-product, labeled disloyal.
None of it mattered, such was the disfiguring intensity of the animus in the hearings against an honorable man who has served Canada in several important capacities.
Meanwhile, the Separatist BQ was too busy bowing to the “expertise” of a few spies turned Boy Scouts to remember that not long ago the same security forces set fire to a barn where Separatists were planning to meet. Or that the security services were responsible for at least 400 illegal break-ins in Quebec (including the offices of a separatist news agency), and that they stole the membership list of the separatist Parti Quebecois.
The BQ’s amnesia is as shocking as his naivete.
Meanwhile, a staring member of Canada’s so-called socialist NDP allowed the two spies to claim – without a word of objection – that the secrecy-soaked and accountability-ridden agencies they work for are committed to openness, transparency and the rule of law.
I had to suppress the urge to laugh.
The criminally ill-prepared NDP MP was unaware, it seems, that a succession of federal court judges in the recent past have criticized the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) for withholding information from the court, lying and routinely breaking the law.
Had the negligent legislator done an ounce of research, she would have found that in July 2020, Judge Patrick Gleeson castigated CSIS for having an “institutional disregard for – or at least an arrogant institutional approach to – the duty of candor and unfortunately the rule of law”.
Examples of CSIS subterfuge abound. In an attempt to deport a Canadian suspected of being a “terrorist” in 2009, the agency not only lied to them, but withheld exculpatory information from a judge who was deciding the man’s fate. In 2016, another irate federal court judge accused CSIS of failing to disclose that it had been illegally collecting and storing metadata unrelated to national security investigations involving dozens of unsuspecting Canadians for more than a decade.
The concerned NDP Member of Parliament could not remember anything about it. Like her light-hearted, sound-bite-happy leader, Jagmeet Singh, she capitulated to the hysteria, rather than making a deliberate effort to cauterize it.
Only Matthew Green, an Ontario NDP MP, seemed to me to have the strength to approach this delicate dossier with the calmness and intelligence it requires.
I should have listened to my instincts and stayed away from Ottawa and the largely bland politicians that populate it.
In the slim chance that I receive another email invitation to appear before a committee after this column is published, I hit delete.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial view of Al Jazeera.