OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) –– Upon threat of his government being potentially forced to face a confidence vote, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his Chief of Staff Katie Telford will now appear before the House Affairs committee to testify concerning alleged interference in Canada’s elections by China.
“While there are serious constraints on what can be said in public about sensitive intelligence matters, in an effort to make Parliament work Ms. Telford has agreed to appear at the Procedure and House Affairs committee as part of their study,” Trudeau said in a statement today.
For days now, Liberal MPs serving on the House Affairs Committee have been filibustering in an attempt to stop the committee from voting to force Telford to testify. Weeks ago, the committee voted to investigate alleged election meddling in Canada by China.
Only minutes after Trudeau’s announcement, Liberal members on the committee ended the filibuster by taking their names off the speakers’ list. Shortly following this, all members of the committee voted to summon Telford to testify.
She will appear before the committee on April 14 for two hours.
The sudden change to have Telford appear comes after the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) said today they would force a vote in the House of Commons via a motion regarding election interference. This motion had the support of the Bloc Quebecois, but it was unclear if the New Democratic Party (NDP), who are in an informal coalition with Trudeau’s Liberals, would support it.
Today, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said his party would vote in favor of the CPC motion which would have forced Telford to testify if Trudeau had not ended the filibuster.
Yesterday, rumors swirled that the Liberal’s would make today’s CPC motion a confidence vote, meaning if it passed the government would be forced to resign.
However today, the Liberals said the motion would not be a confidence vote, most likely because they knew they would be ending the filibuster which satisfied the NDP.
The CPC motion will still go ahead and will be taking place later this afternoon.
In recent weeks, there has been a steady and ongoing stream of leaks from a Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) official to the media detailing how the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) has been allegedly interfering in Canada’s most recent federal elections.
Trudeau, under mounting pressure to investigate alleged CCP interference, last week appointed an “independent special rapporteur” to look into the matter, in lieu of requesting a public inquiry, something that MPs from all opposition parties had requested.
However, the “independent” rapporteur is former Governor General David Johnston, who is a longtime family friend of the Trudeaus and is a current member of the allegedly CCP-linked Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation.
Today, Trudeau also announced the “mandate of Independent Special Rapporteur,” which includes having Johnston recommend “any additional mechanisms or transparent processes, such as a formal public inquiry, he deems necessary to reinforce Canadians’ confidence in the integrity of our democratic institutions by May 23, 2023.”
Over the weekend, the CSIS official who has been steadily leaking confidential information to the media regarding alleged interference in Canada’s elections by China said exposing interference must be done to protect the future of the integrity of the process.
While the overall scandal has been brewing for some time, the issue really took off on February 17 when the Globe and Mail, citing CSIS documents, reported that “an orchestrated machine was operating in Canada with two primary aims: to ensure that a minority Liberal government was returned in 2021, and that certain Conservative candidates identified by China were defeated.”
Matters were made worse on February 24 when Global News broke a story that showed Trudeau was made aware of these allegations but did not take action.
The potential interference by foreign agents has many Canadians concerned, especially considering Trudeau’s past praise for China’s “basic dictatorship” and his labeling of the dictatorial nation as his favorite country other than his own.
During testimony before the House of Commons ethics committee last week as well, Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Cheuk Kwan revealed that he witnessed firsthand proxies of the CCP take busloads of people to vote for their preferred nomination candidate.