OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) –– Under mounting pressure to investigate alleged Canadian election meddling by Communist China, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday chose not to launch a full public inquiry, but instead said he would be appointing an “independent special rapporteur” to investigate the matter.
According to the government, Trudeau’s “Special Rapporteur” will have a “wide mandate to make expert recommendations on protecting and enhancing Canadians’ faith in our democracy,” and will determine whether there should be a “formal inquiry or some other independent review process.”
Speaking on the matter himself, Trudeau stated that the special rapporteur will be an “eminent Canadian.”
However, after it was announced that Trudeau himself will be making the appointment, Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader Pierre Poilievre blasted the decision.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Poilievre alleged that for “10 years” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “dictatorship” has been propping up Trudeau with clandestine funding, and that his latest announcement is just another tactic he’s employing to avoid transparency.
“Now he is trying to cover it up again, with a secret process he controls. We want the opposite. He wants a secret process, we want an open process,” Poilievre said.
“We want the truth to come out, and we are going to continue to fight for that truth,” added the opposition leader.
On Monday, Trudeau held a press conference at which he outlined his new initiatives regarding CCP election meddling, maintaining that “Canada is one of the most stable democracies in the world, but that didn’t happen by accident.”
He also asserted that he takes the issue of foreign election meddling “extremely seriously,” and that he will “continue this work to uphold and strengthen your confidence in our democracy in Canada.”
As part of this effort, Trudeau has asked the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), on which many Liberal MPs sit, “to complete a review to assess the state of foreign interference in federal electoral processes.”
NSICOP will investigate both the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, to “look at foreign interference attempts that occurred.”
Additionally, Trudeau asked the Chair of the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) to review how the nation’s national security agencies “handled the threat of foreign interference during the 43rd and 44th federal general elections, specifically around the flow of information from national security agencies to decision makers.”
The findings from the NSIRA will be given to parliament.
Trudeau’s refusal to launch a public inquiry comes despite the fact that MPs from all opposition parties agreed last week that they are in favor of such an investigation.
Poilievre says ‘Special Rapporteur’ sounds like ‘a fake job’
“Why do we need a special rapporteur? What does this rapporteur even do? It sounds like a fake job,” Poilievre commented at today’s press conference.
“We need someone who actually has a real work plan and what we said is we need an independent and open investigation headed by someone approved by all parties in the House of Commons. Not another liberal establishment Ottawa Insider,” he added.
Poilievre opined that the special rapporteur will likely be a Liberal-friendly individual, who will ultimately conclude that “everything is just fine” and that Canadians should “just close the book and move on and let the dictatorship in Beijing once again interfere to help Justin Trudeau get re-elected.”
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.
While the scandal has been brewing for some time, te issue really took off on February 17 when the Globe and Mail, citing Canadian Security Intelligence Service (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 that Trudeau was made aware of these allegations but did not take any action.
The Global News report also revealed that Liberal MP Han Dong was alleged by security officials as being one of no less than 11 Toronto-area candidates who had clandestine support from CCP officials in the 2019 election.
Furthermore, it was alleged by sources that Dong is a willing partner in China’s election meddling network operating in Canada.
Of note is that Trudeau did not deny that the CCP could have been involved in his re-election, but instead blasted the fact the documents from CSIS were leaked to the public.