Federal parties agree to ask Hogue to investigate allegations in NSICOP report

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OTTAWA — The federal government is calling on Justice Marie-Josée Hogue to investigate allegations of treason by current and former parliamentarians contained in last week’s alarming report from a national security committee.

Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told MPs on Monday that the Liberals would be supporting a motion brought forward by the Bloc Québécois to expand the Hogue Commission’s terms of reference “to allow it to investigate Canada’s federal democratic institutions,” including former and current MPs and senators.

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The vote on the Bloc’s motion will take place Tuesday afternoon, and all recognized parties in the House of Commons have already indicated they will be voting in favour.

“We agree with members of this House that the appropriate forum to look at these matters is the commission already set up and operating… with the unanimous support of parties in this House,” said LeBlanc in response to the Conservatives during question period on Monday.

“The government will be supporting the motion brought forward by the Bloc Quebecois asking the Hogue commission to examine this very matter. We think that’s the appropriate way to do it,” he said.

Hogue is the head of the commission examining allegations of foreign interference by China, India, Russia or others in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

In her interim report in May, Hogue said she did not believe meddling undermined the overall integrity of the elections or affected which party won government. However, she did conclude it could have affected the result in a specific riding.

A separate report by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) released last week found that some MPs or Senators are, “in the words of the intelligence services, ‘semi-witting or witting’ participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in our politics,” with a former MP even meeting with an intelligence official in another country.

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The revelations created a political firestorm, with pressure mounting on all parties to find out if one of their MPs has deliberately participated in foreign meddling.

The report does not publicly identify the MPs and Senators nor their political parties.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau already has access to the unredacted version of the NSICOP report and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh will be receiving his confidential briefing shortly. Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet is in the process of receiving his top-secret security clearance. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has also requested access to the report.

Only Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has refused to get his security clearance to see the full contents of the NSICOP report, arguing that he would be bound to secrecy.

In a letter to LeBlanc and Hogue, the Conservatives suggested that the commission “issue a finding of fact” for each case where an MP has “knowingly” participated in foreign interference activities and report back to Parliament no later than Oct. 1.

Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer wrote in the letter that those findings “would not constitute findings of criminal guilt,” but would rather serve as an “aid” to the House of Commons, the Senate and each political party whose members could be implicated.

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“If Canadians are to continue to have faith in their federal democratic institutions, they need to know who has broken their oath and betrayed their trust,” wrote Scheer.

LeBlanc dismissed the idea of releasing a list of names of the MPs who are suspected of working with foreign states and said that the RCMP told him he would be subject to criminal prosecution if he decided to share the names publicly.

“So, guess what? I’m not going to do that,” he said.

Singh, however, told reporters that he would not hesitate to kick out one of his MPs from the NDP caucus if ever they were found to have “wittingly” participated in foreign interference and challenged other party leaders to do the same after seeing the unredacted NSICOP report.

Singh also called on Hogue to look into allegations of foreign interference, both by China and India, in federal Conservative leadership races. That detail was mentioned in the public version of the NSICOP report.

“The idea that a foreign government was involved in the selection of the leader of the Conservative party is deeply concerning,” he said.

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Earlier in the day, Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon said Hogue already has a “solid mandate” and that “it is not up to the House to give instructions to the commissioner on the way she carries out her mandate.”

LeBlanc said that Hogue already has access to all the same documents that NSICOP had access to in redacting their report.

Hogue is expected to publish her final report, which will contain recommendations on how to “detect, deter and counter” foreign interference, by the end of December.

National Post
calevesque@postmedia.com

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