Justice Hogue’s final report on foreign government meddling in Canada’s democratic processes and institutions is finally out. The report has disappointed many security experts by not calling out more clearly failings in how the Trudeau government and its elected officials, including the prime minister, handled sensitive intelligence.
For more insights and analysis on the report, Hub contributor Michael Kempa joins the program to break down its key findings, where it comes up short, and why its recommendations will not likely see the light of day for months to come and certainly not before the next federal election.
You can read Michael Kempa’s full article here.
The following is an automated transcript. If you are quoting from or referencing this episode, please refer to the audio to verify.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Rudyard Griffiths here, the publisher of The Hub. Welcome to this, our regular up to speed video series. Each day at the hub, we cover a big topic or issue in the news by connecting with our best contributors and writers. No exception today, we’ve got Michael Kempa, criminologist on to talk about his article in The Hub today on the Hogue inquiry, its final findings are out, and Michael is going to break them down for us. Michael, welcome to the program.
MICHAEL KEMPA: Okay, thank you.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Well, let’s start right off the top. You wrote for us today that this kind of inquiry has ended with a whimper, not a bang. Why do you think we came to this place after so much debate, after so much resistance by the Trudeau Government to even have an inquiry in the first place? What’s your verdict on the findings and how they’ve been presented?
MICHAEL KEMPA: Well, I think the findings to this round, this second round report, were always going to be very technical. That was the main purpose of the second phase of the inquiry, to look in to the capacity of the intelligence services, the government, bureaucracy, everybody involved to secure Canada’s electoral process from foreign interference, kind of all the racy stuff about what happened in the past, who may have been involved, what was the extent of people’s knowledge of things that had gone wrong, that was in the first phase? So it wasn’t really all that surprising that this report was very technical. Furthermore, I mean, the big thing for me was, if this is all there was, What on earth was the reluctance of the political leadership, especially the Trudeau Government, who have been more forthcoming right from the outset?
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Absolutely great point. Let’s break down before some of the recommendations, how the Justice Hogue chose to characterize some of the key elements in the report. Some of these incidents, incidents surprise me. For instance, you know, Bill Blair delaying for weeks, the, you know, the formal processes starting on liberal MPP, Chan, and you know, normally this would have taken, or should have taken 48 hours. No real comment.
MICHAEL KEMPA: That’s the door.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah, no real comment on that delay. Michael, no, in a little surprise here, maybe a little disappointed that more censure wasn’t provided by the Justice towards elected officials who who didn’t live up to the letter or the standard of how these serious national security issues need to be handled.
MICHAEL KEMPA: Well, that’s a bit what she basically said was, evidently, nobody along that chain was taking it seriously enough so that when they passed along relevant information for the minister up the chain. At each step, they basically said to themselves, I’ve done my job if I’ve passed it to the next person along. Now obviously, if you’re obtaining a warrant, these things are very time sensitive, as OG obviously points out, you normally expect it to take about 72 hours once you’re at a week once, one would think that there would be some follow up, but there wasn’t any follow up, not for over 50 days. And when you sort of go through the timeline, it’s clear, once the minister actually got the information, he did sign the warrant within the 72 hours. Why were there those 48 days in between? Nobody really explains that other than the fact that people just passed it along and said they had done their job.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah. Well, I think there are some big questions about why those weeks were there, and some of them may be political and therefore outside the scope of the inquiry. Similarly, with regards to the Prime Minister’s own behavior, once again, a finding in this report that there were delays in this case, for years before other parliamentarians, I think of MP Michael Chong, were briefed on the threats that he and his family faced. This is noted in the report. But again, I wonder why this, this conspicuous lack of some censure, of some specific name calling here of individuals, including the prime minister, who, once again, did not follow what would have been expected as a courtesy to a fellow. MP, but even beyond that, what might be expected as the singular individual in government responsible for national security, ie, the PM.
MICHAEL KEMPA: well, that you would think so, and that’s the common sense idea that would be if you had that type of information where another MP or parliamentarian was under some form of threat from a foreign state, you wouldn’t sort of wait or just trust the usual chain of information. You’d either reach out personally. Or at a minimum, you’d make sure that the people responsible for reaching out were actually doing that. So in the app so people didn’t do that, they didn’t follow the common sense. In other words, hog says, basically, there are no formal protocols in place for doing that kind of on the assumption that people would use common sense, but if they’re not, he says, put in place the proper protocols so that whenever this happens again in the future, we’re not relying on everybody’s good Sense and Sensibility. There’s just a protocol in place.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Let’s talk wrap with just a reflection on some of the other recommendations. One of the key ones here is to kind of tighten up nominations require proof of citizenship, permanent residency, get kind of cash. I mean, it’s hard to believe. You know, in 2025 we’re talking about, you know, cash in envelopes, slopping around political parties and nominations, but that is the state of affairs. These seem like low hanging fruit. They seem like sensible things to to act on, but as you mentioned in your piece, we have a comatose, brain dead parliament, very little ability here, Michael to do anything, and possibly a spring election staring us a matter of weeks away.
MICHAEL KEMPA: You all the legislative stuff, forget about it, the institutional reform stuff. You can’t do it before an election. I mean, the recommendation make sure the RCMP is properly staffed and resourced to deal with foreign interference. Okay, well, good luck waiting for that one. We’ll be waiting for a decade, probably, but on issues of party rules. I mean, the parties had the will. They could basically do that within a week. They could straighten the rules out, make sure that they hire some form of data vetting company to go through their databases and ensure that the people signing up are doing it from the addresses that they claim to be doing it and so forth. But why don’t they do it? The issue is parties benefit from looser processes, because they just get more information about prospective voters, and it helps them raise more money. So I get why they do it, but hoga is saying it just comes at too high a cost to threat to foreign interference. So if you want to have that kind of open American style of trying to get citizens engaged in selecting leaders and so selecting nominees and so forth, almost like a primary system. You need to run it more strictly, kind of like the Americans do. You can’t do it informally.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: yeah. Great analysis, great insights. Michael, thank you for all your contributions, and we look forward to reading you in the days and weeks to come on this important issue. Ladies and gentlemen, that is our show today for up to speed. We hope you’ve enjoyed it.