Tom Mulcair: Will Justin Trudeau decide to stick around?

What does Johnston's resignation mean for PM? CTV Political Commentator Scott Reid weighs in how it looks for the Liberal government after David Johnston resigned.

Now that David Johnston has stepped down, the serious work of putting in place a commission of inquiry can begin.

Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc embarrassed himself by saying the Liberals were never opposed to a public inquiry. But at this stage, who cares?

The important thing is that Canadians will finally have a chance to know what really happened with Chinese government interference in our elections.

LeBlanc was on the right track, however, when he put the ball in the opposition court: you come up with some credible names!

The opposition parties appeared somewhat reticent to assume their new role and pleaded that the government was best placed to vet the proposed names. In the same breath, they summoned the Liberals to quit stalling and call the inquiry right away!

These were rather bizarre and not very credible tactics that have really given the upper hand back to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Canadian voting public will be quick to judge this sort of dodge. The opposition parties wanted Parliament to play the lead? They’re being given the chance. They’d better do their part and come up with suggestions that are acceptable to all three. The pressure will then be on Trudeau once again.

It’ll be interesting to see whether Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh can quickly agree on some well-qualified proposals. The onus will be on them now, making this a good move by the Liberals, for once.

It doesn’t have to be a single commissioner. In fact, with the mountains of documents and witnesses to consider, it would be wise to do the same thing that was done in the Inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women: name three commissioners.

The lead has to go to an experienced, respected judge. The name Louise Arbour comes immediately to mind. One of the other commissioners should have experience and expertise in security and intelligence matters. The third should have high level knowledge of the workings of government.

One of them should also, ideally, come from one of Canada’s many ethnocultural groups. The mixing of electoral politics and the interests of diaspora communities is nothing new and is certainly not restricted to Canadians with origins in China. A good knowledge and understanding of those realities would be essential to the work of the Commission.

The timing of the announcement by LeBlanc is interesting. The Liberals had hoped to use Johnston to rag the puck until late October on the largely useless second phase of his mandate. That way, if the pressure continued for a full inquiry, it would happen too late to interfere with possible election plans.

ELECTION TIMING STILL TOP OF MIND FOR LIBERALS

Now, they don’t have even that fig leaf but election timing is still top of mind for the Big Red Machine. The Liberals may have put the ball in the opposition court, but they still have to call the inquiry. Yes, once named it will still take several months for the commission to do all of its massive preparatory work. Everything from hiring staff to interviewing potential witnesses. But it would normally be able to begin late fall.

A lot was made of Johnston’s argument that this was just so darn secret that people could die if a public inquiry were held. There’s of course nothing to stop a full inquiry from keeping secret what is actually secret. You don’t have to explain by what techniques Canada obtained direct evidence that a senior Chinese government consular official in Vancouver was helping to orchestrate the ouster of a sitting mayor because of his support for Hong Kong democracy and the Uyghur minority. What’s important is that Canadians know that plan existed; learn who knew about it; and can find out what, if anything, was ever done to halt it.

It’s on that last issue that the wheels finally came off the Johnston train. His three-hour testimony before a Parliamentary committee last week was excruciating. He gave a bewildering response to Singh’s direct questions about interference in the case of Erin O'Toole’s Conservatives in the last election. Whatever credibility his report may have had was now shot.

That classic Watergate question: ‘what did the prime minister know and when did he know it?’ will be at the core of the inquiry. That’s what Canadians want to know and that’s why Trudeau put in place the elaborate Johnston gambit in the first place. To evade ever having to answer that specific question under oath.

Past statements by his closest adviser, Katie Telford may come back to haunt him. Almost as a matter of reflex, those around him always take great pains to try and create the image of Trudeau as being diligent and studious, which is not always not always an easy task.

Telford did make clear that CSIS kept the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office (Trudeau’s ministry) informed about key threats. She added that Trudeau read everything. That boast will come into play, because it’s key to the investigation.

How, indeed, is it possible that everything else was transmitted, read and understood except the direct interference by the Chinese government against O’Toole, and his Conservative Party in the 2021 election? It’s of course not plausible. He was the Liberals’ principal adversary.

The reason for inaction is as banal as it is rueful. As The Globe and Mail’s Bob Fife, the lead author of many of the articles on the subject has opined: the Liberals have been stonewalling an inquiry because they stood to benefit from that interference and held back. That’s what they don’t want Canadians to see. As with Watergate it’s not the initial behaviour that becomes the focus, it’s the coverup and the reasons for it.

WILL JUSTIN TRUDEAU DECIDE TO STICK AROUND?

Which brings us right back to election timing. Canadians have a healthy aversion to keeping the same party in power for too long. That’s a good thing in our democracy. We may not have term limits, as in the United States, but we have an approach that says, “throw the bums out,” when they’ve been around for too long.

Trudeau is one of the best politicians of his generation and he knows and understands that feeling among Canadians. He’s also very much afraid of the damage a full inquiry could do to his election chances, if he decides to stick around.

For now, his government remains in place thanks to the duct tape and bailing wire of his deal with Singh’s NDP. That could change rapidly if the commission were to begin its serious work and hear testimony that shone a light on malfeasance or culpable negligence of the government. If indeed it is revealed that, in the face of a foreign government's attempt to undermine our free and democratic elections, Trudeau’s government failed to act, it could cost him the election.

Trudeau has yet to decide if he will stick around for a fourth kick at the can. The temptation to leave and begin a no doubt successful life in the private business world, where he’ll be very much in demand, will be enormous after eight years in power. That term included a pandemic and has no doubt brought untold strain on him and his family. He’s keeping his options open and the Liberal Party knows that Mark Carney and Chrystia Freeland are waiting in the wings.

There were already serious reasons why Trudeau wasn’t ruling out a fall election: a new electoral map that will help the Conservatives will come into play if he waits too long; as he enters his ninth year in office in October, his “best before” date will be in full view; and of course there will now be…that inquiry!

Ask Jean Chretien or Jean Charest what happens when the juggernaut of a full, independent public inquiry sets itself in motion. You can’t control the unwieldy beast despite all the levers of power. In Chretien’s (and Martin’s) case it was the Gomery Commission into the sponsorship scandal. For Charest, it was the Charbonneau Commission of inquiry into construction industry corruption and fundraising for his Quebec Liberal party. You know when these things begin, you have no way of knowing how or when they end or what they discover in the meantime.

Those levers include the unfettered right for Trudeau to ask Gov. Gen. Mary Simon for an election writ or, less dramatically, prorogation. He could decide to hit “pause” with prorogation and leave his options open. Prorogation flushes all parliamentary committees and those annoying Conservatives won’t have that vehicle to stay in the news over the summer. He and his ministers could hit the BBQ circuit, handing out smiles and government largesse. If Poilievre’s polling numbers begin to soften, Trudeau will have the option of setting the date for his throne speech in such a way as to allows for a fall election that could be held prior to the recalling of Parliament and before the commission could begin its serious work. If the numbers are still unfavourable, he could just as easily decide to pull the ripcord of his parachute and let Carney or Freeland deal with the mess. Ask Paul Martin how that movie ends.

Tom Mulcair was the leader of the federal New Democratic Party of Canada between 2012 and 2017