No.
I'm going to wait and see when the member for Don Valley North has an invitation to return to the Liberal caucus. Maybe it's in the mail. Who knows? I have real doubts.
It's one thing that there were allegations Beijing interfered to help the member for Don Valley North, which were found by Madam Justice Hogue to be well grounded. What's worse is that top Liberals were briefed by CSIS that Beijing had interfered to assist the member for Don Valley North. Three top Liberals were briefed during the 2019 election. Those top Liberals were the Liberal designates for the SITE task force: the national director of the Liberal Party, Azam Ishmael; Braeden Caley; and Mathieu Lafrance. They received that briefing at the end of September. I believe it was on September 29, 2019. It was a classified briefing.
We know Mr. Ishmael, in turn, briefed then Liberal campaign director and now top adviser to the Prime Minister, Jeremy Broadhurst, about the contents of that briefing. It should be noted that Mr. Broadhurst had the appropriate security clearance to receive the contents of that briefing. Mr. Broadhurst, quite appropriately, thought the information provided by CSIS was concerning, as he has said. He proceeded to brief the Prime Minister the next day. As it so happened, the Prime Minister was in Ottawa. Mr. Broadhurst briefed the Prime Minister about the contents of that briefing the next day in Ottawa.
What did the Prime Minister do with the information he had that Beijing interfered, going in to assist one of his candidates to secure the Liberal nomination? A leader who is concerned about foreign interference, as this Prime Minister claims to be, would have, at the very least, inquired for more information, but Justin Trudeau didn't do that. That is the very least that a leader concerned about countering foreign interference, about the integrity of our democracy and about the threat Beijing posed would have done.
With the information the Prime Minister had, I would submit the appropriate course of action for him to have taken would have been to remove that individual as the Liberal candidate for Don Valley North. However, the Prime Minister didn't even ask any further questions, let alone take what I would submit is the appropriate action. At that point, the individual should not have been the Liberal candidate for Don Valley North. Instead, the Prime Minister did absolutely nothing. He gave a pass to the candidate, allowing his name to stand as the Liberal candidate in the 2019 election. Madam Justice Hogue concluded that Justin Trudeau did so out of concern about the “direct electoral consequences” of removing a candidate, one the Prime Minister was briefed about having been assisted by Beijing.
The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, was more concerned about his own electoral interests and the electoral interests of the Liberal Party of Canada than protecting our democracy from Beijing's interference. Those aren't my findings. Those are the findings of Madam Justice Hogue—the Prime Minister did it out of concern for “direct electoral consequences”. Direct electoral consequences to whom? It was to him.
I would submit that says everything Canadians need to know about this Prime Minister and is further evidence of his complete and utter unfitness to hold the high office that he serves in. This is a Prime Minister who—