David Johnston, the special investigator hand-picked by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to investigate Chinese meddling in Canadian politics, announced his resignation on Friday.
Critics said Johnston was too friendly with Trudeau, so he took a soft touch with a serious issue Trudeau would rather not confront.
Johnston, 81, was Governor-General of Canada from 2010 to 2017, including a two-year extension to his mandate at the request of the prime minister’s office. Outside of politics, he served as a professor of law at several Canadian institutions and wrote over 25 books.
Trudeau tapped Johnston in March 2023 as a “special rapporteur” to investigate reports of Chinese interference in Canadian federal elections. Trudeau promised Johnston would have a “wide mandate to look into foreign interference” and would “make expert recommendations on how to further protect our democracy.”
Under intense pressure from opposition politicians who said he was not doing enough to protect Canada from Chinese interference, and eager to avoid a full public inquiry, Trudeau pledged to follow whatever recommendations Johnston put forward.
March was a tense month for Trudeau because Canada’s Globe and Mail had just uncovered documents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) that showed Beijing was making plans to use Chinese-Canadian associations to influence Canada’s elections.
According to these papers, China was using underhanded tactics to keep Trudeau in office and undermine his Conservative Party opponents. CSIS also feared several candidates for the legislature in the 2019 elections had links to China.
Shortly after Johnston was appointed, three Canadian legislators revealed CSIS told them that China was trying to get them out of office. One of them was Michael Chong, who led an effort in the Canadian parliament to condemn the Uyghur genocide. CSIS reportedly found a Chinese diplomat named Zhao Wei targeted Chong and his family for intimidation tactics to “make an example” of him. Canada subsequently expelled Zhao and declared him persona non grata.
The opposition wanted these allegations to be investigated in public and some thought Trudeau appointed Johnston as special rapporteur just to delay that reckoning. In May, Johnston issued an interim report that ruled out a public inquiry. The House of Commons responded by passing a resolution asking Johnston to resign, but he refused.
Johnston said in May he found it “troubling” that his impartiality would be questioned. He hit that theme again in his resignation announcement.
“My objective was to help build trust in our democratic institutions. I have concluded that, given the highly partisan atmosphere around my appointment and work, my leadership has had the opposite effect,” he said in a letter addressed to Trudeau.
“I encourage you to appoint a respected person with national security experience to complete the work that I recommended,” Johnston said, promising to leave his post by the end of June and deliver an abbreviated final report in the fall.
Canada’s National Post reviewed the allegations made by opposition leaders that Johnston was too close to the Trudeau family to head up such a sensitive investigation:
Johnston knew Trudeau’s family since the prime minister was a child, and their families skied together. The two also lived on the grounds of Rideau Hall together when Johnston was governor general and Trudeau, after being elected prime minister, moved to Rideau Cottage.
Johnston was also a member of the Trudeau Foundation, which accepted a controversial donation from a Chinese billionaire that was revealed this year to be an attempted influence operation from the communist regime in Beijing.
It also came to light that the legal adviser that Johnston had appointed to assist with his work, Sheila Block, was a generous and frequent donor to the Liberal Party of Canada, raising further questions of conflict in Johnston’s recommendations.
The National Post suggested the highly unusual leaks of intelligence about Chinese election meddling to the media were CSIS’ way of prodding the Trudeau administration to take the problem more seriously.
On Saturday, the Trudeau administration finally conceded that a public inquiry might be necessary and opposition party leaders pledged to cooperate on the selection of a presiding judge. Johnston’s letter of resignation suggested giving the opposition a role in selecting his replacement.
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said the administration might name another special rapporteur if the opposition could not suggest an acceptable judge.
“It’s our government’s hope that the opposition parties will treat this issue with the seriousness it deserves and that we will be able to chart a path forward,” LeBlanc said.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said the investigation must be headed by “someone who has a track record of non-partisanship and neutrality,” and who has no ties to Trudeau, his family, or his Liberal party.
“We need to have terms of reference that have tight timelines to have the hearings occur as quickly as possible to get all the truth on the table before the next election. The last thing we need is for the truth to be hidden in the next election so there is no accountability,” Poilievre said.
Writing at the Globe and Mail, whose reporting launched Johnston’s brief and ill-fated stint as special rapporteur, John Ibbitson argued on Sunday that Trudeau’s Liberal government “has botched the issue of Chinese interference in Canadian elections so badly that it’s hard to imagine how things could be any worse.”
Ibbitson chalked up Johnston’s departure as a win for Poilievre, “the fiercest pit bull in public life.” Unfortunately, it was a political victory achieved by “smearing” the honorable Johnston – who, in turn, was only appointed because Trudeau wanted a human shield to keep the China election interference investigation at bay.
Ibbitson castigated the opposition for treating Johnston poorly but said “the greatest burden of responsibility clearly rests with Mr. Trudeau,” who does not wish to confront the “serial failures” of his soft-on-China policy.
“In his efforts to deflect, delay and distract, the Prime Minister has undermined public confidence in our democracy and tarnished Mr. Johnston’s legacy. He should never have called upon the former governor-general, who was 81 and in retirement, to serve in the first place,” Ibbitson charged, adding that he was disappointed in Johnston for not recommending the public inquiry that will almost certainly happen anyway.
“The government’s handling of this issue will go down as one of its most discreditable legacies,” he concluded.
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