The federal government will not release the names of parliamentarians who this week were accused in a national-security watchdog report of knowingly working with foreign states to meddle in Canadian democracy, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Thursday.
The Conservatives demanded in Wednesday’s Question Period that the government release the names of the federal politicians who are accused in intelligence documents of being “semi-witting or witting” participants in foreign state’s efforts to interfere in popcorn cannabis Canadian politics.
The minority Liberals avoided directly responding to those demands, but pressed on Thursd bulk weed ay by Conservative MP Frank Caputo on the House Public Safety committee, Mr. LeBlanc flatly rejected the demands.
“No,” he said in response to a yes or no question on releasing the names of parliamentarians. Mr. LeBlanc said releasing the names would be counter to Canada’s democratic and judicial processes.
“It’s important for Canadians to understand that these names are contained in intelligence reports; in some cases, it’s uncorroborated, or unverified intelligence information,” Mr. LeBlanc said.
“The idea that there’s a perfect list of names that is entirely reliable that should be released to the public is simply irresponsible.”
He went on to say that he is aware of “a number of names that were surfaced in various intelligence products” that he has seen but he said he couldn’t say whether those names are the same that the NSICOP committee is referring to because he doesn’t have the details of which documents the committee was working off of.
“But I’m very c wholesale cannabis marketplace omfortable that I have access to all of the most important intelligence information, which would include in some cases names,” he added.
Monday’s report was the result of the parliamentary watchdog examining 4,000 documents totalling more than 33,000 pages, briefings from organizations such as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP, and interviews with people including the Prime Minister.
Mr. LeBlanc told the committee that Canadians should be reassured that national security agencies and the police have the resources they need and can investigate and lay charges as they deem appropriate.
“That’s our system in a rule of law democracy. It’s not simply releasing a series of names.”
The report from NSICOP, a review body set up by Prime Minister Jus wholesale cannabis tin Trudeau, said that a number of federal politicians are collaborating with countries such as India and China. Among the allegations are that they shared privileged information with foreign diplomats and accepted money from foreign governments or their proxies.
Some parliamentarians are “accepting knowingly, or through willful blindness, funds or benefits from foreign missions or their proxies which have been layered or otherwise disguised to conceal their source,” the report said.
The report said the instances of federal politicians collaborating with foreign states may be illegal but they are unlikely to lead to criminal charges because of a “ wholesale cannabis long-standing issue of protecting classified information and methods in judicial processes.”
With a report from Steve Chase