PUBLIC SAFETY MINISTER RALPH GOODALE DID HIS BEST TO CLARIFY HOW JASPAL ATWAL, WHO WAS CONVICTED OF AN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT, WAS INVITED TO AN EVENT WITH PRIME MINISTER TRUDEAU IN INDIA.
Answers sought on inclusion to dinner guest list
OTTAWA • The Liberals continued Thursday to work furiously to manage the fallout of the Jaspal Atwal affair, blocking attempts to have senior security officials testify in front of a parliamentary committee about how a would-be assassin ended up on Canada’s guest list to a dinner in India.
But Randeep Sarai, the Liberal MP who insists it was his decision alone to invite Atwal, keeps stumbling back into the story.
On Thursday, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale did his best to come up with an explanation as to how it’s possible the incident is both the fault of Sarai (for issuing the invitation) and elements within the Indian government, including perhaps its intelligence service (as suggested last week in briefings to the media, including to the National Post, by a Canadian security official).
Goodale had just wrapped up an appearance before a parliamentary committee and was speaking to journalists outside an elevator. He spent much of the scrum insisting repeatedly he couldn’t discuss what the security official had told reporters.
“Is Mr. Sarai part of a faction in India?” a reporter demanded.
“I have no knowledge of Mr. Sarai’s circumstances,” Goodale responded.
But then a reporter near the back of the crowd noticed someone else had just emerged from a different committee room down the hall, and was trying to slip by to the elevator.
“Guys, guys …” she said, realizing that in a spectacular coincidence, it was Sarai himself, who has been trying to avoid media since the scandal broke.
The reporters and TV crews surged from Goodale to Sarai, causing a Conservative MP caught in the middle to emit a brief howl of panic.
“Are you part of these rogue elements from the (Indian) government?” a reporter shouted at Sarai.
“No,” he said, pushing his way through the crowd and toward the elevators.
Sarai refused to answer any other questions, then got into the waiting elevator with Goodale. As the door closed, reporters shook their heads in disbelief.
The Liberals have been under heavy fire over comments to media by a top security official, who said it was suspicious Atwal had been allowed to enter India at all, given his past criminal conviction for attempting to kill an Indian cabinet minister. The official suggested someone in the Indian intelligence service may have been looking to shame Canada for being soft on Khalistani radicals. (The National Post’s John Ivison was among those who spoke to the official on background — meaning they agreed to identify the person as a senior government security source, but not identify them by name.)
At Thursday’s meeting of the public safety committee, the Conservatives attempted to have the government’s national security adviser and the Privy Council Office’s director of security operations called to testify about the incident, but the Liberals used their majority on the committee to block both motions.
Conservative Senator Jean-Guy Dagenais is also calling for the national security adviser to testify at the Senate’s national security and defence committee, but the Senate — which has become a less predictable place due to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s appointment of a number of independent senators — voted to adjourn debate Thursday, and likely won’t vote on the actual motion until mid-March, following a two-week break.
NDP MP Charlie Angus has also written to Trudeau to request an investigation into whether India is interfering in Canada’s sovereign affairs and democratic institutions. “Parliament must know if the theory you have advanced is backed by credible evidence,” Angus said.
During the House committee meeting, Conservatives demanded to know why it was acceptable for a top security official to speak to the media on background, but not to a parliamentary committee.
Goodale, in his lengthy session with reporters following the meeting, said the proper place for discussing sensitive matters is at the newly established National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, which is cleared to receive classified information. (In exchange for that clearance, the MPs and senators have sworn an oath of lifetime secrecy.)
But if that is the case, he offered no answer as to why media was offered the background briefing.
“What the official may or may not have said to journalists, I don’t know, I wasn’t privy to that,” he said, claiming repeatedly that he couldn’t say more without disclosing classified material.