ANDREW MacDOUGALL
PM politicizing the public service
It should be taken as read that a prime minister doesn’t want his national security adviser to be the star of a farce. It’s a job where credibility is everything.
Why, then, is Justin Trudeau continuing to endorse his adviser’s now discredited tales of rogue Indian government factions being the ones behind Jaspal Atwal’s invitations, while simultaneously assigning blame to a backbench MP for the same? The obvious explanation — that it was a desperate prime minister in full damage-control mode who initially sent Daniel Jean out to do his dirty work — doesn’t justify the tremendous cost being paid by Jean’s credibility, to say nothing of Trudeau’s.
Not that the prime minister sees it this way. Knowing it would be poor form to abandon Jean so soon after he did him a solid, Trudeau rose in the House of Commons on budget day to say if officials of Jean’s rank say something, it’s because “they know it to be true.” Then, to confirm he was at his wits’ end, Trudeau accused the previous Conservative government of torquing the public service “every possible way they could.”
What’s chutzpah in Hindi? And what costume does it wear?
Having done dozens of foreign trips with Stephen Harper, including two to India, I know how the briefing game works. Someone at Jean’s level does not go out to brief the media on his own initiative. It’s inconceivable Jean would have gone out without the prime minister’s knowledge, if not explicit direction. Indeed, the arch-cynics in the Prime Minister’s Office knew the media would be forced to take Jean’s words seriously — such is the power of his position — even if they were unbelievable and delivered from under the cloak of anonymity.
Reporters travelling with Trudeau knew that Jean has access to absolutely every single piece of intelligence at the government’s disposal. They knew that Jean had every chapter and verse of Canada’s sordid history with Sikh extremism committed to memory.
They knew that Indian governments of varying stripes have been trying to get Canada to clamp down on the Khalistani movement since before 329 lives were snuffed out in the Air India bombings. And so the PMO trotted out their No. 1 security bureaucrat to try to change the channel. Their shamelessness is breathtaking.
One hopes Jean at least protested, knowing it was his reputation on the line. The many qualifying words reported out of his briefing suggest some discomfort with the task at hand. And yet, he complied. Had I been Jean, I would have threatened escalation to the clerk of the privy council. Political staff don’t get to send non-partisan public servants out under the cloak of anonymity to impugn a foreign government. It’s just not done.
Had I asked the national security adviser, during my time, to do the same for me, he would have replied with three words, including “go” and “yourself.” I’ll leave it to you to pencil in the word that fits in the middle.
I usually had the opposite problem: getting the public service to say anything on foreign soil. Think what you will of the supposed neutrality of the public service, but they do know how to stay in their lanes. I lost count of the number of times I did trip briefings in the presence of senior officials where said officials didn’t say a word because the questions being chucked at me were mostly political. When I did turn to them for a deeper explanation of policy, they answered as economically as possible.
That isn’t to say I didn’t send out bureaucrats to deliver government messages — but they were government messages. What made Jean’s foray so unusual is there was no confirmation of his message from the political side.
Unfortunately for Trudeau, the Indian government isn’t treating the matter lightly. Indeed, one wonders what Trudeau will say now that the Indian government has responded to his exchange in the House with a statement from spokesman Raveesh Kumar that is worth quoting in full:
“We have seen the recent exchange in the Parliament of Canada regarding two invitations issued to Jaspal Atwal by the Canadian High Commissioner, for functions hosted in honour of the Canadian Prime Minister in India. Let me categorically state that the government of India, including the security agencies, had nothing to do with the presence of Jaspal Atwal at the event hosted by the Canadian High Commissioner in Mumbai or the invitation issued to him for the Canadian High Commissioner’s reception in New Delhi. Any suggestion to the contrary is baseless and unacceptable.”
“Baseless” and “unacceptable” — guess that free trade deal ain’t happening any time soon. Heck of a job there, prime minister. But nice photos, eh?
SEAN KILPATRICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS