Trudeau chief of staff to testify on foreign interference

OTTAWA — The Liberals have agreed to allow Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff to appear at a House of Commons committee next month to answer questions about foreign interference in Canadian elections, ending a standoff by Liberal MPs.

Katie Telford will testify for two hours during the second week of April at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee, where Liberals were engaged in a lengthy filibuster. A motion to call her finally passed on Tuesday morning.

But Trudeau still insists that the best way to get to the bottom of foreign interference allegations is through an investigation by the special rapporteur he named last week. Former governor general David Johnston will have until October to review any evidence he chooses, including classified documents.

“That’s where the answers are going to come,” Trudeau said on Tuesday.

Amid sustained pressure from his political opponents, however, Trudeau has asked Johnston to declare by May 23 if he thinks a full public inquiry is needed.

The opposition parties have demanded an independent inquiry for weeks, as allegations about attempts by Beijing to influence the 2019 and 2021 elections swirled. Trudeau has said he will only call an inquiry if Johnston deems one to be necessary.

He accused the Conservatives of trying to turn the whole thing into a “partisan circus,” and demanding that Telford show up to a committee knowing full well she wouldn’t be able to answer questions about national security.

“The Conservatives are trying to gin up the toxicity and partisanship by making a political theatre out of it and by catching Ms. Telford or others in not being able to answer direct questions,” Trudeau said.

Until Tuesday, the Liberals had attempted to keep Telford out of the witness chair, filibustering the House affairs committee for more than 21 hours across four meetings since March 7. Multiple Liberal MPs jammed up the meetings with lengthy speeches about the appropriateness of officials being called to testify, even questioning whether public inquiries cost too much, all in a bid to keep the motion to call Telford from getting to a vote.

The Liberals were forced to retreat Tuesday after the Conservatives introduced a similar motion in the broader House of Commons, which would have called Telford to testify at the ethics committee instead.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Tuesday that his party would vote for that motion unless the Liberals ended their filibuster.

“We are saying very clearly, if the Liberal government does not stop the obstruction, and if the Liberal government and Justin Trudeau doesn’t permit his chief of staff to testify, then we will force them to do that,” Singh said.

Singh had delivered that message to Trudeau himself on Monday. It was after their conversation that the NDP started to see movement on the Liberal position for the first time, according to a Singh aide who was granted anonymity in order to speak freely on the matter.

Minutes after Singh made his threat public on Tuesday morning, Trudeau’s office issued a statement saying Telford would agree to go the House affairs committee. Then, on Tuesday afternoon, the Conservative motion to call her to ethics was defeated.

While the Liberals would still prefer to leave Telford out of the matter entirely, that committee is deemed to be friendlier to them because it has a Liberal MP as chair.