Attacking the investigator is Trump tactic
The best way to disrupt an investigation is to discredit the investigators.
Pierre Poilievre didn’t write that playbook. He borrowed it from Donald Trump.
No, this isn’t another hyperbolic comparison between American Trumpies and Canadian Tories. The similarities are eerie, but for one significant exception:
In the U.S., most American media called out Trump’s wilful distortions of how democracy works. In Canada, many in the media are repeating the canards from the Conservative leader about democracy, integrity and impartiality — largely uncritically — while dismissing David Johnston’s report on foreign interference in our elections.
First, a flashback to how Trump perfected the tactic of targeting the investigators.
When prosecutors closed in on questionable activities in the 2016 election, the former U.S. president publicly questioned their impartiality — implying that any ties, however routine, to the Democratic party impugned their objectivity. In fact, several prosecutors on the Robert Mueller probe had made political contributions to Democratic candidates, but U.S. rules and policies emphatically do not allow for disqualifying career attorneys because of their political affiliations or donations.
When Trump targeted the FBI’s deputy director, he discredited Andrew McCabe on the grounds that his wife had donated to Hillary Clinton and also run as a Democratic candidate. In fact, as U.S. reporters pointed out, Trump himself had previously donated to his rival and been a registered Democrat, which didn’t disqualify him from becoming the Republican presidential candidate.
Ah, you say, that was America in the Trump era. We take you now to the latest distortions and contortions in Canada’s democratic debate, where supposed conflicts are conflated and inflated — and not just by opposition politicians.
The Official Opposition leader’s unhinged attacks on Johnston’s credibility — who was deemed impartial enough by prime minister Stephen Harper to become governor general in 2010, and to swear in Poilievre as one of Harper’s cabinet ministers in 2013 — have derailed the process and distracted us from bigger perils. More on that in a moment.
But the more egregious distortion was the supposedly scandalous “revelation” that Sheila Block, who acted as legal counsel to Johnston in his role as rapporteur to the prime minister, had dared to donate to a bona fide Canadian political party in previous years in her private capacity as a citizen, long before accepting this role. As manufactured controversies go, this one is not just ill-informed but insidious.
It is also right up Trump’s alley, as we saw in the U.S. — supposedly putative “proof” of bias. In fact, political donations are a matter of public record, not some secret backroom deal — and they are so strongly encouraged in our democracy that they qualify for generous tax credits.
Should all lawyers now look over their shoulders, lest they be judged years from now for recklessly writing a cheque to one political party or another?
Must they inoculate themselves against second guessing by sending a second or third cheque to every party (or a fourth to the Bloc Québécois and a fifth to the Greens)? Does any donation to the NDP disqualify anyone from ever becoming governor general, or even joining the public service?
Are we to make a virtue of abstinence, even while our democracy exhorts donors to contribute generously? Should we make a public celebration of abstention, insisting that anyone in public service swear an oath of never having cast a secret ballot for one political party, since by definition that shows evidence of favouritism for one candidate over another?
Whence does this conceit of political purity emanate? From Trump — the wizard of confusion, conflation and disruption — who knew how to play the game.
What better way to discredit our democracy than to distort its true intent — participation — and turn it against the participants after the fact. All this in pursuit of some mythical ideal of impartiality that has been redefined to suit Poilievre’s purposes.
Set aside, for a moment, the paranoia about political donations and consider the political affiliations of Johnston’s predecessors.
Ray Hnatyshyn served as a fine governor general, despite having taken orders from prime minister Brian Mulroney while serving in his Progressive Conservative government. Roméo Leblanc played the blood sport of politics as a minister for prime minister Pierre Trudeau before rising above politics when recruited by him to be governor general.
It defies credulity that we question the credibility of Johnston today, who was utterly detached from partisan politics throughout his career. No matter, for the facts don’t matter.
When it comes to the report prepared by Johnston and Block in good faith, the critics have defenestrated them and the media have mostly defiled them. We have debased the currency of impartiality in our democracy.
They say the revolution eats its children. Today, the opposition and media make a meal of our elders.