Our leaders invite foreign meddling by flirting with diaspora politics
Canadians are still reeling from the bombshell report on foreign interference released by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) on Monday, which confirmed the existence of “troubling intelligence” indicating that multiple MPs are active and self-aware participants in the covert efforts of foreign states to influence Canadian politics.
But while the revelations outlined in the 84-page report have prompted the expected hand-wringing about the tenuous state of democracy in Canada, there’s thus far been little reflection on how Canada became a hotbed for foreign interference in the first place.
The truth is that Canada’s political leaders must shoulder some of the blame for the dismal state of affairs. In their eagerness to cater to the lowest common denominator of domestic diaspora politics, politicians of all partisan stripes have put our deliberative chambers in the crosshairs of understandably miffed foreign governments.
Case in point: NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh tweeted on the eve of the NSICOP report’s publication that he planned to seek formal recognition of the 1984 “Sikh genocide” in the House of Commons.
