Conrad Black: Feds Should Quit Stalling and Release All Secret Docs to Foreign Interference Inquiry

Commentary The refusal of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to release unredacted documents requested by the inquiry investigating foreign meddling in Canadian elections and democracy is part of a disturbing pattern of retaining an unjustified level of secrecy in these matters, since some of the proportions of Chinese interventions in Canadian elections came to light last year. As if in a perfect counterbalance of the irrational haste with which the prime minister startled Parliament and the country by accusing the government of India of prompting the assassination of a Canadian citizen, he has conducted a prolonged foot-dragging and dissembling operation in respect of the role of the People’s Republic of China in certain recent Canadian elections. Obviously, there is an argument for confining the most sensitive of these intergovernmental abrasions to the discretion of diplomacy, at least up to the point where it is necessary in the national interest to inform and arouse public opinion about the unsatisfactory state of affairs that may have developed. However, there is no excuse that has been made public up to now for the prime minister’s outburst against the government of India....