Bambi loves both bananas and Canada. She just does not like to see them increasingly combined. With all due respect to Mr. David Johnston, we learned today that he was named by our Prime Minster as a “Independent Special Rapporteur, which is “a new role as part of a suite of measures to help combat foreign interference [i.e. China”] and strengthen confidence in our federal electoral process and democratic institutions” (https://bit.ly/3JKXIlx).
Below you can first read and listen to Mr. Maxime Bernier (PPC) commenting on this nomination. Then, you can read Mr. Yves-François Blanchet’s (BQ) tweets in French, which inform us of the following: First, Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Johnston are good friends. Second, Mr. Johnston’s children studied in China.
If all this is not a conflict of interest, what is it then? This “special rapporteur” position appears to be FAR from being “independent” to the point that we can even wonder if it is not a political joke… but April Fool’s Day is still far away :).
Mr. Bernier is a fringe weirdo who lost any credibility long time ago. Mr. Blanchet is a Quebec separatist who has zero respectability outside Quebec. Mr. Johnston, however, has had a long and distinguished career as principal of McGill University, GG of Canada and before that, a journalist who was so perceived as neutral and trusted as non-partisan that they asked him to host the election debates as moderator decades ago. His public image is similar to Richard W. Pound.