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get your podcasts. Let's

18:00

bring everybody back, Chantal, Andrea and Althea. Andrea,

18:03

I'll start with you. I mean, one of the reasons why

18:05

Jenny Kwon, I think, has some credibility on

18:07

this issue is that she herself has been, of

18:09

course, the target of foreign interference. So she, you

18:12

know, she wants to know what's going on. I

18:16

think this is one of those stories, though, that as

18:18

we head into the summer runs the risk of fading

18:20

away. So I wonder

18:22

what you think will happen in the weeks

18:24

ahead. Oh, in the weeks ahead,

18:26

who knows? Probably not much. But

18:29

look, the failure to

18:32

name or to release the names

18:34

does not mean that everybody's avoiding

18:36

besmirching other people's reputations. It's maybe not

18:38

by name. But what's been going on

18:40

is you have Jagmeet

18:43

Singh insinuating that there must be a lot

18:45

of liberal MPs that the prime minister is

18:47

protecting and he's soft on interference. The prime

18:49

minister, in his turn, then says, well, Jagmeet

18:51

Singh, you know, I'd be wary of any

18:53

politician who makes that kind of claim about

18:55

their own party being scot-free. People

18:58

casting aspersions, literaries, et cetera. So it's not

19:00

like everyone's just playing

19:03

above board here. People

19:05

are, you know, the reputations of parliament

19:07

in general are being besmirched. And

19:10

I'm not quite sure why we're so protective

19:12

in this particular case of not naming anybody

19:14

who's been credibly accused of something. When it's

19:16

another matter, if it was misappropriation of funds

19:18

or whatever, there'd be parliamentary committees, the MPs

19:20

involved will be called in front of it.

19:23

They'd have a chance to declare their name

19:25

or not. The evidence will be examined. People

19:27

would see how credible it was or was

19:29

not. I'm not so sure why

19:31

we've had this all party agreement at this point not

19:34

to name anybody. Yeah, but isn't that the

19:36

key thing, credible allegations? Like

19:38

we don't know that they're credible. Well,

19:40

no, but what we know is that

19:42

the committee appointed by the prime

19:45

minister from all parties, people with deep

19:47

backgrounds in law enforcement, in national security,

19:49

et cetera, who spent months going through

19:51

thousands of documents on this. I mean,

19:53

that was the knock saying, let's not

19:55

accept those cease-and-starts that were leaked to

19:57

the press. Who knows how

19:59

credible these were? Okay, so we have a committee

20:01

look at it in depth, go through it at the

20:04

end of which they basically say, we think these allegations

20:06

are credible. That doesn't mean you throw anybody in jail

20:08

over it, but it does mean, it seems to me,

20:10

that you turn over that rock and see what's under

20:12

it. Okay, Jean-Claude. I

20:16

don't, fading away is

20:18

not the same as going away. And

20:20

I don't think the issue is going

20:22

away, but I tend to

20:24

think that we're now going

20:27

to have to wait to see

20:29

what Justice Ugg and the Commission

20:31

on Foreign Interference makes of those

20:34

in its final report. I

20:38

understand what Andrew is saying, but I think

20:40

by now we've come to a dead

20:43

end here. Various MPs

20:45

are saying the names should be named,

20:47

but the party that is most calling

20:49

for names to be named is the

20:51

party whose leader will not read the

20:53

report, the unredacted version. So it's kind

20:55

of a comedy that

20:58

is not meant to shore up confidence

21:00

in parliament or its members at this

21:02

point, but I do believe we're gonna

21:04

have to wait now. The

21:06

least funny comedy ever, Elthea, last word to

21:08

you. Just

21:10

a clarification, the NSICOP

21:13

committee, they're not

21:15

appointed by the Prime Minister, they're chosen by

21:17

their own party leaders. The chair is appointed

21:19

by the Prime Minister, yeah. And

21:21

so it's not like Justin

21:24

Trudeau has single-handedly picked the members of this

21:26

committee. We don't know how

21:28

credible the allegations are because we don't know

21:30

what the language around the allegations were or

21:33

the nature of what it was that they

21:35

were targeting or how many people were targeted.

21:38

Jenny Kwan has asked the Speaker of

21:40

the House of Commons to rule on

21:42

the question of privilege, so that will

21:44

come back to the House of Commons

21:46

in September when the House resumes. Her

21:49

suggestion is for the

21:52

Parliamentary Procedure Committee to

21:54

look at this issue, which I find bewildering.

21:56

If we are sending this back to a

21:58

committee, it should go back. The

24:00

leader of the opposition doesn't need to know

24:02

if there is a caucus like we think

24:04

or report. The great news is we'll still

24:06

be talking about this after our summer break.

24:08

You just all confirmed that. So thank you

24:10

for that. Thank you all very much. And

24:15

that is at issue for this week and indeed

24:17

at issue until September. With the House rising, we're

24:20

going to take a break. But we will be

24:22

back if and when

24:24

events warrant. We'll see.

24:27

Have a great summer. Thanks for listening. I'm

24:29

Rosemary Barton.