Evasive. Duplicitous. Condescending.

If you were to (ironically) do a Google search to find a record of the meeting 69 of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, those would be the words you’d use. Because those words describe — perfectly, accurately — the “testimony” of two Google executives before Members of Parliament last week.

The pair were there to offer up objections to Bill C-18, which would provide Canadian news providers with some degree of compensation for the content that Google — and Facebook, and others — routinely swipe from them, and profit from. C-18 is a fair and reasonable approach to a problem that every modern democracy on Earth faces: Namely, how to keep Google et al. from putting real news media out of business.

The company that owns this newspaper supports C-18, yes, as does every other struggling news organization in Canada. But that is not why this writer supports it: I’m a freelancer, and I easily make my living elsewhere. I support C-18 not simply because it is the right thing to do. I support it because it is the bare minimum of what we must do.

Make no mistake: If C-18 is not passed by Parliament, the consequences will be very dire. The costs will be immense. A diminished democracy, an ill-informed populace, and some of the most obscenely rich companies in the world getting even richer. And even less accountable.

Appearing before the Standing Committee to bleat about C-18 was Sabrina Geremia, a vice-president and “country manager” for Google. With her was Google functionary Jason Kee, who liked to say that he runs lots of “tests.”

One of those “tests,” it turns out, is for Google to punish several million Canadians, and bar their access to news reports. That is, censor Canadian news organizations — cancel them, erase them — because Google doesn’t like what C-18 would do.

What would C-18 do? Require Google and others to share in some of the profit it reaps — US$225 billion a year, last year — from pilfering, and posting, the work of journalists. That’s it. Giving Canadians some credit, and some return, on the work that they do.

In her opening remarks, Google Canada’s “country manager” Geremia wheedled that her company has “worked constructively” with Canada and “offered reasonable and balanced solutions” to resolve their issues with C-18. Some of those solutions, it turns out, are to simply deny Canadians access to information.

Also, in her remarks — which revealed a flair for Orwellian Newspeak that was frankly without equal — Geremia huffed that “C-18 puts a price on free links to web pages, setting a dangerous precedent that threatens the foundations of the open and free flow of information.”

Wow? Did you get that? “Dangerous precedents” are being set, ones that literally “threaten the foundation” of all free speech and knowledge. And here we just thought we were asking Google and their cabal to account for what they purloin.

Anyway. In the question-and-answer section of the meeting, the lead Conservative MP, Marilyn Gladu, revealed herself to be an enthusiastic supplicant for Google, declaring that her party “agreed with some of the concerns” Google had. Said she: “I certainly share your concerns with the bill.”

Well, take note, Canada. The Conservative Party now stands for the proposition that wealthy global multinationals should be able to unfairly profit on the hard work of others. But that’s them.

The Liberals, to my surprise, did much better. Montreal Liberal MP Anthony Housefather was absolutely brilliant in the way he took apart the Google apparatchiks. He pointed out that senior Google executives had come to Canada to lobby behind closed doors — but when the Standing Committee summoned them, they arrogantly refused to come.

He pointed out that Google was supposed to provide its emails and notes about C-18 to the committee in advance and didn’t. Asked repeatedly about that, Geremia blinked a lot and actually said she didn’t understand “the premise” of the question. Gotcha.

Anyway. Google the words evasive, duplicitous and condescending. It’ll take you right to the testimony of the two Google executives.

Do it soon, however.

You never know when Google is going to bar your access to news, Canada.

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You can’t judge yourself.

More specifically, you’re not allowed to decide – or control, or influence – a case in which you are one of the main players. In law, that’s as basic as it gets.

The Bible says we can and should judge ourselves, yes. It’s in 2 Corinthians 13:5, where it goes on about “testing yourself” and “examining yourself.”

But that’s not the law. The law is quite clear: no one is permitted to stand in judgment of themselves.

In law, it is a principle that has been around for centuries. There’s even a Latin phrase for it: “Nemo iudex in causa sua.” That essentially means “no one should be a judge in their own cause”.

It’s an ancient principle of what is called natural law – the unchanging moral principles that serve as the basis governing all human conduct. Natural laws are considered so fundamental they cannot ever be debated.

In Canada, the notion that no one should have the power to judge themselves is seen in section 21 of the Conflict of Interest Act. That law reads: “A public office holder shall recuse himself or herself from any discussion, decision, debate or vote on any matter in respect of which he or she would be in a conflict of interest.”

The “public office holder,” here, is one Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada. The “discussion or debate,” here, is the interference of China in Canada’s federal elections in 2019 and 2021.

The interference isn’t an allegation: there’s been a veritable avalanche of detailed disclosure by intelligence agencies, foreign and/or domestic, characterizing Chinese election interference as a fact, not a claim. The media, too, are now reporting Chinese wrongdoing as fact – and not prefaced by the usual hedges, like “allegedly” or “reportedly.”

For months, the fact of Chinese election criminality has been adamantly denied by Trudeau and his Liberal Party. As recently as last week, he was refusing to do anything about it.

This week, Trudeau did a reversal that was so complete, so colossal, it is frankly amazing that he didn’t suffer actual whiplash. But you knew that he finally knew he could ignore the crisis no longer.

So, he stood before the media for almost an hour – a gaggle of ministers arrayed behind him, nodding their craniums like bobbleheads in a pickup truck window careening along a country road – and pretended to answer questions in that cloying, counterfeit manner he uses whenever he’s caught. All dewy-eyed and inflection.

Except he didn’t answer the key question, however many times he was asked it. Namely, how can he decide who will investigate China’s malfeasance – and what their terms of reference are, and when they will report – when he, him, is the prime beneficiary of the interference?

Because we all know that China interfered in our elections, in our democracy, for one purpose and one purpose alone: to defeat the Conservative Party, who they saw as inimical to their interests. And to elect the aforementioned Justin Trudeau, who they rightly saw as the Western leader most likely to act as supplicant to China.

In the United States, when Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump was not the one who decided whether the interference would be investigated or not. If he alone had had that power, no investigation would have taken place. Trump was quite clear on that.

So the decision was made by an official within the Department of Justice. A public office holder whose fate did not rest on the outcome.

Justin Trudeau’s political fate now rests on the outcome of the Chinese election interference story. That, too, is a fact: he would have continued to stonewall and prevaricate if the metastasizing scandal wasn’t taking a serious toll. He done it before.

Which leads us back to the key question, the one with which we started: how can Justin Trudeau stand in judgment of himself? How? Because, ultimately, that’s what he’s doing. He alone determines the parameters for the investigation of a scandal in which he, personally, was the beneficiary.

That is not just unethical, it is against natural law. And the only way to deal with this abomination, now, is this:

Have a real election, free and fair, and vote the abomination out.

[Kinsella is a lawyer who taught at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Law.]

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The facts of the election interference are well known, by now.

A hostile foreign power, acting on the direct orders of its leader, conspired with sympathizers — and traitors, frankly — to undermine a Western democracy’s general election. Their objective was simple: Get one political party elected. The one that was more sympathetic to their interests.

The hostile foreign power’s campaign to destabilize the election was secret, subtle and successful: Their favoured candidate, their chosen party, ultimately won.

The clandestine criminal campaign had many moving parts. There were multiple contacts with various political players, many of whom were paid thousands of dollars for their complicity. There were fake Internet accounts, developed to stoke division and suppress dissenting voices. There were files stolen, and leaks to various websites. There was intimidation and threats and cash in envelopes. And it all worked.

The response of the winning party, the victorious leader, when details started to leak out in the media — and out of alarmed intelligence agencies? They called it a hoax, and refused to investigate it.

By now, you may have wondered where the aforementioned election interference took place. Canada, right?

Well, yes. That is indeed what China’s regime did in Canada during our last two federal elections, in 2019 and 2021. But it is also what happened in the United States of America in 2016, in their federal election. Then, the hostile foreign power was Russia, not China.

That’s one key difference. The other: In the United States, there was a proper investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — which saw Russia’s candidate, Donald J. Trump, elected president.

In Canada, there has been no such investigation by a truly independent body into Chinese interference in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. Instead, there has been stonewalling by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — the guy the Chinese wanted to win, and whose family’s foundation directly benefitted from Chinese graft.

And there has been a shameful campaign of disinformation and misinformation by his Liberal Party as it desperately attempts to prevent any arm’s-length probe into two election results that may have been actually altered by Chinese meddling.

Because that, truly, is the disturbing reality: In Canada, both of those elections resulted in minority governments. And, if the results in just 20 or so ridings were altered by the Chinese regime, the general election’s outcome was upended.

Twenty ridings, each time. That’s all it took. If 20 or so seats had not been diverted away from Andrew Scheer or Erin O’Toole, Justin Trudeau would have lost. He’d be writing his memoirs by now.

We don’t know, of course, if that happened — because the Trudeau government has adamantly refused to do what the Americans did when confronted with the same problem. They’ve refused to look into it.

In the U.S., a special counsel was appointed by Donald Trump’s own Department of Justice. That special counsel, Robert Mueller, investigated the Russian election interference for two years. He had a team of 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, plus an army of forensic accountants and professionals. He issued nearly 3,000 subpoenas, interviewed 500 witnesses, and prompted nearly 40 indictments.

Mueller’s report was 448 pages, two volumes, and it found that Russia conducted “disinformation and social media operations in the United States designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election.” He also concluded that the Russian campaign was “designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election.”

“Interfering with the election. Influence the election.”

The Americans — even an America led by Donald Trump — did it the right way. They saw how serious the allegations were. They knew their democracy could be placed in peril — perhaps even destroyed — if Russia was allowed to get away with it. So they investigated: Thoroughly, completely, exhaustively.

In Canada, after China’s serial efforts to interfere with not one, but two elections? Crickets.

The eyes of the world are watching us, folks. If we do not do what the Americans did, we will have ceased to be a serious country.

We will be a joke.

— Warren Kinsella was Special Assistant to Jean Chretien, and chairman of the winning 1993 and 2000 federal Liberal election campaigns.

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