Green leader says foreign interference review did not include key materials
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said a top-secret briefing on foreign interference this week did not allow her to access key intelligence documents.
Former special rapporteur David Johnston had released an initial report on alleged meddling in Canadian elections in May, along with a confidential annex of evidence that he said opposition party leaders who obtained relevant clearance could review.
May and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh have both received top-secret security clearance, and May was the first to attend a confidential briefing on Wednesday.
“There’s so much more that I thought I was going to find out about,” May told reporters Friday on Parliament Hill.
She said officials presented her only with two documents Johnston authored — 25 pages in total. The main 20-page annex cited numerous intelligence reports she was not allowed to read, she said.
May said the Privy Council Office is still considering her request for access to all the cited records, saying that she needs them in order to assess the credibility of Johnson’s findings.
The former governor general’s report had concluded that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government didn’t knowingly or negligently fail to act on foreign attempts to interfere in the last two federal elections.
Johnston also concluded, based on the intelligence he reviewed, that Trudeau hadn’t been briefed about specific allegations — though he also found that serious reforms were needed to improve the way government handles sensitive intelligence.
“I expected to have a larger brain burden of reading and comprehending top-secret documents before leaving the room,” May said.
The Green leader said she doesn’t suspect a cover-up, but rather a mistake in how officials interpreted Johnston’s
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