EDITORIAL: Chrystia Freeland's partisan G7 ploy
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It was troubling enough to learn that the Liberals were willing to revise a public safety terror report to win support form Sikh voters.
That’s certainly what it looked like the other week when the phrase “Sikh extremism” was removed from a report at the 11th hour, just before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended popular and vote-rich Sikh holy day celebrations in British Columbia.
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It was alarming to think that something as non-partisan as an intelligence report could be revised for seemingly partisan reasons. Former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh sounded off in the Sun that it was a case of “extreme pandering.”
Now we have another example of the Liberals adjusting national security priorities for what may prove to be solely partisan reasons. This time they’re doing it on an international scale.
It was recently revealed by the Canadian Press that Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland attempted to coerce her counterparts at the G7 to send out a joint communique that claimed white supremacy at home and abroad posed a major global threat. The other countries were reluctant to go along with it.
There is no doubt that white supremacist sentiment is a dangerous scourge that should be denounced by our politicians. But there are no credible intelligence assessments that suggest it is a global phenomenon comparable in scale and threat level to the one we face from radical Islamist terror.
It is still an issue to keep an eye on and hopefully our intelligence agencies are doing just that. No Canadian wants a repeat of the Quebec mosque massacre.
Why, though, is Freeland torquing the threat? What is the point of trying to pressure other countries on this issue?
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Perhaps it’s all for domestic partisan gain. It would be sad if true, but we’ve seen in recent weeks various attempts by the Liberals to link Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to the broader issue of white supremacy and neo-Nazis.
It’s deeply cynical politics but the Liberals clearly feel that if they can’t beat Scheer on policy, they have to go after the person.
They need to back away from this troubling game. Whether it’s Sikh extremism or white supremacy, don’t play politics with security matters.
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