It's a shame we didn't have Trudeau's testimony on foreign interference earlier. Much earlier

A half-hour into his appearance before the public inquiry into foreign interference, Justin Trudeau arrived at a dramatic moment, from 2019, that would reverberate three and a half years later when Canadian journalists began reporting on a series of intelligence leaks.

In the midst of the 2019 election, security officials briefed a Liberal party official about «concerns» related to the Liberal nomination contest in the Toronto riding of Don Valley North. Those concerns were passed on to Jeremy Broadhurst, the party's campaign director, who then ventured to the government terminal at the Ottawa airport on a Sunday in late September to meet with Trudeau, who was returning after a week of campaign travel, Trudeau recounted on Wednesday.

The prime minister and Broadhurst spoke there for 20 or 30 minutes. Broadhurst explained that intelligence officials had concerns that Chinese officials had potentially been planning to interfere in the nomination contest, specifically by transporting either students or Chinese-Canadians via bus to the polling station to vote for Han Dong, who had won the nomination. He later became the Liberal MP for Don Valley North.

In Trudeau's telling on Wednesday, it wasn't clear whether this plan had actually been carried out. The Liberal party's internal process had raised no red flags about the vote. And the mere presence of buses at a nomination contest was not, in Trudeau's view, evidence of something questionable (apparently it's rather common).

Though it was reported in February 2023 that CSIS officials «urged» the Liberals to revoke Dong's nomination, both Trudeau and Broadhurst have now told the commission — under oath — that no recommendation of any kind was made. Trudeau also testified that