The scandal that shocked Parliament in the spring is slowly fading from memory

For a few weeks in June, concerns ran high on Parliament Hill about unnamed MPs or senators possibly being compromised, perhaps even consciously, by foreign states — fears raised by a startling but opaque report by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians.

«We cannot and must not remain indifferent in light of such a revelation,» Bloc Quebecois MP Rene Villemure said.

«The allegations that MPs knowingly received help from a foreign government are deeply disturbing,» NDP MP Alastair MacGregor said. «No one with those interests in mind should be sitting in this House of Commons.»

«Members who willingly, knowingly and wittingly assisted a foreign government to the detriment of members of this place and their privileges, as well as the interests of Canada and its people, need to be expelled from the House,» Conservative MP Michael Chong said.

There were loud demands to «name names.»

Four months later, no names have been named. There is no longer even an agreed-upon process for naming names.

So what happens now?

In June, MPs voted to 320 to 2 to ask Justice Marie-Josée Hogue to look into NSICOP's findings as part of the ongoing public inquiry into foreign interference. But last week, Hogue said she was not capable of adjudicating the matter — at least not in the way MPs might have hoped she would.

«Because the allegations contained in the NSICOP report are based on classified information that cannot be disclosed to the individuals in question, those individuals would not be in a position to be heard in respect of any potential findings that the Commission might consider making against them,» she wrote.

«Thus, as a result of its dual obligations to respect national security confidentiality and the rules of