We owe thanks to the whistleblower

From the bowels of Canada’s security services emerges a person — we have no idea who — who admits to having leaked intelligence information about foreign meddling in our country’s elections.

For years, this person wrote in the Globe and Mail over the weekend, evidence of outside interference grew. He/she/they tried to get top officials to do something about it. Yet “no serious action was being considered.” Even worse, “evidence of senior public officials ignoring interference was beginning to mount.”

In fact, it took the shock of those leaks to elevate the issue to the top of the public agenda. Finally we’re getting the debate we should have had a couple of elections ago. At long last, it looks like the government will be forced to take strong action.

Now comes the most Canadian part of the story. A good chunk of public opinion, especially elite opinion, seems at least as upset about the actions of the whistleblower as it does about the years and years of increasingly blatant interference.

On social media (and yes, take that for what it’s worth) you’re as likely to see the leaker attacked as someone who broke their oath of secrecy and undermined Canadian democracy, as you are to see them praised for trying to defend that same democracy at serious personal risk.

To take one example: a former senior security official Artur Wilczynski, ex-DG of the Communications Security Establishment, now at the University of Ottawa), went on CBC News’ “Power & Politics” show to denounce the person behind the leaks as having “betrayed” democracy and acted in a “narcissistic” manner.

The theory here seems to go like this: the job of a public servant (including a security official) is to work within the system, to push for change if you see a problem, but to keep it all in house. If things don’t move as fast as you’d like, well, that’s life.

I don’t want to rag on Wilczynski in particular. He articulated the case for secrecy very well. What he expressed was just a more elaborated version of the basic distaste of those who’ve dedicated themselves to working inside the system for those who get fed up and step outside. The worst thing in these situations is to be right: that makes everyone who played by the rules and stayed mum even angrier.

None of this is surprising. Deference to authority is a fundamental part of Canadian political culture. It’s bred in the bone, and built into our system.

In the case of foreign meddling in elections, though, it’s obvious by now that the system failed. Security agencies may well have been tracking it for years and issuing reports. The government may well be right that there’s nothing fundamentally new in the leaks.

But the key point was that nothing concrete was done to stop the interference. The meddling was more extensive than we knew, and even if the outcome of elections wasn’t changed many Canadians (especially those with roots in China) felt intimidated by a foreign power and abandoned by their own government.

We’re only starting to get to grips with this because the whistleblower blew that whistle. When Global News came out with troubling reports about foreign interference last fall, the government smothered them in a cloud of words. It was only when actual CSIS documents were leaked in February that the issue exploded.

In such matters there’s always a tension between the “trust us” camp and the “show us” camp. For years the line from official Ottawa was “trust us.” But things have shifted. For a host of reasons Canadians are now in “show us” mode.

That’s why the Trudeau government’s attempt to punt the issue down the road by naming David Johnston to act as a “special rapporteur” won’t wash. In the end, we’ll have to have some kind of public inquiry to clear the air.