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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, leaves after a meeting of the Liberal Caucus on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Wednesday, March 8, 2023.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus top adviser will testify at a House of Commons committee on foreign election interference after Liberals ended their obstruction and acquiesced to a narrow probe proposed by the NDP, over a sweeping study pushed by Conservatives.

Katie Telford, who has been Mr. Trudeaus chief of staff since the Liberals formed government in 2015, attends most national-security briefings and would know how the Prime Minister responded over warnings from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service about Chinese election intrusion.

The climbdown came Tuesday after Liberal MPs spent days filibustering an NDP motion that included calling Ms. Telford to answer questions at the procedure and House affairs committee. She is being asked to explain what she and the Prime Minister knew about Chinese interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections and what they did to stop it. She will testify the week of April 10.

Opposition parties have strongly criticized the Prime Ministers response to a series of reports in The Globe and Mail based on secret and top-secret CSIS documents detailing meddling from the Chinese government and its proxies in Canadian elections. In response to their calls to immediately strike a public inquiry, Mr. Trudeau instead appointed former governor-general David Johnston to advise him on whether he should launch one.

Mr. Trudeau has also asked two closed-door panels, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) and the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA), to study Chinas interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections. The results of their work will be reviewed by Mr. Johnston.

The government also announced Tuesday that Mr. Johnston will have until May 23 to make a recommendation on whether to call a public inquiry. Mr. Trudeau has said he will accept whatever Mr. Johnston suggests. The Conservatives and Bloc Qubcois disagree with the choice of Mr. Johnston, saying he lacks the independence required for the sensitive file because of his close ties to the Trudeau family.

On Tuesday, the Prime Ministers Office also released the mandate for Mr. Johnstons work. He will assess the extent and impact of foreign interference in Canadas elections and identify outstanding issues requiring attention. He is expected to complete his review and provide a final set of recommendations by Oct. 31.

Just before the Prime Ministers Office announced Ms. Telford would testify, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh told reporters if the Liberals didnt end their obstruction at the procedure and House affairs committee, the New Democrats would support the separate Conservative motion. That proposal would have shifted the study to an opposition-controlled committee and forced dozens more senior ministers, officials and advisers to testify on foreign election interference.

Because Mr. Trudeau conceded to the NDP, the fourth-place New Democrats helped the Liberals defeat the Tory proposal in the House 177 to 147. The Bloc supported the Conservatives.

John Ibbitson: Opposition to David Johnstons appointment shows how much politics has changed

Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer accused Mr. Singh of breaking with the approach taken by past NDP leaders, such as Jack Layton, and selling out long standing principles in exchange for who knows what.

The NDP decided to help their friends in the Liberal Party to keep the cover-up going, Mr. Scheer said, noting the differences in scope of the different parties motions and the fact that Ms. Telford will now be allowed to testify before a committee chaired by the Liberals.

Mr. Singh maintained that the NDP offer rendered the Conservative motion useless which is very much on brand for a party that has been pretty useless.

He dismissed the Tory motion as a game and said a question about whether the NDP was giving the minority Liberals cover was a Conservative narrative.

We have consistently been the ones to try to protect our democracy, he said.

Under Mr. Singh, the NDP has agreed to keep the minority Liberals in power in exchange for policy and spending concessions.

CSIS documents leaked to The Globe and Mail describe Chinas efforts to influence the past two federal elections. The Globe has reported that, in the 2021 election, Beijing employed a sophisticated strategy to disrupt Canadas democracy that involved working against some Conservative candidates in an attempt to bring about a Liberal minority government. CSIS reports also said China interfered in the 2019 federal campaign.

Liberal MPs have argued that the documents are not a full picture of how national-security agencies have handled Chinese interference, and that cabinet ministers should be answering questions on this issue and not political staff.

Postelection reports have determined that the meddling did not have a material impact on the election result and political leaders, including the Conservatives, have said they accept the outcome of the last campaign.

The Liberals used procedural tactics to try to prevent Ms. Telford from testifying, but also accuse the Conservatives of acting in their own partisan interest as opposed to the public interest. In announcing she would appear at the committee, the government played down expectations for how much Ms. Telford can disclose about top-secret information in a public setting.

The Conservatives are trying to gin up the toxicity and partisanship by making a political theatre out of it and by catching Ms. Telford or others in not being able to answer direct questions, the Prime Minister said Tuesday. There are unfortunately many things that cant be said in a public committee.

Officials and ministers who have testified on the issue so far have frequently declined to answer specific opposition questions about The Globes reporting, citing secrecy rules.

At an earlier news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Singh said he has told the Prime Minister that the only appropriate response to the allegations of interference is to strike a public inquiry.

Theres a lot of serious questions about what the Prime Ministers Office knew, when they knew it and what they did about that, Mr. Singh said.

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Trudeau adviser Katie Telford to testify on Beijing election ... - The Globe and Mail

The word compromise hovers alluringly over the battles now tearing Israeli society apart.If the two camps would only compromise, it is argued, the problems of the State of Israel will be magically solved. The torrent of discourse surrounding the word compromise suggests the stance of many that prior to the new Coalitions wild legislative blitz, the Israeli liberals inhabited a democratic state that reflected their values. Hence, now, some compromise is called for to accommodate the camp that recently assumed power.

The truth, however, is that the Israeli liberal camp has been compromising continually since the establishment of the state, for 75 years. Three of these massive compromises took place in the early years of the state. The first was the agreement that there would be no separation of religion and state, and that the Jewish religion that would dominate as Israels state religion would be exclusively ultra-Orthodox Judaisms most anti-liberal domination.

The second compromise was the agreement that the education system would be divided into state and private yet subsidized religious schools and state non-religious schools.In practice, however, the latter schools that serve the children of the seculars were, and are, infused by religious and nationalistic content outlined by an Education Ministry usually controlled by an illiberal minister. At the same time, within the religious schools of the ultra-orthodox, teaching math and English that provide basic tools for integration into society, let alone basic democratic education, are extremely limited or completely forbidden.

Later, what began as an agreement to support a handful of religious scholars developed into another, fateful compromise, in which the liberal public financially supports the ultra-Orthodox public, despite this being an anti-democratic population with a birthrate far higher than the rest of the population. This groups assertion of its mystical contribution to public wellbeing (that claim that studying the Torah saves Israel) is at odds with a rational and democratic logic that would obligate it to contribute to military or national service, economic productivity, or paying income tax.

We must not be misled by the fake unity of the people

A fourth compromise, largely repressed, grew since 1967: The liberal public willingness, by and large, to avert its gaze from the anti-democratic injustices done to Palestinians on a daily basis and to finance and protect the settlement enterprise despite its illegality and the trampling of basic human rights it entails.

For years Israeli liberals were held captive by an ethos of the unity of the nation that required compromises only from the liberal camp, by the absurd status quo argument on religion and state, and by the lie of the empty cart according to which only the religious have values they cannot renounce. Later, the rightwing government and its Minister of Finance Netanyahu privatized the Israeli market under cruel neoliberal capitalism ideology. While this policy created extreme economic gaps, it brought many liberals intoxicating wealth. Many could now enjoy a higher standard of living than their parents, allowing a large population a comfortable life in the kind of socioeconomic bubble that does not offer a fertile ground for political engagement and moral activism.

The ongoing occupation and the many Palestinians who did not abandon the idea of return also took their toll. Many abandoned the idea of peace or, worse, became complicit in the notions of Jewish supremacy and in the profits the occupation yielded, deriving from, among other things, the military industry and a significant segment of the hi-tech sector. The great economic inequalities created and sustained by the Likud, and the injustices of the continued occupation, poisoned the liberal camp from the inside, turning most of it into an indifferent and hedonistic one, unmoved by the suffering of others.

Israeli liberals also found bypass routes for some of the impediments posed by their compromises, whether through civil marriage in Cyprus, a medical certificate that allows ones son to escape combat military service, and service in intelligence units where the children not only escaper danger or face the horror of the occupation regime, but also get valuable human capital for the civil market.Liberals have deluded themselves that they can go on forever like this, crying as they shoot, occupying while remaining a democracy for Jews, and somehow assuming the other side will eventually see the light of liberalism, be convinced by feminism, and recognize the value, or at least the necessity, of participating on the labor market.

This did not happen.

Indeed, the liberal camp was forced to realize that not only are its values not winning, but they are increasingly used by the other side in the service of justifying the exact opposite. Thus, a racist, chauvinistic and inciting leadership adopts terms such as equality and democracy, flavored with the schmaltz of faked brotherly love and the unity of the Jewish people, to mobilize Israel toward an anti-democratic religious state.

The liberal camp cannot compromise anymore, not without forever losing its essence. It has been compromising basic liberal values for more than seven decades now, watching and even contributing to the collapse of the ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity. No democratic nation has ruled over another for more than half a century, does not allow civil family law, and has undertaken to fund an entire sector that refuses to contribute its share to this joint effort while sacrificing its children to poverty and ignorance.

There is no room for further compromise: liberals can scarcely recognize themselves as such after the compromises already made.Now it is the turn of the anti-liberals to compromise and preserve the remaining fragile democratic shell that sustains the State of Israels existence. Absent such compromise, those liberals who can will seek their destiny abroad, and all the rest will sink with their sinking state. Without this still large, educated and productive group, Israel would not only be a darker place, but one whose very existence is endangered.

Understanding the depth of compromises the liberal public in Israel has already made since the establishment of the state makes it clear what will happen if their invitation their plea to build a democratic constitution is not seriously taken up, or yields only a fake and temporary compromise that further shrinks Israels already shriveled democracy. We must not be misled by the fake unity of the people, which thus far has only rendered the liberal camp into the Messiahs donkey.

Prof. Dafna Hacker (dafna@tauex.tau.ac.il) is a full professor in the Faculty of Law and the Womens and Gender Studies Program at Tel Aviv University. Prof. Yael Hashiloni-Dolev (yaelhd@bgu.ac.il) is a full professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University.

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Israeli liberals have been compromising for 75 years. Enough! - The Times of Israel

The conservative writer Bethany Mandel, a co-author of a new book attacking wokeness as a new version of leftism that is aimed at your child, recently froze up on a cable news program when asked by an interviewer how she defines woke, the term her book is about.

On the one hand, any of us with a public-facing job could have a similar moment of disassociation on live television. On the other hand, the moment and the debate it sparked revealed something important. Much of the utility of woke as a political epithet is tied to its ambiguity; it often allows its users to condemn something without making the grounds of their objection uncomfortably explicit.

A few years ago, I wrote, Woke is a nebulous term stolen from Black American English, repurposed by conservatives as an epithet to express opposition to forms of egalitarianism they find ridiculous or distasteful. This is what people mean when they refer to woke banks or woke capital, when they complain that the new Lord of the Rings series or the new Little Mermaid is woke because it includes Black actors, or when they argue for a great unwokening that would roll back civil-rights laws. Part of the utility of the term is that it can displace the criticism onto white liberals who are insincere about their egalitarianism, rather than appearing to be an attack on egalitarianism itself. In fact, woke has become so popular as a political epithet that providing an exhaustive list of definitions would be difficult. It is a slippery enough term that you can use it to sound like you are criticizing behavior most people think is silly, even if you are really referring to things most people think of as good or necessary.

Adam Serwer: Woke capital doesnt exist

This is not the only way that the term is employedalthough it is almost always used as a pejorative now, whereas originally it could be sincere or ironic. Some commentators have used it as a shorthand for toxic dynamics in left-wing discourse and advocacy. Wokeness refers to the invocation of unintuitive and morally burdensome political norms and ideas in a manner which suggests they are self-evident, Sam Adler-Bell wrote in New York magazine. At other times, it means we express fealty to a novel or unintuitive norm, while suggesting that anyone who doesnt already agree with it is a bad person.

Adler-Bell is describing a real phenomenon in left-of-center communities, but right-wing opposition to woke discourse is less about the mode of expression than its content. Suffice it to say, though, that no ideology is so pure or benign that it renders its adherents incapable of being cruel, selfish, or self-aggrandizingespecially in a social-media panopticon where everyone is seeking to raise or protect their own status, often at the expense of others.

Mandel herself later offered this definition of woke on Twitter: A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of group result is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob. The right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro offered a similar description.

I like Mandels definition because it makes the concept seem so reasonable that it requires a few modifiers and a straw man about mob enforcement to evoke the proper amount of dread in the reader. If you describe the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, you dont need to add that it was radical to get most people to understand that it was bad. But the claim that American institutions are built around discrimination is just a straightforward account of history. And if few of the people who are caricatured as woke would argue that all disparities result from discrimination, most of them would agree that many key disparities along the axes of class, race, and gender do. But either the history, policy, and structure of the American economy matter or they dont.

To claim the reverse, that people who are rich or white or male are just better than everyone elseto object to equality of group result as a goal, as if its absurd to believe that people from across the boundaries of the biological fiction of race could be equalreveals a prejudice so overt that it practically affirms the woke side of the argument. The radical redefinition of society that many of the so-called woke seek is simply that it lives up to its stated commitments. And one really could, I suppose, describe that as radicalthe abolition of slavery, the ratification of womens suffrage, and the end of Jim Crow were all once genuinely radical positions whose adoption redefined American society.

David A. Graham: Wokeness has replaced socialism as the great conservative bogeyman

Those transitions were only possible because, as Mandels definition inadvertently concedes, the ideology she opposes is grounded in fact. The United States could not have been created without displacing the people who were already living here. Its Constitution preserved slavery, which remained an engine of the national economy well into the 19th century. Among the first pieces of federal legislation was a bill limiting naturalization to free white people. Yet not even all white men could vote at the nations foundingproperty requirements shut out many until around 1840and universal white male suffrage (sometimes including noncitizens!) was paired with the explicit disenfranchisement of Black men, even in some northern states. The nation was nearly rent in two because the slave economy and the social hierarchy it created were precious enough, even to men who did not own slaves, that they took up arms to defend the institution of human bondage with their life. After the Civil War, the former Confederates reimposed white supremacy and subjected the emancipated to an apartheid regime in which they had few real rights, a regime my mother was born into and my grandparents fled. For most of the history of the United States, Black people could not vote and women could not vote; American immigration policy in the early 20th century was based on eugenics and an explicit desire to keep out those deemed nonwhite; the mid-century American prosperity unleashed by the New Deal that conservatives recall with such nostalgia was stratified by race.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. These things are real; they happened. To believe that the disadvantages of race, class, and gender imposed lawfully over centuries never occurred or entirely disappeared in just a few decades is genuinely radical in a negative way; to believe that creating those disadvantages was wrong and that they should be rectified is not. The idea that no one ever succeeds based on advantages unrelated to their personal abilities is likewise radical, and also ludicrous. But you can, perhaps, understand why one of the richest men in the world would consider the opposing ideathat where many people end up in life is the result of unearned advantagesto be a woke mind virus that should be eradicated. That kind of thinking leads to higher marginal tax rates for people with private planes.

Some people so deeply resent the implication that they possess any unearned advantage that, in Republican-run states all over the country, the same folks who were recently shrieking about free speech and oversensitive snowflakes are busy using the power of the state to ban discussions about factual matters that might hurt their feelings, such as descriptions of racial segregation in the story of Rosa Parks. The irony here is that by framing everything they dont like as a symptom of pervasive oppression against white people or Christians that must be rectified by the state, they have themselves adopted the inverse of the logic they decry as wokeness. They believe that Americas demographic majorities are the targets of broad institutional discrimination, which is unjust not because such discrimination is morally abhorrent but because it is targeted at the wrong people.

Then there is the irony that the most zealous among the so-called woke and anti-woke form different denominations of the same religion, following high priests of racial salvation preaching parallel dogmas, one of which says that you need only read certain books or say certain words to attain salvation, and the other of which grants absolution to parishioners for their reflexive contempt for those they despise. Only one of them, however, has become the established church in certain states, deploying the power of the state to enforce its dogma.

You need not adopt either faith. Accepting the reality of American history and the persistence of discrimination does not mean that every egalitarian proposal is correct, nor that every egalitarian argument should be heeded. It does not necessarily mean that we should ban the SAT in college admissions or never refer to women when discussing abortion rights. Calling something racist or sexist doesnt mean that what you are describing is racist or sexist. Conversely, something that appears to be race-neutral can be implemented in a discriminatory fashion, or even adopted with that intention. But if you do accept the reality of our past, then you probably think we should try to level the playing field in some way. The merits of specific arguments or proposals are separate from that underlying principle. Whatever woke might mean, however, it is clear that the objections of the militantly anti-woke find the egalitarian idea itself to be worthy of contempt.

To say that traditional hierarchies are just and good, well, thats simply conservatism. It has been since the 18th century. And to say that those hierarchies do not reflect justice and that people should be equal under the lawall the people, not only propertied white menwell, thats more or less just liberalism. But if you dont like it, youd probably call it woke.

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'Woke' Is Just Another Word for Liberal - The Atlantic

The Washington Post accused Iowa Republicans of "targeting the LGBTQ community" in a hit piece Monday and of making the state the new "Florida of the North."

"Republicans in the Iowa legislature, empowered by the states recent red wave, have embarked on an ambitious new agenda that includes a costly school choice bill and legislation targeting the LGBTQ community, a historic divergence from Iowas history as a civil rights bastion," Washington Post reporter Annie Gowen wrote.

"A joke among statehouse reporters is that Iowa is becoming the Florida of the North without the beaches," she added.

TRUMP MAKES FIRST STOP IN IOWA THIS CYCLE JUST DAYS AFTER DESANTIS, EXPANDS 2024 CAMPAIGN GROUND GAME

"A joke among statehouse reporters is that Iowa is becoming the Florida of the North without the beaches," The Washington Post said of Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds' Iowa. (Courtesy: Iowa governor's office)

The Post mentioned Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, 10 times in the article, portraying her as a culture warrior on "gun rights," "school choice" and "abortion access."

But The Washington Post drew a particular connection between so-called "Dont say gay" protestors in Iowa and Florida.

Leftist activists have notably called Floridas Parental Rights in Education bill, which became law in March, the "Dont say gay" bill, in an attempt to smear Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The law prevents school employees or third parties from giving classroom instruction on "sexual orientation" or "gender identity" for students anywhere from kindergarten through the third grade.

IOWA REPUBLICAN UNVEILS LEGISLATION TO PROTECT RURAL LAND FROM CHINA, OTHER FOREIGN ADVERSARIES

Republican Govs. Kim Reynolds of Iowa (left) and Ron DeSantis of Florida team up at an event in Davenport, Iowa, on March 10, 2023. (And to the Republic)

The Post argued that Reynolds has focused her power on restricting the LGBTQ community.

"Even as teens draped in rainbow flags crowded into the Capitol rotunda chanting We say gay on March 8, Iowa lawmakers quickly passed three bills related to gay and transgender rights, culminating with a measure to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth that is awaiting Republican Gov. Kim Reynoldss signature," The Post claimed.

The article cited politicians and activists opposed to Reynolds to make its case that the Republican governor was an "activist" leader.

"From about 2019 until this year, attacks on LGBTQ Iowans have been exponentially increasing," One Iowa Actions director of policy and advocacy Keenan Crow reportedly told The Washington Post.

"I believe its primarily because of the governor and her shifting priorities. It seems for whatever reason, she wants Iowa to be more like Florida."

A display in a conference room at the Iowa GOP's headquarters, in Des Moines, Iowa on July 15. 2021.

On school choice, a former Iowa mayor accused Reynolds of becoming "extreme."

"Thats a red flag when your head of government is primarying her own party. It is an indication that the ideologies are becoming more extreme," former Indianola mayor Kelly Shaw said, according to The Washington Post.

"The governor has effectively removed her opposition, and that is pretty extraordinary," Shaw added.

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Gov. Reynolds' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

Fox News Jessica Chasmar contributed to this report.

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Liberals whine that Iowa is becoming 'Florida of the North': 'Targeting the LGBTQ community' - Fox News

Liberal MP Han Dong is now independent MP Han Dong. The twice-elected MP from Don Valley North made the announcement in the House of Commons late Wednesday night.

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I am taking this extraordinary step because to sit in the government caucus is a privilege and my presence there may be seen by some as a conflict of duty, Dong said.

Ill be sitting as an independent so that the business of government, and indeed the business of Parliament, is not interrupted as I work to clear my name.

Dong was named in a report by Global News on Feb. 25 as one of the MPs helped by an election interference network that intelligence agencies claim was run out of the Chinese Consulate in Toronto during the 2019 election. Since then, Dong has maintained his innocence and as recently as Tuesday spoke with reporters at length while denying he had any assistance from the Chinese government in getting elected.

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That Feb. 25 report stated that CSIS had warned the Trudeau Liberals that the intelligence agency had concerns about Dong weeks before the September 2019 election. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau never denied that his team or party had been briefed by CSIS but he still stood by Dong.

It is not up to unelected security officials to dictate to political parties who can or cannot run. Thats a really important principle, Trudeau said in response to the February report.

He stood by his MP and didnt expel him from caucus even as a member of Doug Fords Ontario PC Party caucus stepped down in early March when he was named.

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That all changed late Wednesday when another report from Global, citing unnamed sources, said that Dong had spoken to a Chinese diplomat about the detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. The claim was that Dong advised the Chinese diplomat in early 2021 that releasing the two Michaels shouldnt happen at that point in time because it would benefit the Conservative Party.

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Dong admitted to Global News that he did have a conversation with Han Tao, Chinas Consul General in Toronto, but that he had pressed for the two Michaels to be released. Asked about the fact that Dong had spoken to the Chinese consulate about the two Michaels, Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus office said they had no knowledge.

Alison Murphy, a spokesperson for Trudeaus office, said that the PMO only became aware that a conversation took place after Mr. Dong told us, following recent media questions.

That statement was the writing on the wall that Trudeau would no longer back Dong in public. A short time later, he announced his departure from the Liberal caucus.

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The Liberals have been dealing with allegations that they specifically benefitted from Chinas interference in Canadas elections in 2019 and 2021 by delaying any investigation into the matter and casting doubt on the allegations. The move to distance themselves from Dong is a sign that may be changing.

So far, Trudeau has called questions about the matter racist, he has called for the CSIS whistleblowers to be investigated and dealt with and he has delayed in calling a public inquiry by appointing David Johnston as a special rapporteur to study the matter.

If Trudeau was hoping this story would fade away, the latest allegations against Dong and his removal from the Liberal caucus has ensured that this story will stay front and centre for some time.

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LILLEY: Liberal MP Dong resigns from party over interference claims - Toronto Sun