According to Johnston, he and Justin Trudeau occasionally crossed paths when Johnston was the principal of McGill University and Trudeau was a student there . They had no further interactions, he said, until Trudeau was an MP and Johnston was appointed governor general .
But given those facts — and the fact that Johnston was involved with the Trudeau Foundation after his time as governor general came to an end — Trudeau surely would have been better off finding someone else to act as the prime minister's special rapporteur on foreign interference. At the very least, Trudeau and his advisers should have anticipated the attacks Johnston faces now.
Mind you, the past few weeks might also lead one to wonder how many perfectly unimpeachable people there are in Canada.While the headline item in the NDP's motion this week was the call for Johnston to resign, the most interesting part of that motion was an instruction to a House of Commons committee to recommend an individual who could lead a public inquiry into foreign interference. The motion says the individual should have the "unanimous support" of all recognized parties.
It can be safely assumed that no one who has had any involvement with the Trudeau Foundation is eligible . The individual obviously can't have had many interactions with the prime minister or any member of his family. Ultimately, it may turn out that no special rapporteur was ever going to be acceptable — because whoever it was would be standing in the way of demands for a public inquiry.