An honourable man in the wrong place at the wrong time
After a long and distinguished career, now an elderly gentleman in his 80s, this rapporteur assignment is likely David Johnston’s last significant act of public service. With his Harvard and Cambridge pedigrees from the early 1960s, he is the product of a Canada that was politically dominated by a small elite of men whose attitudes of noblesse oblige to women, the lower classes and Indigenous people were matters of honour.
The former Governor General and one-time university president is a lay reader in the Anglican Church and proponent of the YMCA ideals of “muscular Christianity.” Even in youth, when he was a highly accomplished athlete, Johnston’s notion of fair play and a “man’s word is his bond” made him the ideal candidate for the archaic role of representative of Her Majesty the Queen in Canada, which he carried out with great pride.
Let’s face it, Johnston’s dismissal of news media reports about leaked intelligence reports as “misconstrued” is not based on the kind of rigorous investigative tactics that the situation demands. During his interviews, nobody was speaking under oath and they unlikely felt intimidated by Johnston’s genteel questioning. When he looked them in the eye and asked, “were you aware of the reports about Chinese government sponsored interference in Canada’s democratic process?” and they all responded that they were not, Johnston may have been quite inclined to conclude there was no need for deeper interrogation, and that it would indeed be dishonourable and insulting to question anyone’s denial.
