Justin Trudeau was the last new witness, Wednesday, in the first phase of the public inquiry into foreign interference in Canada’s federal elections, getting top billing just as he had for 2022’s public inquiry into the government’s use of the Emergencies Act to end the convoy protest occupations.

After hearing from three senior cabinet ministers — Karina Gould, Bill Blair, and Dominic LeBlanc — that started in the morning it was past 3 p.m. when inquiry commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue, a Quebec Court of Appeal judge, warned there would be a longer break than usual before the next witness as “certain security measures will have to be put into place.”