SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 133

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 23, 2022 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 133 - Nov/23/22
Mr. Alain Therrien (La Prairie, BQ)
  • Nov/23/22 2:31:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when we ask the Prime Minister about China's interference in 2019 election financing, all he does is bluster. He compares us to Donald Trump, who denies the U.S. presidential results. That is nonsense. There is one person who spoke about the legitimacy of the 2019 federal election and that is the guy who won, the Prime Minister. Chinese interference is a very serious matter. We need to know in order to prevent it from happening again. The Prime Minister must stop posturing. He must tell us which candidates received Chinese funding and, above all, how China went about it.
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Context: House Hansard - 133 - Nov/23/22
Mr. Alain Therrien (La Prairie, BQ)
  • Nov/23/22 2:32:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is hard to keep up with the Prime Minister's stance on Chinese interference. In Parliament, he does not consider the issue important enough to give opposition parties serious answers, but at the G20, he was dashing through the halls to go talk to Chinese President Xi Jinping about it. Here in the House, he is not aware of anything, but at the G20, he was aware and concerned enough to discuss it with the Chinese President. That raises a simple question. Does the Prime Minister know all about Chinese interference and is he hiding that information from us, or did he accost Xi Jinping on the basis of a newspaper article alone? Either the Prime Minister is not being straight with us or he is not very savvy. Which is it?
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Context: House Hansard - 133 - Nov/23/22
Mr. Alain Therrien (La Prairie, BQ)
  • Nov/23/22 2:44:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let us talk about solutions. Eleven candidates allegedly received funding from China in the 2019 election. This proves that we need to fight interference by foreign powers in our democracy. That works out well because, in this specific case, it is super easy. We simply need to go back to public funding of political parties. The parties need to be funded by Elections Canada based on the number of votes received instead of focusing everything on major donors. This can be resolved tomorrow morning. Does the Prime Minister realize that, with foreign interference on the rise, public funding is becoming essential?
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Context: House Hansard - 133 - Nov/23/22
Mr. Alain Therrien (La Prairie, BQ)
  • Nov/23/22 2:46:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, why make things simple when they can be overly complicated? It is impossible to wave a magic wand and eliminate all foreign interference in our democracy. Disinformation campaigns on social media, for example, are complicated, but illegal election financing can be eliminated tomorrow morning. We already knew that political parties' dependency on private contributions made them susceptible to the influence of major donors. With the 2019 Chinese interference, we now know that we have the same problem with foreign powers. We can kill two birds with one stone. Will the Prime Minister restore public financing of political parties?
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