44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 20, 2023 11:00AM
- Mar/20/23 3:09:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, violent repeat offenders continue to get bail and are released into our communities.
In Ajax, Ontario, a soccer star was stabbed to death, and his alleged murderer has been released on bail. This suspect was previously arrested and charged with violent crimes just one month before stabbing this soccer player.
Canada has become a place where violent repeat offenders charged with second degree murder are getting out on bail into our communities. When will the Prime Minister take responsibility for this reckless bail system so we can fix what he broke?
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- Mar/20/23 3:10:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there it is. The government's solution is just more meetings, more talk and no action. Meanwhile, Canadians are being murdered.
The Liberals have had eight years to take action and they have only made it worse. We have seen a 32% rise in violent crimes under their watch, a doubling of gang murders, and headline after headline of violent repeat offenders getting out on bail only to hurt more innocent Canadians.
Our bail system is broken. How can Canadians possibly trust that the Liberal government is going to fix it when it is the one that broke it?
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- Mar/20/23 5:03:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, the House of Commons will see a very important vote. It is one that will show Canadians whether the New Democratic Party of Canada is an opposition party that believes in its role to hold the government, the Liberal Party, accountable for its actions, or if the NDP is just a sidekick to the Liberal government that will do whatever it can to uphold the government and support it in its cover-up of getting to the truth on the Beijing interference in our elections. That is what at stake with the vote tomorrow.
The stakes are so high, in fact, that just breaking on the news, there are whispers that the Liberals may make tomorrow a confidence vote. That is how desperate the government is to cover up the truth. That is the latest on the news. That may be happening tomorrow to force the NDP's hand. If the Liberals lose that vote, we will have an election in this country. That is how desperate the Liberals are to make sure we do not get to the truth. I implore the NDP to fulfill its duty as an opposition party and hold the Liberal government accountable, no matter what the consequences are tomorrow. That is what its duty to Canadians is. That is what its members were elected to do.
What are we debating today? In essence, it is a motion to compel a number of key government witnesses from the Liberals to come to committee, face accountability and be transparent on what they knew, what the Prime Minister knew, when he knew it and what he did or did not do about about this political interference campaign from Beijing. The number one person on that list is the Prime Minister's long-time chief of staff, who is arguably one of the most powerful women in this country. Her name is Katie Telford.
Katie Telford has been the right-hand person to the Prime Minister since he started his political career. All through his election as a Liberal leader in 2013, and through his winning election campaigns in 2015, 2019 and 2021. She has been his ultimate gatekeeper, which is what a chief of staff is, for all of that time. She has been front and centre, a key operator, in every one of his election victories. As chief of staff, she would have had access to every top-level, classified briefing. She is the one who decides the political filter of messaging that goes out and the information that gets to the Prime Minister.
I cannot stress enough how important a chief of staff is to the Prime Minister. In fact, I think she has been the longest reigning chief of staff to a prime minister in Canadian history. It shows how influential she is and has been, both in the Liberal wins and within all the ongoings of the Liberal government in the last eight years. She has come to committee before on two occasions. It makes sense. She is such a powerful figure who is wielding so much power in our democracy. Sometimes she will have to come to committee, be held accountable and answer the questions of elected officials.
For some reason, the Liberals are so desperate to stop her from coming to committee that they may be threatening a confidence vote tomorrow. For weeks, they have blocked at the committee a motion to bring her forward. That is why we are here debating it because we were able to bring it to the House for official debate today and a vote tomorrow. It really begs the question why they are so desperate to keep her from coming to committee.
What does she know? What does she know that the Liberals do not want Canadians to know? If she is not hiding anything, there would be no problem. She has come to committee twice and frankly, left relatively unscathed. She is a smooth, intelligent operator. If she has got nothing to hide, she can easily come, fulfill her democratic duty to be held accountable as a powerful woman in this administration and answer our questions as the elected officials. It is not a lot to ask given what is at stake.
I would like to go over what we are talking about and why it is so important. Conservatives had been asking questions, particularly of the Prime Minister, for a number of months regarding election interference from Beijing. However, it was only about a month ago that The Globe and Mail and some of the most prominent journalists in the country, Robert Fife and Steven Chase, broke a groundbreaking story about leaked CSIS documents, which is our spy and intelligence service. It is basically Canada's equivalent of the CIA. There were leaked documents from it. Someone blew the whistle and gave this to Robert Fife and Steven Chase.
In those documents, they found that “China employed a sophisticated strategy to disrupt Canada's democracy in the 2021 federal election campaign as Chinese diplomats and their proxies backed the re-election of [the] Liberals”. The article goes on to say, “Drawn from a series of CSIS intelligence-gather operations, the documents illustrate how an orchestrated machine was operating in Canada with two primary aims: to ensure that a minority Liberal government was returned in 2021, and that certain Conservative candidates identified by China were defeated.”
This is what our head spy and intelligence service has written. It is fairly significant. We would think that the government would move heaven and earth to open the box and tell Canadians what it knows and what it has done about it, which amounts to really nothing at this point.
It goes on to say, “The classified reports viewed by The Globe reveal that China’s former consul-general in Vancouver, Tong Xiaoling, boasted in 2021 about how she helped defeat two Conservative MPs.”
We have a diplomat from Beijing bragging about how she helped defeat two of my colleagues, but the Liberal government says there will be no public inquiry. It says that we do not need that, and we do not need the powerful woman who was likely briefed about this to come forward and answer our questions. No, there is nothing to see here.
The article in The Globe and Mail also said:
Most important, the intelligence reports show that Beijing was determined that the Conservatives did not win. China employed disinformation campaigns and proxies connected to Chinese-Canadian organizations in Vancouver and the GTA...to voice opposition to the Conservatives and favour the [Prime Minister's] Liberals.
It went on to say:
CSIS also explained how Chinese diplomats conduct foreign interference operations in support of political candidates and elected officials. Tactics include undeclared cash donations [which are very illegal in Canada]...or having business owners hire international Chinese students and “assign them to volunteer in electoral campaigns on a full-time basis.”
That is also very illegal, and these are clear violations of the democratic rules we have set for our elections.
Lastly, The Globe and Mail also reported:
China appears to have targeted [the Liberal Prime Minister] in a foreign influence operation after he became Liberal Leader in 2013, according to a national security source who said Beijing’s plan involved donating a significant sum of money to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.
Notably, that was $200,000. More than that, the Trudeau Foundation has since returned the money. It has been a couple of years that it has had it, but now that we know all this information, the foundation has returned it. Still, there is nothing to see here and no need for a public inquiry or to engage in the committee process and have the chief of staff of the Prime Minister come to testify.
It is important that we acknowledge something in this debate: Why would Beijing want to go through all this effort to interfere in a civic election, as recently seen in reports on this impacting Vancouver, as well as provincially and federally? Why would China be doing all this work? It wants the Canadian government to be sympathetic and supportive of its various agendas, and some of them are extremely serious and counter to everything we believe as Canadians.
For example, China wants Canada to accept its claim on Taiwan to annex it by force. It also wants us to accept its draconian 2020 national security law on Hong Kong. It wants us to look the other way with what it is doing in Tibet and its militarization of the South China Sea and sweeping maritime claims in the region. China wants us to do nothing about the fact that it actively threatened Chinese Canadians on Canadian soil, using covert so-called police stations that are operating completely illegally and in violation of our sovereignty. If one does not pay any attention to that, it will help one get elected. At least, that is what is being reported; we could find out more about this if there were a public inquiry and we heard from the most powerful Liberal woman in the country, Katie Telford.
I want to conclude with something I found quite moving. Recently, the person who blew the lid off this, who is the whistle-blower from CSIS, wrote in The Globe and Mail. I will conclude with a quote from him about why he would do this. Why would he risk his reputation and going to prison? It would be very severe, if it were ever revealed who he is, what would happen to him. He said:
When I first became aware of the significance of the threat posed by outside interference to our democratic institutions, I worked—as have many unnamed and tireless colleagues—to equip our leaders with the knowledge and the tools needed to take action against it. Months passed, and then years. The threat grew in urgency; serious action remained unforthcoming. I endeavoured, alone and with others, to raise concerns about this threat directly to those in a position to hold our top officials to account. Regrettably, those individuals were unable to do so.
In conclusion, he said:
In the time that passed, another federal election had come and gone, the threat of interference had grown, and it had become increasingly clear that no serious action was being considered. Worse still, evidence of senior public officials ignoring interference was beginning to mount.
Those are the words of a very patriotic Canadian. I applaud that individual for coming forward when nothing was being done, despite repeated alarms being sounded, by the Liberal government and by the hard-working CSIS individuals to inform them. I support this member, and I ask the NDP to do its duty and vote for our motion tomorrow.
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- Mar/20/23 5:14:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate very much the member and her style. I know it is quite different from that of some of the other members of the House, and I can respect that.
At committee, I too act as someone who brings people together. I do understand that. In fact, the opposition parties in many regards have worked together. However, when it comes down to the most important witness in Canada coming forward to tell us what she knows, one opposition party is not acting like an opposition party. It is acting like a sidekick to prop up a government that is trying to cover up what it knows, when it knew it and what it did or did not do about it.
On Mr. Johnston, I will say that certainly during his time as Governor General he was very well respected. He is an eminent Canadian in many ways. However, because part of this public inquiry would have to investigate what the Liberal leader knew, I do not believe this individual is the right choice if we look at his record. He is a member of the Trudeau Foundation, for example. He aids in appointing board members and crafting its bylaws. He was also the commissioner of the leaders' debates in 2019, which appointed the WE co-founder Craig Kielburger to the advisory board of that commission. Also, under his leadership, CBC's Rosemary Barton was selected, and then she later sued the Conservative Party in that election.
I can go on and on, but I am certainly not taking anything away from his time as Governor General. By all accounts, he did an amazing job. Is he the right person to put the Prime Minister under immense scrutiny when he called him a lifelong friend? I would say no.
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- Mar/20/23 5:17:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of respect for the member opposite.
This is from the Canadian press. It is a mainstream news headline: “Liberals float possibility of making motion on foreign interference a confidence vote”. She can look that up herself and judge if she thinks the news is spreading misinformation or not.
I have an issue with the opening part of her question. She mentioned that the Conservatives are asking for the support of the NDP. It is not us asking for it. It is the Canadian people who care about upholding our democratic institutions. They deserve to know about this from the most powerful Liberal woman in the country, who was side by side with the Liberal Prime Minister for every single one of his election wins, who would have been briefed by CSIS multiple times about this and who would have held all the information for the Prime Minister and advised him on how to act.
The Conservatives should not have to ask the New Democrats to do the democratic duty they were elected to do on behalf of Canadians as an opposition party and hold the Liberals accountable. We are not asking them. It is their duty to Canadians.
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- Mar/20/23 5:19:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a sort of figurative gun to our head. We are going to vote either way, come hell or high water. We will go to an election any day. We welcome that, if that is what happens. If the government has lost the vote of this duly elected House of Commons, we will go to an election. That will not stop us, and I do not believe it will stop the Bloc, either, from voting to hold the Liberals accountable. That is why we are here. No one will hold a gun to our head, figuratively of course, on this. Rest assured that we will stand up here and vote tomorrow and do our duty to hold the Liberals accountable.
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