SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 169 - Mar/20/23

Mar/20/23 4:00:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member is making a point of order. At the end, he said that simply saying “through you, Mr. Speaker” does not allow members, given what the rules are, to start speaking to somebody directly. An hon. member: Debate. Mr. Mark Gerretsen: How is that debate? I am literally talking about a point of order.

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The Deputy Speaker

Mar/20/23 4:00:35 p.m.
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I welcome everyone to speak to one another, to come up with plans and to debate things judiciously on the floor of the House of Commons. Knowing that, I want to move on to the next speaker. The hon. member for Thornhill.

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Ms. Melissa Lantsman (Thornhill, CPC)

Mar/20/23 4:00:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, time is up. The public confidence in our democratic system is rightly in question. Explosive allegations of foreign interference from senior security officials ignored by the highest levels of government, including the PM himself, splashed all over the front pages of our newspapers have Canadians asking a couple of simple questions: What did the Prime Minister know and when did he know it? The NDP members have a choice to make. Will they vote for transparency and answers on Beijing’s interference in our elections, or will they vote for the Prime Minister’s cover-up? Will they vote to cover up what the Prime Minister knew, when he knew it and what he did or did not do about it? For those watching at home, here is what we do know. It starts with sums of money of up to $1 million that were given to causes near and dear to the Prime Minister, including a donation of nearly $200,000 to the Trudeau Foundation and a gift of $50,000 to put a statue of Pierre Trudeau up. These transfers were arranged by a billionaire who was described in The Globe and Mail as “a senior official in...[a] network of state promoters around the world.” He appeared at Liberal Party fundraisers in the intimate presence of the Prime Minister and, according to sources, was reimbursed for his activities by the Communist Party in Beijing. This should raise concern. Again, two questions remain. What did the Prime Minister know and when did he know about it? NDP members have a choice to make today, a simple choice: Do they want to know, or will vote for the Prime Minister’s continued cover-up? To get back to what we know, the goal of these endeavours, everything I just talked about, was to curry favour with a government that was perceived to be friendlier to Communist interests. As one official was quoted as saying, “red is good and blue is bad.” They sought cash for access. They sought positive trade terms. They sought international co-operation. By most accounts, the relationship was going swimmingly well, and many in Beijing were “extremely pleased”. Again, what did the Prime Minister know and when did he know it? Will NDP members show some courage tomorrow when they vote? Will they vote to cover for the Prime Minister? Will they vote with the Liberals or will they vote with Canadians? Let us fast-forward to 2018. Here is more of what we know. The association between Canada and China began to sour. However, senior Communist officials saw another opportunity to destabilize and discredit elections here in Canada to gain greater influence in our country. They had the goal of electing a Liberal minority government, one that would be friendlier to the Communist Party than the alternatives, and one that would be unstable and marked by backroom deals and infighting. One senior diplomat said it best when they said Beijing likes it “when the parties in Parliament are fighting with each other, whereas if there is a majority, the party in power can easily implement policies that do not favour [the PRC].” We know they waged an unprecedented campaign to make that ideal a reality. They meddled in nomination processes to get their preferred candidates chosen. They funnelled money to 11 candidates in the GTA alone. They organized volunteers. They coerced and intimidated voters. That was all in the newspapers. CSIS uncovered evidence of this interference, but according to sources, the warnings of our intelligence agencies were ignored. This was in the papers. Again, what did the Prime Minister know and when did he know it? That is why we are here today. We are also here to see whether NDP members agree. Will they cover for the Prime Minister? Will they cover up the interference? Will they cover up what he knew and when he knew about it? The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians gave a specific warning that meddling from Beijing was “eroding the foundations of our fundamental institutions, including our system of democracy itself”. It does not get much more serious than that. With all of that out in the open, the Liberal Party failed to overturn the nominations of compromised candidates that were brought directly to their attention, according to what was written. They failed to seriously grasp the message offered by our security agencies, according to what was written. In fact, they failed to take any action at all. Therefore, I will ask this again. What did the Prime Minister know and when did he know it? That is the question today. The Communist strategy worked so well that it was repeated in 2021, possibly even on a wider scale. Misinformation and disinformation were rampantly and blatantly spread to voters. Preferred candidates were promoted and opposed candidates were targeted. One senior diplomat from Beijing even boasted about having defeated two Conservative MPs in the last election. This is known. It is in the public domain, and no one on the other side is able to give Canadians a single rebuttal saying it is not true. We have asked. Again I ask: What did the Prime Minister know, and when did he know it? That is why we are here. There is evidence that the answer is “a substantial amount”. The Prime Minister's own national security advisor confirmed that she briefed the Prime Minister multiple times on foreign interference. CSIS intelligence was shared, but again, warnings were ignored, and no substantial action was taken. There is evidence that Beijing's strategy is working. They have opened police stations in our own country to harass and survey free people living here. It is crickets from the Liberals. A scientist fired from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg was named on several documents in China related to discoveries from her time working in the federal government. Several of our universities have collaborated with scholars associated with the Communist regime. The government has vacillated on important issues relating to national security, such as the Huawei issue. We are seeing a pattern here in our own country. Why would anyone conclude that in the absence of doing anything at all, this would not get worse? Canadians need to know that their government is at least taking an interest in how to stop this or answering the basic questions that Canadians have. This is cloaked in secrecy by a Prime Minister who is ranting from a podium daily about how everybody should learn a lesson or take this seriously or is saying that everybody is racist. That is what we are hearing from the Prime Minister, but there is never a single answer about this. What did the Prime Minister know, and when did he know it? Empty platitudes are not going to cut it, nor is having a secret committee with secret evidence that provides secret conclusions to the Prime Minister, who could redact those documents, or telling everyone that it is important but continuing to do nothing about it. Our efforts have been met with never-ending spin and the ever-so-familiar playbook that we have seen time and time again to deny, deflect, divide and distract. It is like a recipe, and the Liberals always use the same one. It is time for unfettered access to officials, including the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Katie Telford, and documents and briefings, all at committee and out in the open. It is time to shine a light on foreign interference, just like our intelligence agency says is the way to root it out. It is time to get answers and to end the charade. The Prime Minister has run out of excuses and other people to blame. It seems that he will run out of people who are his friends to appoint to important positions. The NDP should not be giving the Prime Minister cover today. The Liberals have been filibustering a motion for hours on end at committee, and that is the reason we are here. What are they hiding? It must be bad. Why else would the Liberals go through this whole process, hide at every turn and continue to spin, attack and divide? That is not really behaviour of people who are innocent. This is about our election integrity and the integrity of our democracy. It is about every member in this House. Any time there are even questions about those processes, we owe every Canadian nothing less than the most detailed explanations and answers. We do that through this motion and not by listening to members of the government carry water for the Prime Minister or take orders about filibustering. I have a question, and I know that Canadians are wondering the same thing. Does anybody over there have any courage? Does anybody over there wonder what the Prime Minister knew and when he knew it? Did anyone over there bother to ask? What did we all know about this? If the Liberal members want to talk out the clock at a committee process they control, then it is time we put it in the hands of parliamentarians interested in the actual truth. It is time for the NDP to show some courage when it matters instead of the bluster we hear at the podium, when we are only disappointed by the unwavering support they constantly give to the Liberal government. Anything less than a complete disclosure is not good enough for Canadians. Anything less than full answers will not be accepted by the opposition. What did the Prime Minister know, and when did he know it? We need to find out.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

Mar/20/23 4:10:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member has indicated that the government has been trying to hide at every turn, which could not be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, we have had two ministers already come and answer questions by committee on this. We have told Canadians about a number of different measures we are going to take. The issue for me is inviting staff and requiring them to come to a committee, when at the end of the day, ministers are responsible, not staff. The member does not have to take this just from me; she should listen to her boss, the member from Carleton and the Leader of the Opposition. In 2010, he said: ...ministers answer questions on behalf of the government and not staff. We are not going to be changing 300 years of history all of a sudden at the behest of the coalition parties. We are not going to have the staff members appear in question period to answer on behalf of the government. We are going to do it the old-fashioned way, the way it has always been done right up until the last several months. We are going to keep ministers, the guys in charge, responsible for their duties. That was the member for Carleton, the Leader of the Opposition, who said that not staff but ministers come to committees. Why is it okay now to do this, but it was not for the member for Carleton back then?

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Ms. Melissa Lantsman

Mar/20/23 4:12:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it was okay for the Prime Minister's chief of staff to testify in the WE scandal at committee and to appear during the scandal of sexual assault in the military. It was okay on those two occasions. I think the better question is why it is not okay today. If she does not want to appear as the Prime Minister's chief of staff, perhaps she can appear as the campaign director of the Liberal Party campaign and the member's own leadership, who oversees nominations in his party. Why does she not appear under that title?

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Mr. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay (Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, BQ)

Mar/20/23 4:12:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we know that the Prime Minister, who was simply the member for Papineau at the time, said in 2013 that he had “a level of admiration...for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime”. We are still not sure if he meant the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, or the Tiananmen Square massacre. However, enough about that. We know that there were all the stories about financing activities. We also know that the Prime Minister wanted to sign a free trade agreement with China that would have been disastrous for Canada and that he even wanted to include China in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement that was meant to unify Asia through trade without China. None of it makes sense, but the common thread is complacency. We also learned that, in November 2022, a warning was issued about Chinese interference in the 2019 election. Does my colleague think the problem is that the Prime Minister does not see it, or that he does not want to see it?

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Ms. Melissa Lantsman

Mar/20/23 4:13:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I happen to agree with the hon. member's assessment and that, at every turn, the current government has hidden the truth, and we want to know what that is. It has hidden what the Prime Minister knew about the potential election interference that is now splashed over the pages of our newspapers from foreign intelligence officers, and it has done nothing about it. In fact, it has kicked the can down the road even further to have a plan to maybe look into it or to appoint somebody who will then tell us that they could possibly have an inquiry. Canadians deserve the truth. The time is up for these guys.

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Mr. Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway, NDP)

Mar/20/23 4:14:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we know from NSICOP's foreign interference report from a few years ago that there is a number of countries alleged to be interfering in Canadian democratic processes. Does my hon. colleague think the motion is broad enough to encompass all those countries, not just China? I think Canadians want to make sure their elections are free and clear of all foreign interference, not just that of one particular country. My second question has to do with the fact that we know the only person who has resigned from a caucus in this country so far over interference is a Conservative MPP in Ontario, Vincent Ke. We have also heard allegations that there was potentially Chinese interference in the ousting of the previous Conservative leader, the member from Durham. Can the member tell us what steps her party is taking to root out alleged Chinese interference in the political internal affairs of the Conservative Party?

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Ms. Melissa Lantsman

Mar/20/23 4:15:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will answer the member's first question. We have detailed reporting from a courageous whistle-blower who probably told the government. The government probably did not listen to him and then splashed it over the front pages of our newspapers. I do not know how the member is going to explain to his constituents that he does not want to know more about it or that he is going to support the cover-up of the Prime Minister.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

Mar/20/23 4:16:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Yukon today. I would like to start today by speaking directly to the seriousness of these allegations, the seriousness of foreign interference generally and what the government has been doing. I would say to the member who spoke just before me that the claim that we have done nothing is absolutely ludicrous. I would remind the member that on December 18, 2020, the then minister of public safety mailed a copy of a public report regarding election interference specifically as it relates to China to every single member in this House of Commons. I am sure that she received and reviewed it, as did all Conservative MPs, yet they have the gall to stand up in this House and suggest that we are being secretive or that information is not being shared with them. In addition to that, what has this government done? We created NSICOP, which specifically allows parliamentarians and senators to review highly classified information. We passed the Election Modernization Act to help tackle foreign interference, Bill C-76, which Conservatives voted against. We created a panel of experts to monitor in real time what was going on with respect to foreign interference during an election and gave them the ability and the power to act on it. We put in tighter controls on advertising and online platforms. We closed fundraising loopholes to keep foreign money out of elections. We enhanced the integrity of the voters list. Foreign election interference has been going on for about 10 years. Now, as a result of the real concerns that Canadians have, and rightly so, it is at least being talked about a lot more in the mainstream, as we have seen in other countries. The Prime Minister and indeed this side of the House are seized with what is going on. We take this very seriously. That is why the Prime Minister empowered NSICOP and NSIRA to specifically look into the issue of foreign interference and why he has appointed an incredible Canadian, David Johnston, to look at the issue and recommend to the Prime Minister the best course of action to move forward, which very well might be a public inquiry. This government has already said, in advance of knowing what any of those recommendations might be, that we will accept and implement them. Therefore, for the member for Thornhill to come in here and suggest that this government has done absolutely nothing about foreign interference and has been secretive is just completely untrue. I find it very interesting that we are getting this lecture from the member for Carleton, the Leader of the Opposition, and his MPs about sending staff to committee. It was the member for Carleton who, in 2010, said this to the CBC. I will read it out again because I think it is just so telling, and the video is widely available for anybody to go back and review. He said: ...ministers answer questions on behalf of the government and not staff. We are not going to be changing 300 years of history all of a sudden at the behest of the coalition parties. We are not going to have the staff members appear in question period to answer on behalf of the government. We are going to do it the old-fashioned way, the way it has always been done right up until the last several months. We are going to keep ministers, the guys in charge, responsible for their duties. I always get a kick out of the use of that terminology, “the guys in charge”. Of course the member for Carleton would phrase it like that. That was the member for Carleton when he was in government. He was answering a question as to whether staff, in particular, Dimitri Soudas, the then prime minister's director of communications, would go to committee. I think the hypocrisy here is literally oozing out of that side of the House and dribbling down towards the aisle here when I listen to what is coming from over there. At the time, the NDP, I believe with other political parties, were able to get through a motion to require Mr. Soudas to appear before committee, yet he never did. Do members know who appeared? Stephen Harper sent John Baird, one of his ministers at the time, to deal with the situation. In response to Mr. Easter asking why he was there and not the person who was called to the committee, Mr. Baird said, “the government believes the opposition is playing politics with parliamentary committees and is not respecting due process and fair play.” Does that sound familiar? “They are conducting random interrogations without due process or any rules of fairness. That might be how things work in the United States Congress, but it's not the Canadian tradition. In Canada the constitutional principle is ministerial responsibility.” That is what John Baird said when Stephen Harper defied the request of Parliament for Dimitri Soudas, the director of communications in the Prime Minister's Office, to appear before committee. This new-found approach from the Conservatives is to suddenly be so incredibly hypocritical. I will not even hold it against the new members who have come along since 2015. However, in particular, the member for Carleton was not just an MP who happened to be around the House at the time, but he was actually leading the file. Is he suddenly standing here saying it is completely appropriate now? I asked the member for Thornhill, just before my speech, why it is okay now, and she was totally unable to give an answer. Her answer basically was that the chiefs of staff have already come forward from the government. What she is basically saying is that we should never have set the precedent, because now Conservatives are running rampant all over it, using every possible opportunity. Where does it end from here? That is the question. Every time Conservatives want to drum up a fake scandal, they are going to run in here and use the same language they are using now. No one is doing China's work better for them than the Conservative MPs right now, who are sowing the seeds of distrust in our democratic institutions. That is what is happening right now, and it is Conservative MPs' responsibility for all of it. This comes down to politics, and I am not the only one saying this is politically motivated. Push aside all the people who are Liberal, NDP and non-partisan. Push them aside for a second and let us just talk about Conservatives who are calling out this rhetoric. Fred DeLorey, the campaign manager from a year and a half ago, is on nightly. It is like he is lining up to get on every talk show or every panel he can on CTV and CBC. He is everywhere right now, basically saying that the Conservatives are just trying to score political points. Vern White, a former Conservative senator, has referred to what is going on as “BS”. That is what he actually said. He is a former Conservative senator because at some point he came to the realization that this political party is way further to the right than where it had been when he was appointed a senator, if we can believe that. Former senator Hugh Segal, who represented my area and whom I have an incredible amount of respect for, has also—

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Mr. Gérard Deltell

Mar/20/23 4:26:07 p.m.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Mar/20/23 4:26:07 p.m.
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Listen to them heckle, Mr. Speaker. They have no idea of the incredible things that Hugh Segal has done just for my area. He is a great champion of a basic income guarantee. He referred to what the Conservatives are doing as the “Chicken Little” nature of the opposition. This is a Conservative. It goes on. Then, of course, there is the most recent comment by the member for Carleton himself, which I found very telling and which highlighted the politics of this, when he, the Leader of the Opposition, said he did not want a briefing. He was asked whether, if he were offered a briefing, he would take that briefing on what was going on. He said he would not do that because that means it would be illegal for him to speak out. We basically have the Leader of the Opposition saying he does not want to know the information, even though it might be helpful to Canada, that he would rather be oblivious so he can continue scoring political points and because it works a lot better in his fundraising emails that he blasts out every day. That is what he would much rather do. This really does fall in the hands of the NDP. The NDP gets to decide what happens here. Do we keep playing political theatre, which is exactly what China wants, or do we actually look into this is in a meaningful way that can get answers for Canadians and that can get Canadians confidence in the system, in particular, the strong fundamental institution of democracy that we have here?

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Mr. Gérard Deltell (Louis-Saint-Laurent, CPC)

Mar/20/23 4:26:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I was very pleased to hear my colleague, especially when he talked about the fact that we are attacking the institutions. There is a real road map, I would say, from the Liberal government, since it was elected, to attack our institutions. When this Liberal government was in trouble with the WE Charity, what did it do? Well, it prorogued the House. When it had the problem with the SNC-Lavalin scandal, what did it do? It kicked out the justice minister, who had been the first aboriginal minister to sit in this very important post. Why? It was because the Prime Minister said, “We need to get re-elected.” When it has the deep problem right now with the Beijing intervention in our system, it said, well, that is not true. After that, it said, well, the journalists are all wrong and we have to find the leak, exactly like Watergate. How can we be serious with the Liberal government? How can the Liberal government be serious when it has been attacking our democracy for the last eight years?

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Mar/20/23 4:27:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we can see the politics of it right there. When he was trying to define what the Prime Minister was saying, he put it in quotes. He said, “We need to get re-elected”. The Prime Minister never said that. He cannot provide me with a single time the Prime Minister actually said that. The member is just making assumptions and trying to put it in quotes as though it is something that actually happened. He talked about a track record. He is absolutely right that we have a track record. We have a track record when it comes to dealing with foreign interference. We have actually made election security a priority. We have put in an oversight process over elections. We have tasked NSICOP with ensuring it has oversight from a parliamentarian perspective. We have tightened up fundraising loopholes. We have cracked down on the wild west advertising schemes that used to exist. We have ensured the integrity of the voters list and we have appointed a special independent expert to specifically look at this issue that we are seized with today, foreign interference. Yes, we have a track record when it comes to that.

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Ms. Andréanne Larouche (Shefford, BQ)

Mar/20/23 4:28:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Kingston and the Islands for his presentation. He spoke about what his government did, but I would prefer to know what his government failed to do. When he spoke about the report, was he referring to the report by Morris Rosenberg, a friend of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation? Was he speaking about the special rapporteur, Mr. Johnston, who is a friend of the Prime Minister? Is that how they are trying to rebuild public trust? Is that how they are trying to avoid conflicts of interest? The answer is rather obvious. Aside from the Prime Minister's troubling admiration for a Chinese government that suppresses human rights and freedom of expression, what concerns me the most is that the Liberal Party is trying to buy time. Why is it doing that? What is it hiding? I really do wonder. The Liberals are more interested in protecting their chief of staff than actually getting to the bottom of this matter. The Conservatives are putting on a show. All we want have an independent inquiry give us the truth.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Mar/20/23 4:29:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if this member wants to attack the credibility of David Johnston, that is entirely her prerogative, but I think nobody said it better than Chantal Hébert, who said that, if she had the accomplishments of David Johnston and she lived to be 81 years old, she wouldn't give a darn about what Pierre Poilievre or anybody else said about her— Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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The Deputy Speaker

Mar/20/23 4:30:04 p.m.
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Order. The hon. member knows full well that he is not supposed to use the proper names of the members, so he can say “the member of the opposition”, “the Leader of the Opposition” or whatever he wants to do. The hon. parliamentary secretary.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Mar/20/23 4:30:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I apologize. Yes, I do not think that David Johnston should really care about what the Leader of the Opposition or any Bloc member says. I think that his record and his incredible accomplishments throughout his career, at 81 years old, speak for themselves. If people would like to challenge that, well, that is their prerogative.

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Mr. Matthew Green (Hamilton Centre, NDP)

Mar/20/23 4:30:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am certainly not here to get down that rabbit hole on David Johnston, but I will make one thing clear: I do not recall anybody asking for a special rapporteur. The hon. member suggests that it is our decision, but they have a decision they can make. They can call a public inquiry. They can allow an independent body to dig into this. They can have the Prime Minister commit to testifying at committee, if they believe in prime ministerial accountability, or they can have Telford testify. Those three choices have been put on the table at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. What will the government do and what will the hon. member have to say when this comes up tomorrow? He had the choice, yet they chose not to take this action and instead appointed the special rapporteur that nobody in the House asked for.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Mar/20/23 4:31:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not recall seeing the member at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. If he had been there, he would have heard various experts coming forward, including Conservative supporters and the national security experts, basically everybody. There was not a single expert who came forward and said that the best place to discuss national security is in a public inquiry. It did not happen. To the member's point, yes, there will be a very important decision for the NDP members to make tomorrow. It is entirely up to them, but I would refer him back to his House leader, who actually said in that committee that staff should not be called before committee and that the only people who should be called before committee, as it relates to the political arm of government, are ministers.

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