44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 8, 2023 11:00AM
- May/8/23 9:16:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise, and it is always a pleasure to see you in the chair. I will ask for the Chair's indulgence for a brief 30 seconds, before I start my remarks on the substance at hand, to recognize the Ramara Chamber of Commerce, which held its annual AGM tonight, and to recognize some wonderful businesses and organizations in the community. Lagoon City Pier One Resort, the Ramara Public Library, Casino Rama, Ramara Quilting, Spray-Net Northern Ontario and Orillia & Lake Country Tourism are businesses and organizations in the Ramara region that have done a lot in the community.
However, we are here to talk about a very serious issue, and that is the question of privilege raised by my colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills about potential threats and harassment that members of the House or their loved ones have been subjected to based on some of the actions taken in the House.
One of the things we have actually lost in the debate, given everything that happened last week, is that the report out of CSIS allegedly refers to multiple members of Parliament, not just one member of Parliament. There may be members in more parties, and perhaps even in the governing party, who are asking themselves whether the government is taking the necessary actions to keep them and their families safe or to keep them free from intimidation and harassment. This is why the question of privilege is important to explore. It is also why all members of the House, in many of the speeches tonight, have indicated their support for the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to explore in greater detail the questions raised by the member for Wellington—Halton Hills.
I heard many great speeches here tonight, but the member for Scarborough—Guildwood also imparted some wisdom to us in terms of keeping some humility. There are lots of things about this situation that we do not know. There may be some things we will never be able to know because of national security, but it is the Prime Minister's job to set up the apparatus or machinery of government, to set in place a system through which the Prime Minister will be informed of the most serious matters.
It is not a defence, in a Westminster parliamentary system, to put up a shield and say that one did not know about something. However, in the greater context, we have been losing this thing called “ministerial responsibility” over the last number of years. In parliamentary democracies, or in Westminster parliamentary systems, ministerial responsibility is very important. What we have seen recently from the government is that ministerial responsibility no longer exists. All one has to do is stand up in the chamber and say, “This result is unacceptable and we are working really hard to change it”, but I am not really sure we are getting the results we need or that there is accountability for actions of the government.
Time and time again, unfortunately, it is the same playbook with the government. How many times have we heard, “The story in The Globe and Mail is false”, “The conversations never happened the way the Globe reported them”, or “We didn't know of that happening”? Then, when more information comes to light, the story changes to “Well, those might have occurred, but they didn't happen the way they were reported.” Then we learn a little more information and it is revealed that, actually, the issue in question did happen or the conversation did occur the way it was reported. Then, at the very end, time and time again we are told, “This has been a learning experience for all of us, and we will do better next time.”
Let us just recap how we arrived here in just one week. On Monday, the government would not confirm when it had become aware of the allegations in The Globe and Mail.
These are pretty simple questions. Either the government knew or it did not. It waited three days before acknowledging whether it knew and when it knew. I will note that not only is it a very simple question, but that the government confirmed, not in this chamber for Canadians, based on questions from parliamentarians, but in a scrum to the media. Why is it always that a simple question cannot get answered in the House, but government members will freely give some fact to the media when asked directly?
On Monday, the government also said that any individual who contravenes the Vienna convention would be expelled.
On Tuesday, there was no information given; there was no expulsion.
On Wednesday, the Prime Minister said that he was unaware of the allegations until Monday, and that was the same for any of the other members of the executive branch. That was also the day when the Prime Minister said that the briefing note did not leave CSIS. “CSIS made the determination that it wasn't something that needed be raised to a higher level because it wasn't a significant enough concern.” There was still no expulsion.
On Thursday, a really important day, the narrative began to change. The Prime Minister and senior government members appointed to senior parliamentary posts engaged in what anyone else would describe as gaslighting. In fact, they implied that it was the member for Wellington—Halton Hills who actually knew about these allegations two years ago from a briefing. We know that is categorically false.
On Thursday, we also learned that in fact the alleged briefing document did, indeed, make its way out of CSIS and into the government apparatus. The national security adviser at the time received this note, as did other government departments. There was still no expulsion on Thursday, but the government summoned the ambassador to the People's Republic of China and asked what the consequences would be for expulsion. That is a little bit bizarre to me. How on one hand could the government take the position that there were actually no actions that rose to the level of expulsion but then ask what the consequences would be if an expulsion occurred? Was the government just trying to figure out the minimum that it could do to make this issue go away?
Friday was a very important day as categorically false implications were made about the character and recollection of events by the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. The Prime Minister himself got in on the gaslighting game. “I was reassured to see that Mr. Chong received multiple briefings following the information collected by CSIS to ensure”—
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- May/8/23 9:25:59 p.m.
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My apology, Madam Speaker. I will paraphrase appropriately.
On Friday, the Prime Minister got in on the gaslighting action. He said, “I was reassured to see that [the member for Wellington—Halton Hills] had received multiple briefings following the information collected by CSIS to ensure that he and his family were kept safe or would at least know what was going on in the extent that they needed to and they could be briefed.” The last part was a little jumbled, but I believe the implication and the only conclusion one can draw from listening to that quote is that the Prime Minister's comments are that the member for Wellington—Halton Hills was aware of the interference.
I do not know if anyone from that side of the House just parachuted in from another planet, because there is no one in the Milky Way who believes that these two things can be true. Nobody can believe that there was not serious enough action to be taken. That was one story. Then Liberals say that the member himself was made aware of the allegations. Then they also say that CSIS told the member, that he was made aware of these allegations, but we never knew. It is an impossible thing to have actually happened. They cannot, on one hand, say that because it was so serious, the member was made aware, but the government did not know. There is no possible way that CSIS would brief a member of this House on a serious issue without making people in the national security apparatus aware.
Why do we need further investigation? The government's favourite game seems to be who knew what when. We always have to play that game with the government. We had to play it during SNC-Lavalin. We had to play it during the investigation of the Nova Scotia shooting. We had to play it during the WE Charity scandal. We will never know where the idea originated for the government program for the WE Charity to disburse $1 billion of government funds. We also had to play it last week with respect to the Trudeau Foundation donation that was linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
There are allegations that donations to the foundation that bears the Prime Minister's name were made to influence the government. These are in reports. These allegations are very serious. Now we have evidence that the government either sat on some information, was unaware of it or was not curious enough to find out about certain interference actions. We know that there were not enough inquiries made with respect to the political donation scandal from just a few months ago that was revealed, where CSIS again produced reports, documents and evidence that suggested there was money being funnelled through a People's Republic of China official or consulate in Toronto to various political candidates from multiple parties, I would add, yet we have seen virtually no action on that front, no arrests, no expulsions with respect to that scandal and there have certainly been no fines related to or levied by Elections Canada. It should concern all members when there are accusations of improper and illegal donations for campaigns and political parties. Should all members of this House or all potential candidates not know who they should not accept funds from? That would be very important, I would think.
I mentioned there are allegations that donations made to the foundation were done in a way to influence the government. I give full credit to a minister of the Crown for being transparent with the fact that Liberals summoned the Chinese ambassador to ask what the consequences would be. I cannot believe we asked what the consequences would be if we telegraphed that hostage diplomacy works, that we are worried about the repercussions of the expulsion of a diplomat because of what has happened over the last couple of years to Canadians in China.
Today, we learned that the government has finally expelled the individual in question, which is interesting. Is it because the government got assurances from the Chinese Communist Party that the retaliation would be small in nature and that the government could take this action and that it does not think it rises to the level of expulsion but it is under a lot of pressure to do so? The government actually has not come out and said why the individual was expelled or that it believes the individual did anything in question. We are only left to go with what the government actually said last week, which was that it did not think that the actions that were taken rose to the level of expulsion.
On my way here, I bumped into the member for York—Simcoe, who I know you like very well, Madam Speaker. He would like to speak tonight, but the spots were full. We were having a discussion about a similar question: Did the government have to give anything up? Does the government know what the retaliation is going to be already? Is it going to be transparent with Canadians? Is there some discussion about a tit-for-tat that is acceptable and that we accept as a country and so we can take this expulsion?
Even the Chinese Communist Party has said that Canada is a good target for election interference because the consequences of being caught are not that serious. That is the level of respect that the Chinese Communist Party has for Canada. I submit that Canada is not viewed as a partner; we are a means through which the Chinese will accomplish their objectives. We have resources that they are interested in. We go along to get along. We are always worried about our standing in the world, so we do not want to take too aggressive foreign policy positions.
However, the other thing that is very interesting is that we know the global power imbalances are shifting and we are funding them. We are using taxpayer dollars to fund the global realignment. We spent $256 million and funded the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Against the advice of basically every national security individual expert, we used $256 million of Canadian taxpayer money so that the Chinese Communist Party could grow its influence in the world. We have paid to undermine the global order that we enjoyed for a long time. That is a complete shame.
The government does not like to talk about its investment in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. It had not said much about it, but the last government refused to make that investment and the current government could not make it fast enough when it first took power.
Why are we talking about all this? It is clear that we need to learn more about what happened. We also have hanging over our heads the potential for an inquiry. Let me just say this about the inquiry. Nobody says here, or at least I certainly do not say here, that former governor general David Johnston is a bad person. He is an eminent Canadian and an incredibly qualified individual. It does not make him a good choice to recommend actions to the government. It is the Prime Minister's own words that say that Mr. Johnston is a very close family friend. It is the Prime Minister's own assertions of how close the former governor general is to his family. In addition, he was so linked and such a prominent figure in the Trudeau Foundation.
That does not make him a great choice to give the government advice on this matter. The test is actually quite simple. The test is whether a reasonable person would believe there is a reasonable apprehension of bias? An actual conflict does not need to exist. Just the mere perception of a conflict is enough.
There was some discussion earlier about whether or not we are to just take the Prime Minister at his word that he learned of the allegations on Monday. I believe in the height of the Cold War, it was Ronald Reagan who said, “Trust, but verify.” That is what we are going to do at the committee.
Canadians deserve more. Thank heavens we have a member in the member for Wellington—Halton Hills who has the honour, the integrity and the principled approach to stand up in this place to face down his critics.
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- May/8/23 9:38:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that was a very thoughtful question.
I share the member's concern about the future of democracy. I would also just reiterate that the briefing note alleges there were multiple members of Parliament. We actually only know of one that has been public. It is possible that there are other members in this chamber who have actually experienced a similar thing. It should concern all members.
As for the government's delayed response to some of these issues, I would say that we are hanging a sign out for the rest of the world that tells them what would happen if they meddle in our democracy, and we better be very clear about the signal that we send. We better make it clear that no amount of meddling is appropriate.
Let us be honest, there have been countless times over the course of history where governments, maybe even Canadian governments, have gotten involved in the politics of other countries. We should be thinking before we do that. However, I will say that, when it happens here, we pride ourselves on transparency. Now that we know, we must dig more. We owe it to Canadians to dig into this more. We owe it future Canadians and to our democracy to take the sign out that says no meddling is welcome here.
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- May/8/23 9:40:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague.
My hon. colleague has another thoughtful question.
Is it a mistake, or is it an error? Could it be negligence? It could be all of the above.
We cannot set up a system where we insulate ourselves from very important issues and then try to use that as a shield to say, “I did not know, and I cannot be held accountable for that.” Westminster parliamentary democracy has a thing called “ministerial accountability”. I actually cannot remember the last time there has been a lot of ministerial accountability in this chamber. Apparently, all they have to do is stand up to say that they think what is happening in a relevant department is unacceptable and that they are working to change it.
Do we think that passports would have been issued quicker if ministers were losing their jobs? Maybe they would have. Do we think the backlog at immigration would get faster if ministers were held accountable for the performance of their departments? Maybe.
Can the Prime Minister stand in the House and say that it is reasonable that he did not know of the allegations? It is entirely possible that he is being truthful and he actually did not know until Monday, but is that an acceptable way to manage the affairs of government? We are setting ourselves up for a precedent to say, “If you shield yourself from information, you cannot be held accountable.” Surely, I do not think that is the road we want to go down.
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- May/8/23 9:44:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member is quite right. We need to thoughtfully think about allegations of foreign interference, and we need to examine them very closely. Do members know where we would be able to do that? It is in a public inquiry, for which the government seems very reticent to admit.
Now, this hon. member, whom I respect greatly, says that we learned at committee that there was no interference. However, I did not see a report coming from PROC that said there was no interference with the Trudeau Foundation. The hon. member also says there was no quid pro quo, but let us look at the facts. Money went to the Trudeau Foundation, for which it was reported as an effort to influence the government. The government's action since taking government seems to be not very aggressive on dealing with China. I do not know. What is a quid pro quo?
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- May/8/23 9:46:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think the member for Huron—Bruce makes an excellent point. This is exactly why the question of privilege was raised.
This also affects every other member in the House. That is why we need a further thoughtful study at committee. I look forward to the results of that study and whatever comes from it. Tomorrow is another day, and we are sure to learn new information.
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