44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 9, 2023 10:00AM
- May/9/23 9:53:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was a pleasure to work with the member on the special committee on Canada-China relations in the last Parliament. We got a lot of important work done. In particular, we began a study, which was interrupted by the election, highlighting the national security threats that were associated with Canada's relationship with the PRC. What struck me about some of the work we did at the time was how many everyday Canadians are impacted by these threats, these instances of foreign interference.
The member for Wellington—Halton Hills has recognized as well that, as he faces these threats, he has a position that allows him to bring attention to them, but many people have suffered in silence. There are many stories we have heard, but there are many stories we will never hear, of people who have been victims of foreign interference and have not been able to bring the attention to the situation that should have been brought to it.
I wonder if the member has thoughts and reflections, as we address this privilege issue involving members of Parliament, on how we can stand with everyday Canadians who face worse threats and do not have the same opportunities.
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- May/9/23 10:18:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, foreign interference impacts many different communities in Canada. I know the member has a very close relationship with the Muslim community in her riding, and I have had a chance to visit the mosque there. The Muslim community has been targeted with foreign interference by the Chinese government when people have been involved in advocacy around the Uyghur issue.
I know there is a student club at McMaster University, which is not quite in her riding but maybe there are students from London who go there. The club was hosting an event to discuss the Uyghur genocide, and there was attempted interference by the Chinese consulate in Toronto, which was asking people to monitor who was there, to see if any university officials were there and if any international students were there, in an attempt to undermine this event or discourage people from attending it.
I wonder if the member could share just a bit more about what she is hearing from people in her riding about how these efforts to suppress the voices of people who are involved in human rights advocacy are impacting people from a diversity of communities in her riding and in the region.
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- May/9/23 10:33:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that may be the only time my friend from Lac-Saint-Jean is ever on the government's side, but I know there was a lot of space over there he was doing his best to fill.
I want to ask about the Hong Kong national security law, because this is an important aspect of the issue of foreign interference. Many flights transit through Hong Kong, of course, and Hong Kong's national security law effectively claims a universal jurisdiction. If I get up and give a speech in this House and say certain things about the democracy movement in Hong Kong, theoretically that law claims the right to arrest and prosecute me if I transit through Hong Kong. It is really an incredible disregard for national sovereignty in other countries shown through this law and is an explicit in-statute claim to interfere in the affairs of other states.
We heard during previous testimony at the Special Committee on the Canada–People’s Republic of China Relationship how indeed this national security is a threat to members of Parliament in every part of the world as it is in particular a threat to the people of Hong Kong. What should we be doing to respond to this law and to stand up for the freedom of people in Hong Kong?
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- May/9/23 10:47:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and his work. It is a pleasure to work with him on the matter of Uyghurs' rights and other important human rights issues.
It is important to underline how the threats that were made against the member for Wellington—Halton Hills followed the leadership he showed in recognizing the Uyghur genocide issue. The fact is that Canada's Parliament was the first in the world to pass this motion. In a way, this is a recognition of how important that moment was in catalyzing the global response. It was a proposal vote that had such an impact on the discussion that it catalyzed some of these responses and threats. However, the government still has not been willing to take the step of recognizing that.
Does the member think that now would be a good time for the government to recognize the importance of this issue and recognize the Uyghur genocide?
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- May/9/23 11:06:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I very much appreciate that my colleague put an emphasis on the reason why the member for Wellington—Halton Hills was threatened. He was threatened because of his leadership in standing with victims of genocide.
Through the motion that he put forward, the motion that was adopted unanimously, though with cabinet abstaining, Canada's legislature was the first in the world, but it started a global movement of other legislatures recognizing the Uyghur genocide. This was a consequential moment of leadership for that member and this Parliament, in spite of the inaction of the government. The threats this member has faced underlines just how consequential that moment was.
I want to thank the member for raising that issue and just invite her to add additional measures, perhaps, that the House needs to take and the government needs to take, to stand with the Uyghur people. The House has spoken on this multiple times, but the government has been far behind.
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- May/9/23 11:20:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time.
This is a critically important debate. We are debating a question of privilege, which means that we are debating an instance in which the rights and privileges, and the ability of a member or members of this Parliament to do their job, were threatened.
In particular, we are dealing with a situation where, incredibly, a member of Canada's Parliament and his family were threatened by a foreign government. We have to contend with the reality that a member of Parliament was threatened by a foreign government, the People's Republic of China, Beijing's Communist Party. Why was he threatened? He was threatened because he stood with victims of the Uyghur genocide.
As the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, this is deeply personal for me. I grew up hearing stories from my grandmother not only about the persecution she and her family faced, but also about the stories of politicians, everyday leaders, church leaders and everyday people in Germany and throughout the world who were willing to stand with her and stand with other victims of that genocide. Their courageous witness for justice, for universal human dignity, is part of what contributed to my grandmother surviving the war, and to me being alive today and able to give this speech.
I honour and recognize the member for Wellington—Halton Hills for, just like courageous those heroes of the past, being willing to stand with victims of genocide in our own day and bearing the costs of that. He has faced threats. He has faced intimidation from the government of China, a loss that I think is challenging for all of us to understand. There is now an inability, for instance, to safely visit his ancestral homeland and show it to his family. These are real sacrifices, and the member has shown significant courage in taking this stand.
The fact that the government of a foreign state would presume to threaten a member of Parliament here in Canada should underline the new reality we are facing in the world today. It is the reality, sadly, of a new kind of cold war where we have fierce ideological, economic and other forms of strategic competition between a free democratic bloc, on the one hand, and a group of autocratic revisionist powers that seek to reverse and undermine the international rules-based order on the other. In particular, it seeks to overturn the idea that borders should be set through agreement and through the sovereign will of the people, not by force.
These revisionist powers seek to overturn that long-standing consensus. They do not have any respect for national sovereignty, which is why they presume to not only dictate other countries, such as in the case of Russia's actions to invade Ukraine and the cases of the PRC's action to threaten Taiwan and the sovereignty of various other countries in the area, but also intervene and try to stealthily control and direct our institutions here. This is the reality of the world today. It is one of intense strategic competition that I think could be appropriately and honestly described as a new kind of cold war.
The outcome of this competition between free democratic values and this emerging authoritarian revisionist bloc is not certain. We cannot presume the triumph of the values of democracy and liberty. We must struggle, work hard and make the sacrifices necessary to preserve our way of life and spread the cause of freedom to expand the space of freedom to more people around the world. This is something we can hope for, but we cannot presume will happen unless we fully commit ourselves individually and collectively to the pursuit of this end.
I believe the system of free democracy is superior. It harnesses the energies and the creativity of more people and it will prevail under the right circumstances. A critical part of that circumstance is that we summon the courage required to meet the challenge.
I want to speak specifically tonight to the virtue of courage. Courage, quite simply, is the virtue of being willing to risk important and valuable things in pursuit of greater things, in pursuit of things that are good, true and beautiful. It is a willingness to risk our own safety, security, comfort or economic well-being to pursue greater and more important goods. That is the preservation of democracy and of liberty, and a system that recognizes universal human rights and the rule of law. It requires courage and a willingness to sacrifice, if we are going to prevail in the midst of this.
This story of what happened with the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, with the threats he faced and the stance he has taken, is about courage. It is about a contrast in courage, sadly, between the stand he took and the positions the government has taken.
The member, in working with other parties, especially other opposition parties, put forward a motion to recognize the Uyghur genocide. It was telling the simple truth that Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in China are victims of an ongoing genocide. That motion passed because the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, all members of the opposition and some members of the government were prepared to stand up and say it was true and that Canada has obligations under the genocide convention to act for and stand with victims of this genocide. Cabinet did not show the necessary courage. It showed cowardice. Its members remained in their seats and abstained on that all-important vote.
That took courage, because it involved sacrifice. It led directly to threats made against the member and his family, but it also led to legislatures around the world following Canada's example and recognizing this genocide. It was a crucial step in helping people everywhere understand what the CCP is really all about and what its agenda is: The CCP is using the latest technology to inflict a campaign of genocide against an ethnic and religious minority.
That vote was a crucial moment. It took courage and it had consequences: challenging consequences for the member and his family, but positive consequences in terms of advancing awareness and action in response to the still ongoing Uyghur genocide.
I think the response by the government to the threat also tells an important story about courage and cowardice. Because the government did not act, the member was not informed, and when he was informed this past week, when the information was out on the news, the response from the government was to say that it cannot take certain actions, or that it at least has to be very careful to take certain actions because there might be retaliation.
It is the old logic of appeasement, the logic of Neville Chamberlain, to say we do not want to annoy our adversaries in this global reality of competition because they might do things back to us. We will therefore tolerate such outrages as threats to members of Parliament, and we will not take action in response.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs at committee said that we have to consider this very carefully because China might retaliate. We should have the courage to say it is a fundamental point for us here in Canada that we will not tolerate threats made against our citizens, whether or not they are members of Parliament, and we will expel diplomats who engage in that behaviour, period, full stop. That takes courage. That takes a willingness of the government to draw a line. If this was a government of courage, we would not have gotten this far in terms of the vulnerability to these threats.
If the government had courage, we would have had our government recognize the Uyghur genocide. We would have taken strong measures to combat foreign interference, including bringing in a foreign agent registry. We would have taken those measures years ago. However, the government, in a pretense of sophistication, says it cannot do that because we have to think about it carefully and they might retaliate and so forth.
This is fundamentally the logic of weakness, and I think it is so important for us to reflect on this issue of courage and what strength or weakness looks like in the challenge in front of us. I think we will face in the years ahead an ongoing competition between free democracies and revisionist authoritarian powers. We can win this struggle if we collectively have the kind of courage that has been shown by my colleague on this side, and if we have the kind of courage to say we will make the sacrifices required, we will stand up for what is right, we will tell the truth about genocide, we will protect our country and we will protect our citizens.
If we have, collectively, the courage to take that stand and to make the sacrifices associated with it, we will preserve freedom and democracy for generations to come. If we do not, if we buy into the logic of appeasement that refuses to act and that is calcified in faux sophistication, then we will not prevail.
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- May/9/23 11:31:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in terms of ensuring that these things do not happen again, we have to recognize the reality that we are going to see attempts at this kind of interference. We are going to see interference in the lives of members of Parliament, but also in the lives of other figures in our society, such as elite figures, university officials, people at other levels of government and everyday citizens.
We are going to continue to see these kinds of events, because this is the new reality. It is a reality in which there is intensified competition, but also a much higher degree of mutual penetration, between the different blocs than existed in the last Cold War. We are going to see these challenges intensify, so what do we do in response to that?
We need to undertake many of the measures that have been proposed, and many more, to make our societies stronger and more resilient against these kinds of threats. It is not just a matter of policy. There are policy changes that are required, the foreign influence registry and others, but we need to build a kind of social mentality that is resilient to these kinds of threats.
On the issue of misinformation, for example, government regulation is not the solution to misinformation. The solution is an informed, engaged and aware citizenry where the government is being frank and honest about those kinds of interference. It is something we all need to collectively respond to together.
We are going to continue to see these threats. We are going to have the struggle. This is a critical challenge that Parliament must meet in the days ahead, and we can meet it together, but the government has to step up and lead.
The other thing that is frustrating is that we hear members of the government complain about partisanship, yet they are doing nothing. It is our job to challenge them to take action, and when they take action, we will celebrate that action, absolutely. It was far too late, but it was a small step in the right direction to declare the diplomat in question persona non grata, but there are so many more steps that are required.
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- May/9/23 11:34:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there have been many failures from the government in defending our security, as this debate demonstrates. The evidence is there in terms of how our stature in the world has not been helped by the government; however, we should not be looking at our stature in the world as an end in and of itself. We should be recognizing how strengthening our real contribution to the advancement of freedom of democracy is going to both build our stature but also advance and protect our security.
What jumps out at me most in this context is the signing of the AUKUS agreement. The United States, the U.K. and Australia are coming together and saying that they are going to have an intelligence-sharing agreement, where they are going to work together and collaborate. It is great for them to be collaborating, but that intelligence sharing is supposed to be happening at the Five Eyes. We have three of the Five Eyes coming together, apart from the other two.
This should raise important questions for Canada. Why is Canada not at that table? Why is Canada not engaged in these important discussions? Why is Canada not more engaged with the Quad? Again, it is not engagement as an end in and of itself, but as a means to effectively standing up for our democratic values. The government's focus in the world has been trying to send signals and look good, but not to actually achieve concrete results, and it shows.
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- May/9/23 11:48:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one point I want to add as more of a comment is that with critical G7 meetings coming up in Japan, I think it is very important for free democracies to work together on a coordinated response to transnational repression. That includes us learning from our allies by implementing measures such as the foreign influence registry. It also includes having a coordinated approach among allies on combatting forced labour in our supply chains. However, especially on this issue of protecting free democracies from foreign infiltration, I think we have a lot to learn from like-minded partners. It is very important that this is a priority on the agenda in those upcoming meetings.
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