SoVote

Mr. René Villemure (Trois-Rivières, BQ)

May/6/24 11:30:40 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will keep the public interest in mind while making my remarks rather than uttering sentences in the future tense about some potential future government. No one can be against virtue. This is hardly a new idea. In fact, the greatest philosopher ever, Socrates, once said that “no one knowingly does evil”. Let us bear that in mind. This morning we are studying Motion No. 112, which deals with interference and violence. The motion is divided into three parts, which I will summarize to ensure that our arguments are placed in the proper context. The first section moves that the House of Commons recognize that “Canada takes global security very seriously.” As we know, Canada is part of the Five Eyes. Canada is maybe the fifth and a half country, but it is nevertheless a member of the Five Eyes and, as such, it receives and provides information on the national security of member states. In recent years, questions can certainly be asked about the effectiveness of this, because it seems that when it comes to interference, we have not reacted in a very timely way. Nevertheless, there is a desire to see Canada take global security seriously. The motion also discusses the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in a place of worship on Canadian soil. This is an example of threats and interference by a country. India, Iran, Russia, China and many others are recognized for their practice of interfering in some way or another in the affairs of numerous states. The motion goes on to say that “the government should immediately review its measures that hold to account any person or agents of a foreign state undermining democratic institutions, engaging in acts of violence, or violating human or international rights, in order to bar these persons from entering Canada, and report to the House”. No one is against virtue. Reading Motion No. 112 made me smile a bit, I have to say. The motion—and it is a good motion—calls on the government to play the role it should have been playing. There should be no need for Motion No. 112 because these measures should already be in place. In concrete terms, Motion No. 112 talks about reviewing the measures Canada takes to hold to account foreign agents seeking to undermine democracy. No one can be against that. When it comes to ignoring measures, the government is number one. We have only to think of the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, the incidents involving Chinese interference, the incidents during the election that Justice Hogue commented on last week and the harassment of certain members of the diaspora. It seems to me that we should have started demanding accountability a long time ago. When we talk about accountability, we have to differentiate between matters of influence and matters of interference. Influence is leading someone to come on side of their own accord. Interference is meddling in someone’s affairs. We know that, since 2015-16, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service warned the government on a few occasions that there were risks or information that had to be taken into account. We know that in November 2020, the House of Commons adopted a motion to create a foreign agent registry, but that has still not happened. Actually, last November, I proposed introducing a bill to create such a registry, which would have some teeth and a very broad scope, but so far we have not seen anything. It has not yet happened. The interference issue, however, has been known for a long time. We could say that the government had a slightly naive view of China and was a bit complacent toward that country. Indeed, in all these years they have not done much, other than denying the bill or attempting to dodge the issue. This struck me in the case of the Winnipeg laboratory. Six hundred pages of the report were redacted, and now the equivalent of about 14 remain. That is certainly cause for concern. The same goes for the federal election. They said that nothing happened, but they realized that something perhaps did happen in the case of the member for Don Valley North and the former Conservative member for Steveston—Richmond East. In fact, it is interesting, because, although this report says there was interference, it also says there was no impact on the outcome of the election and that the same party would have come to power. However, it might not have been the same member sitting in the same place. It is important to realize that. These types of missed opportunities include the 2023 Rosenberg report. There was an investigation into interference and the Trudeau Foundation. It is funny that just 23 out of the 23,000 words in the report referred to interference or to China. Here again, this looks like a missed opportunity or an attempt to dodge the issue. In the case of the Trudeau Foundation, cheques were written in Mandarin, donations were reimbursed and the board of directors was a bungling mess; in short, this was a crisis. The Trudeau Foundation is not the government, let us be clear about that. However, there is a connection, and there is a need to rebuild trust. In a democracy, trust is key. Trust is the act of delegating one's future to someone else. That requires a relationship of trust. Otherwise it does not work. Morris Rosenberg filed his report. I was rather dissatisfied with it. After that, we figured there would be an independent special rapporteur appointed. We recognized Mr. Johnston’s capabilities. However, we challenged his independence. We did not approve. He said that there was nothing there and that there were documents that could not be made public because they were classified as secret or top secret. Pressure was applied to help us get to the bottom of things. In short, Mr. Johnston resigned. Then there was the Hogue commission, which promised transparency and did a thorough job. It recently tabled a report confirming foreign interference, with nuances, of course. It was only once it had lost the people’s trust that the government agreed to take action. That is not reassuring. It does not build public trust in the government, since Canadians do not know whether our elections are working, if the nomination system is working, or if—getting back to my initial point—everything was done to protect national security. Personally, I like Motion No. 112. However, I cannot say that the government was quick to take action. Rather, it tried to make us believe that the Prime Minister was doing something. Not doing anything is not exactly taking action. With a foreign policy that, in my opinion, is vague at best, and perhaps even naive, we cannot manage these incidents piecemeal. We need a coherent vision to be able to provide a coherent response. For now, we appear to respond only when we are forced to do so, on a case-by-case basis. I believe we need to think about the rogue states around us, because there is an increasing number of them, and see what we can do. Since it would be hard to be against virtue, the Bloc Québécois will support motion Motion No. 112, despite the fact that it is a timid measure at best.

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Context: House Hansard - 309 - May/6/24

Mr. Parm Bains (Steveston—Richmond East, Lib.)

May/6/24 11:48:44 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this very important motion, Motion No. 112. I would like to thank the member for Surrey—Newton for bringing this motion before us and, of course, for his dedicated service. Democracy has always been at risk and has been tested throughout history. Living here, in one of the world's greatest democracies, it is easy to forget how fragile it is. These are real threats posed by foreign governments who seek to intimidate diaspora communities in Canada. We need to combat these threats with new tools and resources to protect our democracy, our institutions and our way of life. Our government has taken some strong measures, like creating a National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians so that MPs could be briefed with gathered intelligence and sensitive information they can work with to make recommendations to government. Additionally, the security and intelligence threats to elections task force was installed to maintain the integrity of our electoral process. In budget 2024, we are committing $655.7 million over the next eight years, and $114.7 million in ongoing funding, to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to enhance its intelligence capabilities, in addition to increased funding for the RCMP. These efforts demonstrate the commitment of the government to push back against the threats of foreign interference. While these are necessary steps, we recognize that they are not sufficient, and we need to modernize our approach and fight to protect ourselves. As Justice Hogue's recent report made clear, more work needs to be done to protect Canada's democracy and institutions from foreign interference. The murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in front of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey is proof of how far some foreign actors will go to achieve their objectives, to harm opposing ideologies or to attempt to destabilize our strong and free nation. Canadian police and intelligence authorities need the necessary tools to track, and they must be equipped with the tools to expose threats from foreign state actors or from individuals from within Canada. I was encouraged to hear, during the recent RCMP press conference, that co-operation between the RCMP and its counterparts in the Five Eyes allied nations, particularly the United States, helped make these arrests possible. This is why Motion No. 112 specifically references the sharing of information and security intelligence to protect democratic institutions, to maintain the rule of law and to prevent violence and terrorism. However, we must do more to protect vulnerable diaspora communities and the integrity of our democracy. Gone are the days when the Conservative government thought it was a good idea to invite Chinese police officers to come here, to strike fear in the Chinese diaspora community and to repatriate people back to China. Motion No. 112 calls on the government to review its measures that hold to account any person or agents of a foreign state undermining democratic institutions, engaging in acts of violence or violating human or international rights in order to bar bad actors from entering Canada. At the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, we completed a study on foreign interference last year. We heard valuable testimony on steps Canada could take to address foreign interference, including a foreign agent registry. The registry has been mentioned a couple of times. The registry is another tool that could have the ability to protect our intellectual property, academic institutions, research and development, industry and innovation, but the registry lacks the strength to target clandestine actors. I reached out to CSIS officers for support and protection advice, and they recognized that a registry has its limits. Dan Stanton, the former executive manager at CSIS, told the committee that it still does not solve the issue of a proxy acting out illicit activities. When asked if a registry would blunt the attempts of the PRC to influence Canada's elections, he said that it would not. Stanton did recommend that the government should focus on the Security of Information Act. That is why I was encouraged to see our government take another strong step forward, this past November, to launch the consultations to amend the Security of Information Act and the CSIS Act to modernize our response to the ever-evolving threats. The findings from the public safety consultations on amendments to the CSIS Act proved to be productive and thoughtful. The report found strong support for proposed amendments to section 16 of the act. Section 16 would close the gap created by technological evolution and regain the ability for CSIS to collect, from within Canada, foreign intelligence about foreign states and foreign individuals in Canada. The amendments proposed in the consultation for the Security of Information Act provided investigators and prosecutors with new categories of offences in response to the reality of modern, clandestine activity, in order to pursue hostile foreign actors from Iran, Russia, China, India or any hostile state. Notably, the Department of Justice received strong support for increasing the penalty for the preparatory acts offence in section 22 and expanding its scope of application to other Security of Information Act offences, as well as to the new foreign interference offences being proposed under the act. Rightly, the report was conscious of the risks these changes could pose to the charter and provided warnings to the government that safeguards are necessary to ensure that these powers are used only against foreign actors. I look forward to seeing revisions to the CSIS Act and the Security of Information Act in the House very soon. Foreign interference ranges from direct hostile action, such as the murder of Mr. Hardeep Singh Nijjar, to the spread of online misinformation and disinformation. The ethics committee is currently studying the effects of misinformation and disinformation on the work of parliamentarians. We heard fascinating testimony last week from Ben Nimmo, a threat investigator at OpenAI, who spoke about the range and success of various foreign interference plots. He spoke about some efforts that had tremendous impact, such as the Russian “hack and leak” operations in 2016 that targeted the United States. However, there are other initiatives, like the Russian operation Secondary Infektion between 2014 and 2019 that posted hundreds of pieces of content across hundreds of platforms, where very little of it was seen by real people, that did not have the intended impact. Again, foreign threats have been real for a long time. Russian state actors may have pioneered mass information activities, but other states are now emerging as leaders in these campaigns. We learned this recently from Justice Hogue's interim report and her findings. Although attempts to interfere in recent elections were not successful, we need to be increasingly vigilant about the intentions of hostile nations and make sure our security intelligence agreements with foreign states work to protect Canadians. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.” We must adapt our thinking and our actions to new realities, which is why I call on all members of the House to support Motion No. 112.

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Context: House Hansard - 309 - May/6/24

Mr. Garnett Genuis

May/6/24 10:07:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member has spoken a lot about this tonight already. I know one of the key issues the Iranian community in Canada has been highlighting is foreign state-backed interference. The most pressing security threat to our country right now is foreign states interfering in Canadian affairs. Of course, the Iranian regime is a major player, and there are many other players we have discussed over recent months and years in the House. We have seen interference in our democracy through foreign state interference. What is much more pernicious are the threats of violence toward Canadians, especially targeted at members of diaspora communities. A few years ago, the Iranian regime was responsible for shooting down a flight, PS752, with many Canadians on it. Many in our region of Edmonton were impacted by this in particular. One young man, whose wife was killed, spoke out about what happened, and he faced threats here in Canada. Imagine someone speaking out about their wife being murdered by this regime and then facing threats here in Canada. This underlines how critical it is that more action be taken on foreign state-backed interference to protect the Iranian community and many different communities facing attacks from beyond our shores.

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