- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Trois-Rivières
- Quebec
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Drummond. All those voices were rather distracting.
As I was saying, the Chinese government arrested two Canadian citizens in China and took trade actions against Quebec and Canadian farmers, all to influence Canadian policy and force the government to give in. These dramatic actions, which were taken openly, constitute aggressive diplomacy. However, to be very clear, China also took more discreet measures and those are the types of measures that Bill C‑70 seeks to counter.
Russia is saber rattling to mask its decline. China is in the final stages of its big project to transform an empire into a country. They are both projecting their power and need to weaken international resistance, hence the interference campaigns abroad, including in Canada. We need the necessary antibodies to prepare ourselves and to guard against that.
The second reason, in addition to the international situation, is the national situation. I am going to share a secret: Do not tell anyone, but an election is coming. I do not know when, but it is coming. Sometimes the leader of the NDP does this funny dance before he grovels or goes into bravado mode. His rhetoric suggests that there will be an election any day now. However, that is not the case. The reality is that we do not know for sure, but it could happen at any time. I am just joking around with my NDP friends, of course.
On election day, the politicians keep quiet and the citizens do the talking. For that to happen, in order for citizens to speak freely, they cannot be targeted by pressure or interference. That is what democratic expression is all about. That said, an election is the ideal time for interference. It can be tempting for a foreign actor to try to replace a hawk with a dove, for example. It is therefore essential that we develop tools for countering foreign interference before the election period, and time is running out.
The third reason is the legislative situation. Canada does not currently have the antibodies to fight off the virus of foreign interference. There is no foreign agent registry, for example, and the various laws governing the operation of the intelligence agencies date back 40 years, before the digital age. Some of our members were not even born yet.
Those laws do not make it possible to analyze the huge amount of information that can be gathered today and process it within a useful time frame. Those laws do a poor job of protecting secret operational intelligence. Those laws do not adequately protect people against threats or intimidation by foreign states. The rules of the justice system have not struck a balance that allows for prosecution, a fair trial and the protection of sensitive intelligence. All of this is what Bill C‑70 seeks to correct. That is why we support it in principle.
In practical terms, Bill C‑70 amends four acts. Part 1 amends the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, which governs the organization better known as CSIS. The amendments clarify data collection and analysis, provide for preservation and production orders, and authorize new search and seizure powers. David Vigneault, director of CSIS, has long been calling for the act's modernization. It was enacted in 1984, before the Internet existed, and has not been amended since. Technology has obviously evolved, and such a legislative change is long overdue. According to David Vigneault, too many authorizations are required, including the approval of the Minister of Public Safety, to analyze the data and decide whether to retain, process or archive them.
In fact, here is the government's description of the Kafkaesque current process:
The totality of this process could require up to five separate submissions for review by the Minister, Intelligence Commissioner, and/or the Court, resulting in a delay of up to six to nine months before CSIS can exploit the data, by which time its intelligence value may have diminished significantly. If CSIS cannot evaluate and apply to retain the dataset within the statutory time limit, it is required to destroy all the data.
It could take six to nine months, but information can be sent instantaneously. Something is not right there. I would remind the House that the election period lasts five weeks. A six- to nine-month delay is not very helpful. That is not all. Currently, CSIS cannot share intelligence outside the federal government. Bill C‑70 would allow that, which is very good. Once the bill comes into force, the provinces, municipalities and territories will be able to receive certain information.
Imagine for a moment that Hydro‑Québec is the victim of foreign interference or espionage. CSIS could disclose certain information to Hydro‑Québec to help the publicly owned corporation protect its critical information. The same goes for warrants under the current CSIS legislation, which are not adapted to the digital age and can sometimes paralyze investigations.
All these aspects of Bill C‑70 seem to be good ideas. We will have to look at it carefully in committee, because the devil is in the details.
We know that total security would require total surveillance. I do not think that we want to go that far.
The restrictions and silos that are paralyzing CSIS, and that this government wants to relax, are there for a reason. Much of this stems from the work of the McDonald commission that examined the RCMP's actions during the October crisis in Quebec. Members will recall the events of October 1970. We certainly remember. The federal government had imprisoned hundreds of people in Quebec, including politicians, intellectuals and artists, causing a true national trauma. In order for the federal government to regain Quebeckers' trust, the Mulroney government replaced the War Measures Act with the Emergencies Act, which had much stricter limits. It eliminated the RCMP's intelligence role with the creation of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS. In doing so, it created a wall between intelligence and law enforcement, so as to limit abuses. Now these safeguards are preventing us from combatting foreign interference, and we are being asked to relax them. Okay, we understand that.
I repeat, the Bloc Québécois will support Bill C‑70 in principle, but not at the cost of civil liberties. This is an absolutely fundamental issue that demands the utmost vigilance on the part of legislators. We are in favour of passing the bill quickly at second reading, but we would be remiss if we did not conduct a serious study in committee. This must not be rushed through.
I would remind the House that the inefficiencies of the current legislation were designed to protect the people of Quebec from the excesses of the federal government. In light of the current rise in international tensions and the aggressiveness of certain countries, we must not diminish the protection our people enjoy from potential government abuses. Therefore, our work must be guided by a search for balance.
Bill C‑70 also protects certain operational secrets. Again, this is a necessary safeguard against foreign states with hostile intentions. We should not weaken our democracy in the name of protecting it. We saw this happen with the Winnipeg lab incident and, 15 years ago, with the Afghan detainees.
It is very difficult for Parliament to exercise the oversight that it must exercise when it requires access to classified information, not to mention frequent overclassification—as we saw with the Winnipeg lab—which makes sometimes innocuous information secret and hard to obtain. Even the Hogue commission, which was set up to shed light on foreign interference and help counter it, has complained that it did not have access to all the documents it requested because the Prime Minister's Office was reluctant to release them.
Morever, Bill C-70 seeks to better equip the justice system to fight foreign interference, so this bill sets out new offences that cover a broader range of harmful acts. It sets out new procedures that we hope will make it possible to prosecute offences, grant a fair trial and protect intelligence that would be harmful if disclosed.
Again, we are in favour of this in principle. However, these are fundamental issues of justice, and our work must be guided by a quest for balance. I repeat that a lot, because it is very important.
Bill C‑70 will also eliminate the requirement to prove that a criminal act benefited a foreign state or harmed Canada. Simply put, intimidation by a foreign state could become punishable, even if it does not produce the desired result. We are talking about attempts here. That means it will be possible to charge people who intimidate Canadian citizens or their families. People who are originally from totalitarian countries are particularly vulnerable.
Bill C‑70 also provides for consecutive sentences and even life imprisonment for certain offences. I understand the desire to impose harsher sentences, but listen to what the Canadian Civil Liberties Association had to say. It said, and I quote:
The availability of life imprisonment for certain offences introduced under Bill C‑70 is disproportionate and excessive. For example, a person convicted of an indictable offence under the Criminal Code, even as minimal as theft under $5,000, could be sentenced to life in prison if they acted for the benefit of a foreign entity.
I could cite numerous other examples of measures that will need to be closely scrutinized before they are approved or allowed to come into force.
I will end my speech by talking about the foreign agent registry. This registry should have been created a long time ago. The United States created theirs in 1930. Everyone agrees that a registry alone will not prevent foreign interference, but it is an essential tool to have in our tool box. The director of CSIS has said that a registry would be very useful. The European Union is currently working on a transparency register, and there are registries in other countries too. With a registry, it is easier to demonstrate that someone is working on behalf of a foreign state than to prove that the state interfered. Refusal to join the registry would become an offence in itself and it would be easier to punish than the crime of interference.
I am therefore pleased that the government is moving forward with the registry. It will improve the identification of people trying to influence public policy and of persons acting on behalf of a foreign state. I have spent a lot of time studying this topic. In fact, I drafted a bill to create this registry and I was about to introduce it before Bill C‑70 was tabled. However, the registry put forward in Bill C‑70 has gaps that I would like to try to fill in committee.
For example, although foreign agents are required to register, public office holders are not required to declare their interactions with foreign agents. The two-party registration of foreign agents and public office holders would allow for more thorough checks and enhance the registry's effectiveness. Furthermore, foreign agents have to report their contact with certain categories of people, but the list is too narrow to protect things like government-funded research activities, for example. In short, at committee stage, I intend to propose an expansion of the registry's scope to improve its effectiveness.
As a final point, I would like to take a closer look at the very concept of interference. Let us imagine, for example, that a foreign state sent a bunch of people to fill the room during a nomination to influence the choice of candidate. The foreign state would not have intervened directly with the government to influence public policy, but it would have obviously intervened in public political life. Would that situation be covered by the registry? I doubt it.
Another example is the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. The Chinese agents working there had no desire to influence public policy. Rather, they wanted to monopolize the fruits of research paid for by Canadian taxpayers. Does Bill C-70 protect us from that? I doubt it.
I will conclude with a bit of a broader reflection. Protecting our constituents against interference is a profoundly democratic act. People have the right to control their political life and their social, economic and cultural development. This expression of democracy, which must be exercised freely, without undue pressure or interference, is fundamental to peoples' right to decide for themselves and assert their inalienable right to self-determination.
In committee, we will have disagreements on this or that clause of Bill C‑70, but I think that all the members of the House are united on the need to protect the inalienable right of the Canadian people to control their development without foreign interference. Under Bill C‑70, foreign states will be required to respect that right and stop interfering.
As long as we are requiring respect from others, we need to be honest about being respectful ourselves. Twenty-nine years ago, my people, the people of Quebec, were called to democratically exercise their own right to self-determination in a referendum on independence. What happened? Canada, the federal government, spent more on its campaign than the Yes and No camps combined in Quebec. That is serious interference. I am pleased to see that everyone in the House is, I note, unanimous in agreeing that interference in a people's choice is not good. We are making progress. We are getting somewhere.
I hope that the desire to protect Canadian democracy from foreign interference will engender the same respect for Quebec's democracy, because my people also need to be able to experience their democracy without interference.
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- May/8/23 4:07:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are at the point where we have to request a special decision from the House to recognize that a sitting member of the House has been intimidated. That is something. We are talking about a direct attack on democracy. That is where we are.
When did this start? The friends I meet on the street in Trois-Rivières on the weekend often tell me that we have been talking about this for weeks. It has not been weeks. The Liberal government has been totally oblivious to what is going on in foreign affairs since 2015.
The government is not particularly interested in foreign affairs, and has no clear idea of the direction it should take. The government has had four ministers of foreign affairs in seven or eight years, which is not a sign of strong diplomacy, as diplomacy requires continuity. One of my colleagues is telling me that there have been five. Five ministers in seven years is not continuity. It suggests that the government is not concerned about diplomacy. What is diplomacy? It is a form of dialogue between nations intended to ensure peace.
Right now, there is no dialogue between Canada and China. China tells us what to do and we do it. That is unacceptable. The Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, of which I am a member, has been working on the issue of Chinese interference for months now.
It does not stop there. Universities, research centres and the business community often fear that if they look too closely into interference they will lose funding or market shares. Losing our democracy is worse than that, however. This makes no sense. A line has been crossed that I did not even think it possible to approach in the House.
Let us talk about academia. In 2017, the French government conducted a survey that showed that the Chinese regime was courting former politicians to obtain information and derive benefits. That is called elite capture. They can be former politicians who are now sitting on boards of directors, or former faculty deans who hold other chairs in China or who receive various research grants. That is elite capture, and it is a phenomenon that we do not talk about here.
We are hearing a lot of talk these days about the Volkswagen factory that will be opening in Ontario. That company also has a factory in China. Does anyone think that Volkswagen really owns that factory? Volkswagen does whatever the Chinese government tells it to do. The company cannot pull out of China, and it does not control the prices of its cars.
The Chinese regime is philosophically and ideologically diametrically opposed to what we stand for here. It does not recognize the value of democracy and would prefer to do without it.
China has always tried to sow chaos among its trade partners. What is chaos? Obviously, it is when things go off in different directions, but let us look at what has been going on in the House over the past three months or so. Every day during question period, we ask the government whether it is going to do something about what we are seeing and whether it will continue to justify the unjustifiable for much longer. It is chaos here. Meanwhile, Beijing is jumping for joy.
The same cannot be said of our government. This is terrible. The Chinese regime is bent on destroying all other social systems. We are not on the same page.
I think that the government would be better off learning to play Go rather than trying to play Risk because, right now, it is not working. We need to think in terms of generations.
I will give an example. Around 2013, when Xi Jinping came to power, I was in Paris with the then ambassador of China. One of my colleagues asked the ambassador why the President of China is appointed rather than elected in free and fair elections like in this country. The ambassador carefully explained that, in China, all the children are screened at a very young age, and the ones with potential are singled out to be educated in the best schools, evaluated again and sent to study abroad. Eventually, based on the challenges of the day, the best person is chosen to achieve a given goal. It was very difficult for me to hear, but he told me that what we do basically amounts to a beauty contest. We were approaching 2015 at the time. I could not really argue with him. While we hold beauty contests, people make sure they have the means to achieve their ends.
I think that we are being taught an important lesson in foreign affairs as a result of our lack of interest in recent years, and it hurts.
Today's expulsion of the Chinese diplomat sends the message that we are not the only ones who will be facing consequences. The Chinese government will also have to face certain consequences.
There was an obvious lack of courage in everything leading up to that decision, which was the right decision. It was about time, but the government made the decision with a gun to its head. The government did not really make a decision, it simply no longer had any choice. Its credibility with its partners was at stake. However, this decision sends the message that we are prepared to face the consequences of our choice, because yours was unacceptable.
I do not think we should tolerate the intolerable. We need to stand up, appreciate the value of our system and our democracy and protect it.
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- Oct/18/22 11:20:42 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
He raises an important point. There is a difference between communicating, that is, transmitting a message, and the language. The language helps add meaning to the story.
I think there has been a lot of superficial diplomacy, just for show. Most countries do this, not just Canada. We need to engage in meaningful action and determine which direction we want to take so we can put it into words that actually mean something.
Things are a bit blurry right now. The messages are often contradictory and incomplete. I feel that our diplomatic efforts are purely superficial and have no real impact. That is my opinion.
I would therefore like us to distinguish between the communication tools we use every day and the language that would enable us to settle an impasse.
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- Oct/18/22 11:15:40 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very relevant question.
He mentioned immigration. I will not say any more about that, because the committee discussed it at length and made some very useful recommendations.
However, I would like to talk about the fact that it was said that the Canadian embassy in Ukraine was being opened. It was opened, and the diplomatic staff were taken out. I think the first thing we must do is open an embassy.
What we need is genuine, meaningful diplomatic dialogue, not superficial diplomatic dialogue or diplomacy conducted via images and tweets. I think seasoned diplomats are needed to establish dialogue between the parties. We are not mediators, but we must have a presence in Ukraine and Russia. There has been quite a bit of talk about closing the embassies in Russia, but that is not a good idea. The dialogue must continue.
A long-term diplomatic solution must be seriously considered. Superficial diplomacy is simply not an option. It must be seriously considered.
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- Apr/5/22 5:09:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, Talleyrand, a diplomat whom I admire, always said that if it goes without saying, then it will go even better if we say it. Let us say what must be said.
I am pleased to rise to speak today on this Conservative opposition day. Knowing that the devil is in the details, I want to take this opportunity to try to better understand this proposal which, while it seems valid, does require some reflection.
Unlike being a member of your local book club, NATO membership brings with it certain obligations. One such obligation is that member states allocate 2% of their GDP to defence-related expenditures. This 2% is a figure, a symbol. I know the Liberals are fond of symbols. In fact, it seems to me that the Liberal government is a little too focused on images, on symbols and on promises that are all too often meaningless. Meaning is the way. It is the path. It provides direction. Without meaning, we go astray.
As we have learned over the past few years, Canada has gone astray in terms of foreign affairs and national defence. It is hard to believe, but just four of the NATO member countries spend less than Canada on defence. As Canada, with its jet-set diplomacy, travels the world lecturing everyone about Ukraine, it spends less than Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg and Slovenia. Yes, Slovenia. That is shameful. Slovenia's biggest resource is comedians. Gaspard Proust, a worthy successor of Pierre Desproges and master of irony, loves to say to whoever will listen, “I'm a disillusioned Cartesian. I think, therefore I am, but I don't give a damn.”
Canada does not seem to give a damn about its defence policy.
Beyond the symbolism, let us talk about what it all means. What will Canada do if it decides to spend 2% of its GDP, as required by NATO? Will Canada do that just to say that it did it? Will Canada do it just to look good, for its image, to contribute to world peace? Why will it do so?
Spending is one thing. Making good spending choices is another. We know the Liberal government loves to spend, but making an effective contribution to global peace is a different story. Right now, the Canadian Armed Forces have a serious personnel issue.
Let us talk about recruitment. The government is having a hard time recruiting new soldiers. The Canadian Forces were hoping to recruit almost 6,800 people last year, but they got only 2,800. The forces themselves admitted that that was not even close to the target, which was impossible to achieve. Even though the ads suggest excitement with that “There's no life like it” slogan, it is clear that major operations are few. Instead it is mostly training, training and more training, which can be discouraging for people who are looking to make a real contribution. Recruitment does not deliver on its promises. Right now, equipment is going unused because there are no people to use it. The labour shortage is affecting the armed forces too.
Let us talk about retention. In 2018, the Auditor General released a report stating that the Air Force had only 64% of the qualified pilots needed for operations and that 22% of technician positions were vacant. The Navy has ships, but few sailors. Without more sailors, the existing personnel are overworked, and this leads to exhaustion and disinterest. The lack of workability, the lack of excitement in the training operations I mentioned earlier, such as Operation Presence and Operation Reassurance, is disturbing. This does not speak to the “There's no life like it!” challenge. It does not help motivation.
Soldiers undergo six months of intensive training to go and do what? To train even more, except somewhere else. That is not very interesting. The situation is even worse for reservists, who have fewer opportunities to deploy. They are being asked to leave their civilian jobs to join the forces, with no guarantee of deployment afterwards. Let us not forget the pandemic. Courses were cancelled. Training was done online. Soldiers had to isolate. There was nothing to motivate anyone. There was also a lack of proper leadership.
Possible solutions do exist. The deployment system must be reformed. We have been saying this for many years, but it must be done.
We also have to do more to help forces members get settled and housed. The cost of homes, as we hear every day in the House, is skyrocketing, even for the military. Inflation is affecting our soldiers.
We must also give francophones—and this is very important to the Bloc Québécois—the opportunity to stay in francophone communities. Sending Quebeckers to anglophone provinces is a growing source of hardship for a family that does not necessarily speak the language and will suddenly have to learn to live in English. Many francophone parents end up choosing to educate their children in English instead of French, which we think is a shame.
I will sum up. As we can see, spending without ensuring that there is a solid foundation, without first ensuring that there are pilots in the planes, is reckless, to say the least.
I could not leave here today without making reference to a NATO exercise called Cold Response that is under way in Norway. More than 30,000 soldiers are participating in this operation, including 10 Canadians. Just imagine the size.
The Bloc Québécois will support the Conservatives' motion while remaining wary of the Liberal government, which puts empty words ahead of meaningful action. I invite the Liberal government to stop repeating its “we are there, we were there” mantra. Instead it should do something meaningful to keep the Canadian Armed Forces off the list of delinquent NATO members.
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