- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Trois-Rivières
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 63%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $100,349.98
- Government Page
moved:
That the House:
(a) take note of the Special Report on Foreign Interference in Canada's Democratic Processes and Institutions of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians;
(b) express concern that certain elected officials may be wittingly or unwittingly working in the interests of foreign powers; and
(c) request the terms of reference of the foreign interference commission (the Hogue Commission) to be expanded to allow it to investigate Canada's federal democratic institutions, including members of the House of Commons elected in the 43rd and 44th Parliaments as well as Senators.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise today to give the opening speech for today's Bloc Québécois opposition day, which is about foreign interference. I would like to take this opportunity to say hello to my constituents in Trois-Rivières. I often discuss this subject with them because they find it interesting. People are curious, and today we are going to try to satisfy that curiosity.
Here is the motion:
That the House:
(a) take note of the Special Report on Foreign Interference in Canada's Democratic Processes and Institutions of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians;
(b) express concern that certain elected officials may be wittingly or unwittingly working in the interests of foreign powers; and
(c) request the terms of reference of the foreign interference commission (the Hogue Commission) to be expanded to allow it to investigate Canada's federal democratic institutions, including members of the House of Commons elected in the 43rd and 44th Parliaments as well as Senators.
One week ago today, Canada, the Parliament of Canada and, undoubtedly, many of Canada's national security and intelligence allies lost their innocence. Despite the Liberal government's repeated denials, despite the ill-advised optimism of the so-called independent special rapporteur, despite the report by the ineffectual Rosenberg commission, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP, published a devastating report on June 5. The report is not devastating in its tone. It is devastating because of what it contains, which was unknown to most although suspected by many.
Despite the redaction that comes with this type of report, it is obvious that there is a problem, that we are at risk. Throughout its 178 paragraphs, the report describes the concept of foreign interference. Incidentally, I would like to point out that the concept of foreign interference is not defined in Canadian law, nor is it included in Bill C‑70, which we are currently studying. The report also describes the identity of the rogue states, their tactics, their use of cybertools and the absence of a coordinated response to these threats by the Canadian government.
Paragraph 50 and the paragraphs that follow are the ones that make the reader's hair stand on end.
First, we learn that some parliamentarians have communicated “frequently with foreign missions before or during a political campaign to obtain support from community groups or businesses which the diplomatic missions promise to quietly mobilize in a candidate's favour”.
Second, we learn that some parliamentarians have accepted “knowingly or through willful blindness funds or benefits from foreign missions or their proxies which have been layered or otherwise disguised to conceal their source”.
Third, we learn that some parliamentarians have provided “foreign diplomatic officials with privileged information on the work or opinions of fellow Parliamentarians, knowing that such information will be used by those officials to inappropriately pressure Parliamentarians to change their positions”.
Fourth, we learn that some parliamentarians have responded “to the requests or direction of foreign officials to improperly influence Parliamentary colleagues or Parliamentary business to the advantage of a foreign state”.
Fifth, we learn that some parliamentarians have provided “information learned in confidence from the government to a known intelligence officer of a foreign state.”
These are five devastating findings. This report confirms that, right now, there are members of the House who have, in one way or another, colluded with rogue states against our national interest. It is right there in black and white. If that is not foreign interference, then what is?
We cannot and must not remain indifferent in light of such a revelation. I promise that we will not remain indifferent. Of course, the government did warn us. I will give three examples of what it said. The government told us that intelligence is not truth. That answer has merit. Intelligence is not necessarily the truth. The government also told us that sometimes we have to look at the whole picture to understand the meaning, the direction and the path and to know where we are going.
That is not wrong. It is an interesting point. The report also states that the information was top secret and could not be revealed upon penalty of life imprisonment, which is also true. These three points are factual. We can agree on that.
I would like to hear and understand the justifications or answers but, in the end, the report is clear. There is currently interference in our Parliament. Instead of trying to reassure us with empty rhetoric, what did they do? What are they doing? What are we going to do? These questions remain unanswered.
After hearing the lame justifications concerning the Trudeau Foundation given before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, after reading the complacent report of the so-called independent special rapporteur and the damning report of the committee of parliamentarians, what are they doing? What will it take for them to do something?
Currently, the situation is tense. There is a sense of distrust. That is no good for anyone, for any party. Then, to add insult to injury, the committee of parliamentarians mentioned something very interesting in its 2023 report. The committee said that the government submitted only four of the thousand documents requested. That is four out of one thousand. That has to be read to be believed. In all fairness, I would say that some of the 996 missing documents were submitted in redacted form. Okay, but still, it is a curiously small sample.
Once the parliamentarians read the report of the Special Committee on the Canada–People's Republic of China Relationship on the Winnipeg laboratory, there were all sorts of debates in the House, and approximately 600 pages of the report were redacted, including the footnotes and page numbers.
A special committee was struck to analyze the situation alongside arbitrators, who used to serve as Federal Court judges. The arbitrators found that the redaction was excessive. It may have been preventive, but it was excessive. We saw that the report's redactions were nearly eliminated. They were not entirely eliminated because there was sensitive information in the report, but all in all, most of the redactions were done away with. We often come up against over-classification, which is to say that information is classified in too high a category. It goes from “confidential” to “secret”, from “secret” to “top secret”, and so on. It is done for preventive reasons, but perhaps not very accurately.
I would just echo the remarks of the Information Commissioner, who told us at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, that this government clearly prefers darkness to light.
It is in that spirit that the Bloc Québécois is moving its motion today. The situation is worse than we could have possibly imagined to date. The report tells us not only that foreign states are interfering in our democratic process, but that parliamentarians are colluding with these states. These elected representatives are not publicly named, and the members who serve on the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP, are bound to secrecy forever, as I was saying earlier, under penalty of imprisonment.
In other words, the names of the individuals working for foreign interests may not be revealed by the NSICOP, but they can be through other avenues, such as a broader inquiry by the Hogue commission. The commission could dig deeper and obtain new testimony as part of a broader investigation.
The Liberal government must understand that its duty is to protect us, not protect itself. It must cease its strategy of dodging serious questions and remove its rose-coloured glasses, because the year is no longer 2015. The government must also stop trivializing the situation, as the parliamentary secretary and member for Pickering—Uxbridge did last week. Before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, she replied, “Boo hoo, get over it” to a parliamentarian who was querying the Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs about the foreign interference.
This trivialization is unacceptable and will not be tolerated any longer. The Liberal government must also understand that not everyone is nice, that not everyone is telling the truth and that the interference is real. To get to the bottom of things, some explanations are in order. It is a given that the “top secret” security classification binds parliamentarians to secrecy for life. This is a real thing.
There is also something called cabinet confidence. Its purpose is codified in the Westminster Parliament, and that is not a bad thing in and of itself. It allows participants to perhaps be more honest with each other, with no filters and without the risk of being smeared or whatnot.
Secrecy is not a bad thing in and of itself. Cabinet confidence is not a bad thing in and of itself either. The problem lies in cabinet confidence being abused, in a way that could be described as unethical, in this instance. To make sense of it, we have to be able to distinguish between secrecy and concealment, which are very different notions. Without going into the origin of the word, secrecy is that which must not be shared. It is in a different category. Concealment is simply deception to conceal what could be shared. Concealment is a form of manipulation, a type of lying that implies a certain superiority over others, based on the fact that one knows and believes the other does not need to know. It is not very egalitarian. However, lying is mostly making people believe something and do what they would not have done had they known. That is fundamental in an election.
All lies are secret, but not all secrets are lies. This is an important distinction, and I encourage my friends across the aisle to think about it. Concealment and lies are the enemies of trust, which, I would remind members, consists in putting one's future in someone else's hands. In an election, citizens put their future in the hands of their elected candidates and they have the right to expect those candidates to earn that trust. Citizens expect that the government will protect their interests, not those of a foreign power or, worse yet, partisan interests.
However, as it stands, when one looks at everything the Liberal government has done to address foreign interference, one can only be surprised by its casual approach and its elevation of concealment as a way of life. That is why we must push harder to do away with concealment and lies and restore the trust that Canadians deserve from elected officials.
After the failure of the so-called independent special rapporteur, the Bloc Québécois placed its trust in the Hogue commission. The Hogue commission was established by the four main parties, who worked together and unanimously agreed on the commissioner and the scope and nature of the commission's terms of reference.
For the benefit of those who may not know, I will list a few elements of those terms of reference. The commission will “examine and assess the interference by China, Russia and other foreign states or non-state actors, including any potential impacts, in order to confirm the integrity of, and any impacts on, the 43rd and 44th general elections”. It will also “examine and assess the flow of information to senior decision-makers, including elected officials”. Thirdly, it will “examine and assess the capacity of relevant federal departments, agencies, institutional structures and governance processes to permit the Government of Canada to detect, deter and counter any form of foreign interference directly or indirectly targeting Canada's democratic processes.”
That is an extraordinary mission, and as they say, extraordinary problems require extraordinary remedies. The Hogue commission has extraordinary powers: It can adopt any procedures or methods it sees fit to effectively conduct the public inquiry, and it can receive and examine all pertinent documents, classified or not. That is the problem, because the commissioner admitted that she had not received certain documents or that she received redacted documents when they should not have been redacted, which brings me back to the issue of over-classification. We need to stop being afraid of being afraid. The four parties unanimously appointed a commissioner and gave her a mandate. The commissioner should be able to obtain these documents.
Foreign interference has no political stripe. Foreign interference affects every parliamentarian here in the House, every political party and every citizen. Tens of billions of dollars are stolen every year. Members of many diasporas are threatened on Canadian soil every year. The threats are real, now, here in the House. Doing nothing is not an option anymore. We must stop looking the other way and believing that the danger will go away on its own.
That is why the Bloc Québécois “request[s] the terms of reference of the foreign interference commission…to be expanded to allow it to investigate Canada's federal democratic institutions, including members of the House of Commons elected in the 43rd and 44th Parliaments as well as Senators.”
We must choose to make history rather than endure it. Great danger calls for great courage. The Bloc Québécois is moving this motion so that trust can be restored. I ask all my colleagues to have courage.
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- 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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- Apr/29/24 5:28:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, despite the good intentions of wanting to create health programs and build housing—all good things—I would like to know, on a scale of one to 10, what number best reflects the federal government's contempt for interfering in Quebec's jurisdictions.
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- Jun/5/23 2:39:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that did not answer my question, but anyway. The Liberal solution is full of holes. We have a Prime Minister who hides the truth from citizens and who wants to force the opposition leaders to join him in his secretive practices. He wants to let them in on the secret, while keeping Quebeckers and Canadians in the dark.
The Liberals are looking at this problem from the wrong angle. The problem is not that the public knows that China is interfering in democracy. On the contrary, the problem is that China is able to continue interfering behind the scenes. The problem is the darkness, not the light.
When will the government launch an independent public inquiry?
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- Mar/20/23 1:37:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I really enjoy hearing from my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.
China does not have a monopoly on interference. That would be my first point.
Also, we have to be very careful because, when we talk about the Chinese Communist Party interfering, we are not saying that allegations should be made against Chinese Canadians. That is very different. We have to be careful not to stigmatize people unnecessarily by stigmatizing a community. It is the Chinese Communist Party that is the problem here.
I agree with my colleague that China does not have a monopoly on interference.
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