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René Villemure

Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
Bloc Québécois

Trois-Rivières
Quebec
Voting Attendance: 63%
Expenses Last Quarter: $100,349.98

Government Page

Mr. René Villemure (Trois-Rivières, BQ)

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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Context: House Hansard - 191 - May/4/23

Mr. René Villemure (Trois-Rivières, BQ)

May/4/23 4:44:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, after hearing about Chinese police stations, interference attempts at universities and everything else, I wonder if my colleague is prepared to understand or actually accept the fact that there are regimes in this world that are ideologically and philosophically opposed to democracy and that the current Chinese regime is one of those regimes. Does my colleague agree with me that the Chinese regime is hostile to democracy?

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Member of Parliament

René Villemure