- Member of Parliament
- Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Conservative
- Wellington—Halton Hills
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $120,269.09
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I believe if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent for the following motion, which would see the bill voted on at third reading by Wednesday, June 12, at end of day.
That, notwithstanding any standing order, special order or usual practice of the House, Bill C-70, an act respecting countering foreign interference, shall be disposed of as follows:
(a) at the expiry of the time provided for government orders later today, the bill would be deemed adopted at second reading and referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security;
(b) during the consideration of the bill by the committee: (1) the committee shall have the first priority for the use of House resources for committee meetings; (2) the committee shall meet for extended hours on Monday, June 3; Tuesday, June 4; Wednesday, June 5; and Thursday, June 6, to gather evidence from witnesses; (3) the Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs, the officials from the RCMP and CSIS, the national security and intelligence adviser to the Prime Minister, the officials from the Department of Public Safety and other expert witnesses deemed relevant by the committee be invited to appear; (4) all amendments be submitted to the clerk of the committee by 9 a.m. on Monday, June 10; (5) amendments filed by independent members shall be deemed to have been proposed during the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill; (6) the committee shall meet at 3.30 p.m. on Monday, June 10—
256 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/29/24 5:07:43 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, there are measures in this bill that will give CSIS the power to disclose classified information to universities, municipalities and provinces to ensure that they have the information they need to protect their interests. We support this measure. We think it is very important to give our national security agencies the power to do that.
57 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/9/24 10:59:44 a.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I believe that Justice Hogue's initial report is a good start. She will present a second report in December of this year. I will continue working with the commission to ensure that the second report is very strong and contains solid recommendations for building a national security system that will protect our democratic institutions.
I also agree that the government must act. The director of CSIS sounded the alarm in 2018 when he publicly announced that there was a national security problem here in Canada, specifically in relation to the People's Republic of China. That was six or seven years ago. The government dragged its feet over proposing a measure or taking action. As my hon. NDP colleague said, they took too long introducing a bill aimed at creating a registry of foreign agents.
A lot more needs to be done, and I think that the government needs to do these things.
156 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/29/24 2:21:08 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the documents reveal a shocking disregard for Canada's national security. They reveal a government that is completely asleep at the switch on national security and the machinery of government. They reveal government employees collaborating with Beijing's government and with the biological weapons unit of the People's Liberation Army.
Equally shocking are the health minister's comments. He said yesterday that there was no evidence of actual breaches at the lab and that no sensitive information actually left the country. The documents say otherwise.
Does the minister stand by those comments?
95 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/26/24 3:07:50 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the four MPs on the Winnipeg lab committee found that most of the information the government withheld from Parliament was withheld to shield the Prime Minister and ministers from embarrassment rather than to protect national security. These four MPs, including a Liberal member, recommended that the majority of the information withheld by the government be made public.
Will the government finally admit that its decision to withhold documents from Parliament was not to protect national security, but rather to protect itself from political embarrassment?
86 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/8/23 4:06:31 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, this is an important question. I am very concerned about the weakening of Canada's national security and intelligence system, the intelligence community, because of what has taken place over the last several months.
I would add that it is not primarily the decision of CSIS whether or not to inform members of foreign interference threat activities. It is primarily the responsibility of the Prime Minister; an open and accountable government is clear. The Prime Minister has primary responsibility among all ministers for national security. The Prime Minister is primarily responsible for the government's relationship to Parliament.
What has clearly broken down here is the direction from the Prime Minister to direct his intelligence community, departments and central agencies to inform members of Parliament and their families, in an appropriate manner, about foreign interference threat activities. He has indicated that this will now happen going forward, but it should have happened as soon as he was appointed to office, in early November 2015.
166 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/4/23 4:14:02 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his very important question.
It is beyond belief that the Prime Minister would structure the government in a way that prevents the Prime Minister from knowing what is going on with national security.
It is absolutely incredible that the Prime Minister set things up this way. It really shakes me to the core, and should shake Canadians to the core, that, clearly, the national security of this country is not a concern of the Prime Minister or the government.
87 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/4/23 4:12:33 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister is responsible for ensuring that he sets up the machinery of government and the broad organizational structure of the government to ensure that he is informed about national security issues. The Prime Minister is responsible for the government's relationship to this place, Parliament.
The fact that the Prime Minister set things up in such a way that he did not know is shocking. It is like the head of a government of a G7 country saying to the chief of the defence staff for the armed forces that he does not actually want to know if there is an intrusion into our airspace. It is like saying, “I don't want to know when that happens; don't bother telling me.” That is essentially what has happened here, with the Prime Minister setting things up in such a way that he was not informed about these things.
155 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/4/23 2:24:25 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, CSIS has been advising the government, the departments, the Privy Council Office, the national security adviser and deputy ministers that foreign agents in Canada, foreign diplomats in Canada, are presenting a threat to Canadian MPs in the House of Commons. In fact, the 2022 intelligence report from CSIS today says, “These threat actors must be held accountable for their clandestine activities.... We will also continue to inform national security stakeholders and all Canadians about foreign interference”.
Why is the government not listening to the advice of CSIS and not listening to the advice in the reports that are being distributed?
104 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Apr/18/23 3:09:10 p.m.
- Watch
All that has happened, Mr. Speaker, to this point is that the RCMP has parked police cars at these illegal stations, and that is not good enough.
The government has had years to counter what CSIS has called a serious national threat to the security of Canada, but nothing has happened: no prosecution of anyone involved with these illegal foreign interference activities; no prosecution of anyone for these illegal police stations; no legislation introduced to counter Beijing's agents; no diplomats expelled.
Why does it take the U.S.A. to protect Canadians and Canadian sovereignty on Canadian soil?
99 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/20/23 5:01:56 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. I think that Beijing poses a real threat to our post-secondary institutions.
CSIS has identified that Beijing is a threat in five areas of research and development. It is a threat to our national security and a threat to our intellectual property in the five areas of clean tech, artificial intelligence, biopharma, 5G telecommunications and quantum computing. However, the government has failed to take action to protect the post-secondary research institutions that my hon. colleague referred to. It has failed to provide a directive ordering the CIHR, the CFI, the SSHRC and NSERC, the four granting councils, to ban funding in partnership with entities in the People's Republic of China in these five sensitive areas. That is why we have been lax in protecting our national security.
More broadly, the government has failed to step up when it comes to protecting the cybersecurity of Canadians. In the last election, we saw the case of candidate Kenny Chiu, who was the subject of a volume of disinformation that Global Affairs Canada's G7 rapid response mechanism was tracking. The SITE task force failed to release this disinformation during the election to ensure that Kenny Chiu at least had a fighting chance to counter it.
215 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/21/22 4:04:19 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, three of the safeguards that have been put into the act are the three criteria that the government must meet in order to trigger a public order emergency.
The first is a threat or the actual use of violence to achieve a political, religious or ideological objective. The second is a threat to the health, safety and lives of Canadians that is beyond the capacity of a province to deal with, or alternatively that there is a threat to the sovereignty, territorial integrity or security of this country. The last is that there is no other law in Canada, federal or provincial, that could effectively deal with the situation.
Those three criteria are safeguards in preventing intrusions into civil liberties.
122 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
