44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 4, 2023 10:00AM
- May/4/23 3:50:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am not aware of the details of the operations that are apparently still ongoing, but I have great confidence in the RCMP to do its job. The RCMP has been charged by the government and, indeed, all Canadians. The RCMP walks the hall of Parliament. That is a pretty big deal. Only about five years ago, it did not. The RCMP was not even allowed in this building, if we remember correctly.
We have great faith in the RCMP and its ability to protect Canadians, and I have no doubt that the RCMP is doing and will do whatever is necessary to combat not just this, but all illegal activity, in particular, as it comes from foreign actors.
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- May/4/23 3:53:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to put on the record that both my colleague from Kitchener Centre and I will be voting for the motion before the House today, and we would wish for Liberal members do so too.
I want to make it very clear that, in voting for the motion before us, I am not saying in any way, shape or form that I do not believe the Prime Minister. Without evidence to the contrary, I absolutely take the Prime Minister at his word that CSIS did not brief him.
When I am asked if I trust the RCMP or CSIS, I say that I would be a fool to do so. The RCMP, we know, is the only agency proven to have interfered in a Canadian election and changed the result from a Liberal win to a Conservative win in 2005. We also know that CSIS is not exactly reliable. It allowed trumped-up charges against Maher Arar and continued to defend them past the point that it knew the charges were a lie and that they were covering up for the false arrest, imprisonment and torture of a Canadian citizen.
I will never blindly trust any agency. I want civilian oversight all the time, and that is why I support an inquiry into this matter. We need to make sure that we know that we do not have vulnerability as Canadians to any form of interference, whether the state police, CSIS or China.
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- May/4/23 4:58:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member mentioned that there is an illegal Beijing police station operating in his riding. I presume that he has brought that to the attention of the Minister of Public Safety.
Last week, when the minister appeared before the procedure and House affairs committee, he repeatedly claimed that the RCMP had shut down all illegal police stations. That is not true. Either the minister does not know what is going on or he intentionally misled the committee.
Does the hon. member have concerns about that, and did he alert the minister to the illegal police station in his riding?
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- May/4/23 6:41:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak about our government's record when dealing with foreign interference. However, I want to start with where the member seemingly left off.
He asked how long it would take for the U.S. or China to react to these things. I am surprised that he would suggest in the House that we should follow the lead of the Chinese government in how it handles things, whether it is foreign interference or the rules of law and order in its country. We will not take lessons from the Chinese government on that. Instead, we will follow the rule of law in this country as parliamentarians.
As we have heard throughout the debate today, when it comes to illegal police stations, it is absolutely unequivocal that they need to be shut down. However, the suggestion that it is the federal government that polices them in this country shows how naive the member opposite is in terms of the role of the RCMP. I have every bit of faith and trust that the RCMP will do the right things to ensure not only that any illegal police stations that are open will be shut down, but that any additional police stations would be shut down as well. The suggestion that the police require this House to tell them to enforce the law is frankly insulting to our very capable RCMP members.
When it comes to foreign interference, it is not a new phenomenon. It is not unique to Canada. In fact, we have seen many examples of it around the world. The member opposite raised the issue of Australia. We also saw very public cases in the U.S. in the 2016 presidential election, as well as in France, Australia and New Zealand. We hear often of incidents in Estonia of foreign interference by the Russian government.
This is not new. In fact, it was the 2019 NSICOP report in this very House that raised issues of foreign interference and the targeting of MPs. As I have said in the House time and time again, reports are tabled in the House, and even though the suggestion is made that the government somehow never took this seriously and never addressed it, it was in those very reports that all members of the House had access to. It was actually our government, right from the beginning, that took serious action on foreign interference by creating NSICOP and the oversight body NSIRA. We are also moving ahead with a foreign agent registry.
We continue to take serious action on this. If the member opposite thinks there is a silver bullet to solve foreign interference, I would like to inform him that foreign interference is always going to be a threat that all governments must take incredibly seriously. We must be diligent. The forms that foreign interference takes may be changing. All governments and all parliamentarians need to be very aware of that, and all Canadians need to be able to trust the democratic institutions in this country. All governments must take this extremely seriously and continue to combat it.
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- May/4/23 6:54:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I understand the need for an all-of-government approach. Again, I appreciate the comments made by the hon. member and will certainly continue to work with her on ways we can improve this.
This is also why the Minister of Public Safety has mandated to co-develop first nations police services legislation. In addition to this, the government is funding the first nations and Inuit policing program, including expanding the program to new communities. As part of this expansion, I am pleased to note that Nunavut will be receiving dedicated RCMP resources for the first time under the program. Given Nunavut's majority Inuit population, this will fill a long-standing gap.
In addition to other programs, such as crime prevention, community safety and planning, we will be working with Indigenous Services Canada's pathways to safe indigenous communities program to continue to build—
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