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House Hansard - 192

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 8, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 192 - May/8/23
Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)
  • May/8/23 10:41:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on the issue of responding to interference by foreign diplomats. Of course, foreign interference does not always involve diplomats, but it often can and the government has been way behind on disciplining or expelling any diplomats, none up until today. This is in a context where the member pointed out some of the anomalies, in terms of the numbers of diplomats here. She mentioned there are 176 from China and 81 accredited diplomats from Russia. Meanwhile, Poland has 26 accredited diplomats. Germany has 50 accredited diplomats, and the U.K. has 51 accredited diplomats. There are more Russian diplomats here in Canada than German and Polish diplomats combined. There are more than three times as many diplomats from China as there are from the United Kingdom. This suggests that, when we have these large numbers of diplomats from countries that we do not actually have a particularly warm relationships with, without the same level of trade relationships, people-to-people exchanges and so forth, we should be concerned about what those diplomats might be up to, yet the government has allowed very high levels of accredited diplomats from states that have interests that are contrary to our own, and they have not been responding to clear instances of foreign interference. It seems that one issue we should be looking at in responding to foreign interference is asking what the appropriate number of accredited diplomats is. Should it be, in some sense, proportionate to the number of Canadian diplomats in the other place? Should it be proportionate to other aspects of the relationship, and is this an indicator of something else? Further, do we need to be setting limits so that somehow they are proportionate to what the relationship actually is?
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