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Mr. Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, NDP)

May/9/23 12:03:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from La Prairie for his speech. I always learn new turns of phrase from him. This time, it was, “It is about as easy as eating an apple through a tennis racquet”. I had not heard that one before. I would like to make it clear that the NDP obviously supports our Conservative colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills and his family, who are in an extremely delicate position. I also agree that troubling facts keep emerging, what with the secret police stations, the contributions to Liberal candidates, the strange donations to the Trudeau Foundation, and now these threats against a member of Parliament, who was not informed for two years. There is nothing more important in a democracy than getting to the whole truth so that Canadians can trust our institutions and the electoral process. Does my colleague agree that the only way to get at the whole truth is to hold an independent public inquiry?

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Mr. Alain Therrien

May/9/23 12:04:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is right. Speaking of coalitions, I think it is pretty clear. The Conservatives, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP all agree. Is that partisanship? No, it is not. I completely agree with my colleague that we need an independent public inquiry. We have been asking for one for a long time. The NDP has been asking for one. The Conservatives are also asking for one. The government got the brilliant idea to procrastinate once again, hoping things would get better on their own, only to discover that it had wasted two months and that the revelations keep on coming. It is not over yet, I am sure. I therefore agree with the hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie. We need an independent public inquiry.

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Mr. Martin Champoux (Drummond, BQ)

May/9/23 12:05:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to commend my colleague from La Prairie for the tone and mood of his speech. He addressed serious topics, but he found a way to make it fun to listen to. He is a talented speaker who should inspire many. I really like listening to him in the House. A few days ago, the Prime Minister stated that he was not aware of the threats and intimidation that the hon. member for Wellington—Halton Hills had been facing for the last two years. Soon after, we learned that he may have been aware and that his entourage was aware. In short, all this is unclear. However, CSIS was well aware of this information and did its duty by notifying the Prime Minister's Office. My question for my colleague is as follows: Does he feel that this government is listening to the agencies, especially CSIS, the way it should, or is it operating in isolation? Is CSIS just there for decoration?

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Mr. Alain Therrien

May/9/23 12:06:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I recognize all the work done by my colleague. Our caucus truly appreciates him and so do his constituents. The question is whether CSIS has discovered anything. I have never been there, but I imagine that those people must work hard. They are not sitting on their couches eating chocolates and waiting for people to come to them with information. They have to go look for the information and work hard. They go look for information some place, somewhere, and that is extremely important. They want to protect Canada's democracy and parliamentarians. After making all these efforts, they come up against a government, and especially a prime minister, that completely ignores the hard work they do. There is reason for concern. We are in the dark.

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Mr. John Brassard (Barrie—Innisfil, CPC)

May/9/23 12:07:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will ask my question in English, because I do not have much time. I want to thank the hon. member for his speech, the history and the truth. In my interactions as former House leader, I found that this member speaks the truth. He is honourable, and his word is his worth. I cannot actually say that about the Liberal or NDP House leaders. Is there no other option at this point but to have a public inquiry, with Mr. Johnston, to get to the bottom of what is happening with foreign interference and all of the stuff that is happening with the Trudeau Foundation? Is an independent public inquiry the only way to get to the bottom of what is happening here?

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

May/9/23 12:07:48 p.m.
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The hon. member for La Prairie has 40 seconds to respond.

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Mr. Alain Therrien

May/9/23 12:07:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it would take me longer than 40 seconds to say how much I appreciate my colleague. He is amazing. To answer his question, yes, an independent public inquiry is essential. One thing we know for sure about the Prime Minister is that he is in no way competent enough to find out what happened and disclose it publicly. He has to hand over the reins to someone else, and an independent, public inquiry is what it will take.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

May/9/23 12:08:31 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-11

Madam Speaker, I too want to add my voice to the conversation we are having here today in this debate on privilege. The issue of a member's vote in this place is really what we are after today. Our ability to vote without influence from other countries is very important. I would note that the vote in question had to do with the recognition of the genocide of the Uyghur people in China. The Beijing government has been focused on repressing the Uyghurs through things such as forced abortion, forced sterilization, re-education camps and concentration camps. Members may have seen the photos of Uyghur folks lined up at the bus terminals and being loaded onto the trains. We have stated often in this place “never again”, and here we are watching “never again” happen again. That vote that took place in the House of Commons was historic. The Canadian Parliament was one of the first parliaments around the world that voted to recognize that. It was something many members had worked fairly hard on, and we had also felt pressure from various corners to ensure that we got that right. What is fascinating is that the member for Wellington—Halton Hills voted for that motion while the entire Canadian cabinet did not. That is telling, perhaps, as to the weight of that vote. However, it also raises the question of foreign influence happening here in Canada. What kind of influence is that having on the Canadian cabinet, given the fact that we have discovered now that the government knew for over two years that the member for Wellington—Halton Hills' family was being harassed because of this particular vote? What was happening to members of the cabinet in their personal lives and how was that being influenced? That is what this whole debate is about. It is about the privilege of members of Parliament to be able to do their job. Probably one of the most important things we do as members of Parliament is to vote from our seats in this place. That is what we are elected to do. We are elected to take our seats in this place to vote on things. Votes are a moment in time. Votes are a very binary thing. We vote for something; we vote against something. In many cases, when we have a vote, those are weighty moments. Members must consider all the ramifications and impacts of the position they take on that. There is nothing that brings more clarity into a situation than having a binary vote on a particular piece of legislation because that is when we get to find out about who is affected, what the ramifications are and all of these kinds of things. Particularly if people are upset about that vote, we get to hear about it after we cast that vote. Our ability to vote in this place is incredibly important. The member for Wellington—Halton Hills has been a stalwart defender of democracy. This may be due in part to his roots, as he comes from Hong Kong, so he has a firm understanding of the relationship with the Beijing government and the world. Just due to the nature of his heritage, the member has some fortitude when it comes to understanding how democracy works, and he has worked very hard in this place to ensure that democracy works better. He has a very good grasp of the history of this place and the history of our mother Parliament over in England. He worked on the Reform Act, which is an act that has empowered individual members of Parliament. That is something that the member has been passionate about. He has argued for increased members' budgets. He has argued for more members of Parliament, so we have more representation for individual Canadians. His allegiance to democracy, parliamentary democracy and the House of Commons is unquestioned. I want to thank him for that. I know his passion and diligence on these democracy issues are so important. That is perhaps the great irony of this particular situation. Of all members of Parliament for this to fall upon, the member for Wellington—Halton Hills has impeccable credentials in the defence of democracy. That is why it is so frustrating to see that the government sat on this information for over two years, only for us, as individual members of Parliament, to find out about this through the press. That goes to show why the freedom of the press is so important. This is something the Liberal government has been undermining over the last number of years, just as we have seen with Bill C-11. We see how voices that may disagree with the government may be repressed online. We see that with the funding of journalism across the country. We see this with the subsidization of CBC, how that money influences the reporting that we get. This particular instance shows that the freedom of the press, the ability for the press to be unencumbered by owing the government a favour of any sort, is necessary. We see, with The Globe and Mail and Global News, that if it were not for the work they had done, we would never know about this. We would never know that, for over two years, the government and the Prime Minister sat on the information that a member of the House and his family were being threatened because of a vote that had taken place here. We have heard, over the last couple of days as we have been having this debate, over and over again how the Liberals are trying to spin this, and it is classic gaslighting. My working definition of “gaslighting” is that whatever someone is doing, they accuse their opponents of doing the same. I would like to address a couple of those things. One of the things they say is that the Conservatives did nothing when they were in power. The fact of the matter is that the Liberals have done nothing to stop this. They have allowed it. They have watched it grow. They have watched the foreign influence grow in Canada and have done nothing to prevent it over the last number of years. The other thing that is interesting is that, under Stephen Harper, there was a different leader in China. When Stephen Harper was the prime minister, there was a different leader. China had a different outlook on the world under the other leader. There has been a significant shift. If someone wants to look it up, they can google “wolf warrior”. The current leader of China, Xi Jinping, has openly stated that China is moving into a wolf warrior pose in the world. Instead of biding its time, which was the previous leader's line, it is looking at being a wolf warrior. They are looking to be dominant in the world. There is no doubt about that. They are much more aggressive. That is a completely different context. I know the member for Winnipeg North will probably stand up to talk about Stephen Harper and the great job Stephen Harper did when he was the prime minister. The point is that, when Stephen Harper was the leader, Canada was seen as a strong player on the international stage. We were convening meetings to take on ISIL. We were a valued partner of the Five Eyes. Australia, the United States and the U.K. looked to Canada to provide a leadership role in many of these discussions. Now we are ignored, sidelined and not trusted by the international community when it comes to dealing with things like China. The Beijing government worked much more carefully. It was much more concerned about what Canada had to say about what it was up to. Today, we have a completely different context. Today, we see the Chinese run roughshod over Canadian values and institutions. They have set up police stations on Canadian sovereign soil. We have seen this over and over again. We just know that a lot of this is about posture. We know that, under Stephen Harper, Canada had a proud posture on the international stage. We had a posture that said we were open for business but that we had rules that everybody had to follow. Canadian sovereignty was something we were very concerned about. In fact, we spent a lot of time mapping the north. The entire search for the Franklin expedition was a mapping exercise to establish Canadian sovereignty in the north. This was a nation-building exercise. It was something that we told the Canadian people about. It was a source of pride for Canadians. However, we also said we needed to establish Canadian sovereignty in the north because of threats from China. Threats from China were something that the Harper government took very seriously. It was something that we went into with both eyes open. We dealt with China, but we said that we knew it was a Communist country and that Communism is not something that is equivocal. We cannot make equivalencies between Communism and democracy, and therefore, the rules of engagement that we deal with when dealing with France, Germany, Holland or the United States are going to be different from those we have when we are dealing with China. Because it operates on a different system, we need to ensure that we deal with China appropriately. To some degree, this comes back to ideas around humanity and whether people are basically good. Maybe it is postmodernism that the government really espouses, with ideas around equivalency, and we just have to basically trust that everybody is good. There are evil actors in the world. There are nefarious actors, and China is one of them. China has not been a force for good in the world over the last number of decades. That is a major difference between Conservatives and Liberals. Liberals have a naive view. They want to equivocate. They want to say that it is a different system, but it is just as good. I would argue that this is not the case and that there are threats and nefarious actors in the world. These are threats and actors that we must take seriously and challenge. We must stand up for democracy and make the arguments for why democracy is better and why the Western systems are better. Those are important things to do, and I do not think it is good enough to say, “You do it your way, and we will do it ours.” I think we should say, “This is the way we do it because it is better, because it is moral and because it is the right way to do things.” I see this postmodern idea that there is no truth, or that the truth is relative, as a failure of the current government. All of these kinds of things have really been worked into it. The other area of gaslighting I see happen through this debate, particularly in questions from the Liberals, is how this is the member's fault and how the member should have known about this. Of course—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

May/9/23 12:22:39 p.m.
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The hon. member for Beauport—Limoilou is rising on a point of order.

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Mrs. Julie Vignola

May/9/23 12:22:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I apologize to my hon. colleague for interrupting his riveting speech, but we have no French interpretation. We have to select the English channel to hear anything. The French channel is completely silent.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

May/9/23 12:22:53 p.m.
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We will look into it right away. Is it working now? Yes. The hon. member for Peace River—Westlock.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen

May/9/23 12:23:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the other area where we are seeing some significant gaslighting is where the government says that it is the member's fault and the member should have known about this. This is an interesting thing about victim blaming. We see the government accuse others of doing this all the time, and here we are seeing that once again. The government's newest line is that it did not know; it only found out on Monday, just the other day. However, there seems to be a lot of evidence that it knew about this over two years ago. That does not include all the other troubles we have with foreign interference in this country. The Trudeau Foundation is embroiled in a whole host of scandals now around taking Chinese money. When the government was kind of embarrassed about its coziness with the Beijing government and Chinese influence in Canada, it appointed a special rapporteur. This position does not have any legal standing in Canada; nonetheless, it has appointed this person. One would think that if one were trying to allay Canadians' fears around this foreign interference issue, one would find somebody with no connections to the Beijing government and no relationship to the people who are being accused of not doing anything about it. However, here we are with the director of the Trudeau Foundation being appointed as the special rapporteur. That organization has taken money from the Beijing government or their emissaries. We have seen all kinds of confusion around who took the money and how it was organized. The Prime Minister's brother was the one who facilitated a donation. Then we see that this organization's annual report names the Prime Minister as a member. Now, he says he is unaffiliated and has not had contact with it for over 10 years, but his name is still in the annual report. He is still part of the Trudeau Foundation. That is the reality, whether the Prime Minister wants to admit it or not. He can say that he is currently uninvolved in the operations of the organization, but when he leaves this place, he will be able to be a part of its directorship. If he says that funds donated to that organization today could not be disbursed in the future, what does he take Canadians for? Today, donations are being made to the Trudeau Foundation; despite saying he is unaffiliated to it at the moment, the Prime Minister has connections to this organization. It is obvious that even if it were true that he is unaffiliated, which it is not, he will be reaffiliated in the future. He will be back on the governance board doing the same things, and he will have whatever kind of money has been donated to the Trudeau Foundation at his disposal once again. We have also seen over and over that the Liberals' claim to success is about how much money they spend. The Liberals accuse the past Conservative government of not doing anything and then go on to state how much they have increased funding for whatever the situation is. The Liberals accuse Conservatives of not having done something compared with how much more money they are spending on a particular thing. Again, this is another place where the Liberals will say that they have spent more money on this, which is an interesting way of ranking things. If we can get something and not have to spend money on it, that would seem to be a good win. We will not have to spend money on it if we can have national security because of our posture in the world and because we speak softly and carry a big stick. We will not have to spend money if we have no foreign interference because, rhetorically and by our posture, we signal to the world that Canada is not open to foreign interference. These are things that will happen naturally and organically. We will prevent foreign interference by our posture and by our rhetoric, and we will not have to spend money. However, the Liberals will come and tell us how much money they are spending on initiative X, Y or Z as a point of proof that they are doing more. I just want to reject that whole premise outright. The amount of money that is spent dealing with a particular thing does not necessarily correlate to taking action on that thing. I just want to restate once again that Canada is not for sale. Canada is a sovereign nation. The Canadian government should do all that it can to prevent foreign influence in our democracy and ensure that Canadian democracy is upheld wherever it is under threat.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

May/9/23 12:29:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, just to pick up on the member's last points, people who are following the debate should be very much aware of the facts. The fact is that, whether the Conservatives want to agree or disagree, the Prime Minister first found out about this just last week. He took immediate action. Within a week, we now have a diplomat being expelled from Canada. Back on March 12, we talked about establishing a foreign influence transparency registry. On March 15, we put in a special rapporteur, who could well come back suggesting that we have a public inquiry. The Prime Minister says that if that is the recommendation, that is what we will accept. Would the member not acknowledge that the Prime Minister found out for the very first time last week, as he has indicated?

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Mr. Arnold Viersen

May/9/23 12:30:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member will have to forgive me for not believing a lot of what comes across from that side of the floor. There was the WE Charity scandal, the SNC-Lavalin scandal and the question of who stayed in a $6,000-a-night hotel room. We have seen over and over again that the government has not been forthcoming. It has been a distract-and-deflect kind of government. Therefore, we are not going to take the Prime Minister at his word. We are going to continue to investigate this and call for an independent inquiry. We are going to hold the government to account so that we can show Canadians that there is an ethical government-in-waiting ready to take a seat on that side of the House.

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Ms. Louise Chabot (Thérèse-De Blainville, BQ)

May/9/23 12:31:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the motion is important because it enables us to express our indignation and shine a light on what happened to my Conservative colleague and his family. Since day one, this government has been reacting instead of taking action. This has been going on for weeks. It is hard for us to believe that the Prime Minister just happened to find out last week that a member and his family were being threatened for the past two years. That is pretty hard to believe. There is only one way to shine a light on the situation as a whole, which is not pretty: an independent public inquiry. We have been calling for this for weeks, as my colleague just said. Instead of waiting for the special rapporteur, who is not independent in the least, will the Prime Minister stand up right now and launch an independent public inquiry?

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Mr. Arnold Viersen

May/9/23 12:32:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is probably the crux of the situation. Canadians are looking to the government to provide stability, to provide clarity and to ensure that this kind of thing does not happen anymore. A public inquiry that is truly independent and has the ability to follow its nose and to look in the dark corners, if set up correctly, would actually have the opportunity to bring trust back to our Canadian institutions. The member is totally right in that this is bigger than just the individual member. I mentioned this off the top. For me, it is an interesting thing that the entire cabinet did not vote on that particular item, on the same vote that the member's family was threatened over. Therefore, was their vote being influenced? Were their families being threatened, or was there some other part of their personal life that was being used to extort a non-vote on that particular item? This is the one that we know about. What other actions have been happening in this place to—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

May/9/23 12:34:07 p.m.
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Questions and comments, the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

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Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

May/9/23 12:34:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have a responsibility in the House to protect democracy, and that means we have to be the adults in the room. When the allegations of electoral interference came up, the Prime Minister reasonably should have said that there would be a public investigation so that people would know that it was not so much just about China, but that there could be all manner of foreign interference. We know about Russian bot interference during the convoy. Let us do that and reassure people. We found out the shocking news about the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. I do not know that there is any evidence that the Prime Minister knew two years ago, but when he was made aware, he did not expel the diplomat, and that sent a very disturbing signal. In the midst of this debate, and I mean no offence to my Liberal colleagues, the fact that they put forward the member for Winnipeg North and the member for Kingston and the Islands is turning this into a gong show, and that is not helpful. However, I would ask my hon. colleague about his own leader, who is getting up and making outrageously juvenile claims that thousands of Chinese Canadians were intimidated into not voting, in order to benefit the Prime Minister. That kind of exploitation and falsehood is also dangerous to democracy. We need to take this thing in a focused manner. We need to be able to reassure people. However, to exploit it like the Conservative leader is doing is, to me, as concerning for democracy as the failure of the Liberals to take responsibility for their ship and what they should be doing right now to protect democracy.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen

May/9/23 12:35:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, building on the comments from my hon. colleague around the gaslighting that happens in this place, one of the other things that the Liberals bring up all the time is the perceived partisanship of this. Again, it is interesting that they accuse their opponents of doing what they are actually doing. One of the things that is fairly obvious is that the Liberals benefited from the Beijing influence in the previous election, and, therefore, were not interested in dealing with this. It is becoming increasingly obvious that one of the reasons the Prime Minister did not deal with the perceived foreign influence of Beijing is that the Liberals stood to benefit from the influence. Therefore, when they say it is partisan interest that is driving this, that is precisely why they did not do anything.

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Mr. Damien Kurek (Battle River—Crowfoot, CPC)

May/9/23 12:36:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it cannot be emphasized enough how important this debate is for the proper functioning of Canadian democracy. I know that the Liberals seem to be making light of the fact of what happens in this place. My question for the member for Peace River—Westlock is this: Is he concerned about what seems to be the increasing disconnect between the legislative and executive branches of government with respect to how Canadian democracy is supposed to function?

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