44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 9, 2023 10:00AM
- May/9/23 10:29:59 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I really appreciated his reminding us that the opposition is important to democracy and to Parliament, although I do not remember him saying anything like that when Stephen Harper was Prime Minister. Things were different then.
What is going on right now is very troubling. Every day brings new revelations. The member for Wellington—Halton Hills and his family are being directly threatened. The Liberal government is dragging its feet despite having had this information for two years.
Does my colleague agree with me and with many other members of the House that the only way to fully understand what is going on and fix it is to have an independent public inquiry into foreign political interference in general in this country?
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- May/9/23 10:35:04 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member could reflect about the number of years that foreign interference has been an issue, even while Steven Harper was the prime minister and today's leader of the Conservative Party was the minister responsible for democracy. Those individuals did absolutely nothing; they did zero in terms of dealing with this particular issue.
The Prime Minister has done numerous things. When he actually found out about this specific case, just a week ago, he took immediate action. The Conservatives may disagree, but based on the speeches that I have been hearing over the last number of hours, this debate is more about character assassination of the Prime Minister than it is about defending rights.
What hits one affects us all, and the Conservatives are doing a disservice to the issue by ramping it up politically. Does the member not believe that the Conservatives need to turn the page, dial it down and ensure that we deal with the issue?
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- May/9/23 11:02:23 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, when I was sitting in the opposition benches, Stephen Harper went to China and brought back a commitment for panda bears. What he did not tell us is that he actually signed off on a secretive trade deal.
The member might want to reflect on that, given his comments about trade—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
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- May/9/23 11:02:57 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, when it comes to foreign interference, it is really important to recognize, as I have, that foreign interference has been taking place for many years, even when Stephen Harper was there. Stephen Harper was aware of it.
How does the member justify the secretive trade agreement or Stephen Harper doing nothing? The Prime Minister found out about this last week for the very first time. Within a week, that diplomat was asked to leave the country.
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- May/9/23 11:03:32 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, first of all, we have a trade relationship with China because they are the second biggest economy in the world.
When Stephen Harper signed investment deals, not trade agreements, it benefited Canadians. At this point, there is now a massive trade deficit, and Canadians are not benefiting. Canadians are in an abusive relationship and are losing in this relationship with China under the Prime Minister.
At the end of the day, we have to have a nation that speaks softly, has diplomacy and has sets of investment deals because that is good for Canadians and Canadian companies, but we do not put up with Canadians being compromised, elections being compromised or democracy being compromised. There is a difference. Our government knew that difference and acted on it. The Liberal government does not.
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- May/9/23 11:04:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, as a member of the Bloc Québécois, I am always surprised to hear our neighbours across the way point out what Mr. Harper has done. Apparently, Mr. Harper has made a big impact on politics, based on how often they mention him.
Now, for my question. The member mentioned the fact that a resolution passed at the Liberal convention this weekend—one that was akin to a form of media censorship—would be dangerous.
What should we think of a Prime Minister who gets his information from the newspaper rather than CSIS?
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- May/9/23 11:06:11 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think we all agree that the member for Wellington—Halton Hills has an incredible amount of integrity.
Where we do not see integrity is in how the Conservatives are trying to exploit this. I am amazed that my colleague quotes Teddy Roosevelt. Do Conservatives think their leader is going to carry a big stick? Teddy Roosevelt, of course, launched illegal invasions into Cuba and Philippines, and mass murder, based on falsehoods.
The Conservatives believe that, as long as Canadians do not know history, they will be okay. When it was Stephen Harper who was kissing up to China, what did they announce? The member on the back bench can confirm that they were going to send blueberries to China. In exchange for blueberries, what did China take? Chinese state corporations took control of a huge part of the oil sands. Stephen Harper said that was okay because they were sucking up to China.
For Conservatives to come in now with this false history is really concerning. They are exploiting a very serious situation to make their very juvenile leader look like he is going to walk out on the world stage with his big stick to take on China. For sure, Canadians deserve better than that.
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- May/9/23 11:36:16 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is kind of the modus operandi we have seen from the Prime Minister, at least in the seven and a half years that I have been a member of Parliament. Whether it is “elbowgate”, Jody Wilson-Raybould, SNC or the WE scandal, it is always, “There is nothing to see here.” Then they blame Stephen Harper or the previous government. It just goes on and on.
The Prime Minister reminds me of the schoolyard bully, where he picks and natters at somebody. When the person finally has enough, they punch the bully in the nose, and the bully runs to his parents and blames everybody else. He does not take responsibility for his own actions, which caused that to happen.
It is the lack of leadership we have seen and come to expect from the Prime Minister, as well as the weakness he has shown time and time again. It is his own self-adulation, the arrogance we have seen and how he loves being on the red carpet rather than being on this green carpet right here.
This is the House of the people; this is the House of Commons. This House elects 338 members of Parliament so that we can bring Canadians' voices here. At the very least, the Prime Minister should be standing up for the 338 members of Parliament so that they can vote with their conscience and be the voices for their constituents and Canadians. Canadians know that we will stand up for them. Regardless of who they are or where they are from, we will allow them to have a free and democratic life here in Canada. We will not stand for a foreign country intimidating them.
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- May/9/23 11:58:31 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, at times, we can witness that the coalition between the Conservatives and the Bloc is doing quite well. It is kind of like the blue and the light blue. It is interesting.
I went through premiers Gary Doer, Greg Selinger, Gary Filmon and, of course, former prime minister Stephen Harper, all in opposition. I am very comfortable with what we have been able to accomplish.
I would challenge the member. He has a different view of the last eight years. I could talk about the tax break to the middle class; the GIS lifting hundred of thousands, going to millions, of people out of poverty; and the historic number of trade agreements signed off by the government. Shall we talk about COVID and about the nine million Canadians who benefited from CERB? What about the wage subsidy program? Shall we talk about post-COVID? We can talk about child care. We can talk about the health care agreements. We can talk about the Volkswagen deal. It is endless.
That is a leader who has demonstrated an immense amount of focus, when every day, the Conservatives, and now the Bloc, are more concerned about character assassination. As those two political parties focus their attention on the negative, on the Prime Minister, and are spreading misinformation, we will continue to espouse what is important to Canadians.
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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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- May/9/23 1:49:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to reinforce the fact that it has been very clear that the Prime Minister first found out about this just last week. I know it upsets a number of people in this chamber, but the fact is that the Prime Minister found out about it just last week. Since then, he has taken a number of direct actions to deal with the issue. Other issues, such as the registry and the public inquiry, could be dealt with by David Johnston, who was a Conservative Stephen Harper appointment. We will wait for that report to come. There is no denying that this government has been proactive on the file.
Does the member not believe, when he talks about the credibility and integrity of individuals, that all members in this chamber are honourable, and if the Prime Minister says he learned about it last week, that is a fact?
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- May/9/23 1:53:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as we are dealing with China in general, I wonder what the member's thoughts are with regard to the overall policy.
I remember this first being raised when I got here with China Minmetals. The government of the day, under Paul Martin, was selling our shares of Petro-Canada, and China Minmetals was buying up Canadian natural resources. I always thought it was odd that it was not okay for Canadians to own our own gas but it was okay for the Chinese to.
Later on, we saw policies under the Harper administration, when we had the largest delegations that went to China for investment opportunities, and a series of things have come out of that. It was actually to strengthen and grow some of our universities and co-operative programs, which are now being questioned by a lot of individuals.
I am curious as to whether we need to do something different in terms of how we approach this entire issue. I would conclude by saying that these are non-democratic governments, which is the context we have been raising it in, so I think it is larger than just China.
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- May/9/23 2:37:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I was the critic of public safety at the time of Stephen Harper's government, and when Justice Iacobucci and Justice O'Connor issued their recommendations saying that urgent action needed to be taken, and that an independent parliamentary committee of parliamentarians should oversee every aspect of national security, they did nothing.
It was our government that brought in that body, which allows parliamentarians of every party to be able to see into every aspect of our national security. We acted on those and many other recommendations that the Conservatives opposite, when they were in government, sat on and did not act upon.
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