SoVote

Mr. Dave Epp (Chatham-Kent—Leamington, CPC)

May/8/24 10:38:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are three reasons that come to my mind for the government's response to the serious situation: ambivalence, and my hon. colleague referenced that; incompetence; and the worst, intentional inaction. Would he opine on what he thinks is the driving force for the government's response here?

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Mr. James Bezan

May/8/24 10:39:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think the proper term to describe what has happened here is that the Liberal government is willfully neglecting its responsibilities and duties to make sure that we, as parliamentarians, and all Canadians are protected from foreign interference.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

May/8/24 10:39:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I wish I were pleased to join the debate, but I am not. I am one of those 18 parliamentarians who had their email targeted by APT31. To be perfectly honest, I did not know what APT31 was. I think many of my colleagues know that I spend a lot of time in diaspora communities, so I do know quite a bit about random, obscure groups that many of us do not pay attention to, but this is a new one even to me. I had to have staff actually look up what exactly this particular group was involved in. The attack was back in January 2021. By “attack”, I do not mean a physical attack. This was a digital hacking attempt, pixel reconnaissance. Again, that is another term I did not know, so I had to look it up. It was, I think, a sophisticated attempt. I would not have thought about it. My colleagues and members of other political parties know that I am quite paranoid. I think a little bit of paranoia is healthy in this line of work. I used to work for the department of defence as an exempt staffer for the Minister of National Defence during the Afghan war. I worked at the Alberta finance department as a policy adviser, where the security of budget documents was important, so just as a regular practice, I would do things like stopping my emails from automatically opening images. Little did I know that, in this situation, that would have helped me out, because those images are the ones that contain one pixel that would upload code onto whatever device would open it. In the case of my email account, I did ask my staff on their computers to verify whether those emails were opened and were still there in my email account, and they were. This is one of the problems I have with what the government's position has been, along with the Communications Security Establishment and the House of Commons cybersecurity. As soon as I found out about this, just a few weeks ago, I contacted them immediately to find out whether they knew or whether there was something that I should do. At first, I got kind of mixed messages from them, saying they kind of knew about the investigation but they did not know. It was not really clear. There were two different emails saying almost identical things, using synonyms to avoid actually committing to anything, which I guess is typical. I do not fault them for it. However, when it came to the fact that my email had been targeted, I would like to have been told of that fact back in January 2021. I would like to have known, because I could have deleted those emails. I may have gone back to those emails several times and opened them all over again. I will even read the headlines for colleagues, because I have them. The first one was on January 28, 2021, and it reads, “More than 50 passengers killed”. It looks like a random story about a traffic accident in western Cameroon. We get lots of different emails. There is not necessarily a reason for us to open those. It is signed by a David Aaro, and “nropnews” is a domain name. The next email is from Brooke Singman, on China's GDP. I might have opened that email out of sheer curiosity about what an analyst might be saying. The third email has the headline of “Canada parliament labels US far-right Proud Boys group 'a terrorist entity'”, by David Aaro again. These emails were over several days. They were not all on the same day. They are just three emails that I still have in my email inbox that I could have reopened for whatever reason while searching for another email, because nobody told me anything. Nobody did. I think it is both immoral and unethical, what happened through the House of Commons, CSE, and especially the Liberal government. For all the talk of wanting to protect Canadians, doing right by them and ensuring there is no foreign interference, it is only when the government is called out that it starts pretending it is going to do something. I deal with political prisoners. I deal with people who have fled their country of origin, who were political activists. They were in jail. They were on death row, some of them. They were democracy activists. They were journalists, perhaps, in their country. I have one working for me who was a journalist in a country that has an authoritarian regime that shut down her newspaper. I have met journalists who used to work in Turkey who are on the Turkish “grey list”, which is their terrorist list. This particular individual has not done any crime of terrorism. I call her the Robert Fife of Turkey. She reported on the fact that the Turkish government, during the Syrian civil war, had given weapons and arms and other means to ISIS and ISIS-affiliated jihadi groups. These are the people I meet with. They all saw the news that I had been targeted. They all worry. It directly affects the type of work that I can do, the type of work I am interested in doing, the type of work I have been asked to do by the leader of my political party as the shadow minister for immigration, refugees and citizenship. Refugees are quite core to that. Many of these people have applied for and obtained protected person status in Canada. I read your ruling, Mr. Speaker, and this is, like you said, material to the type of work that I do. When the government claims it is doing enough, no, it is not doing enough. The fact is that nobody on the Liberal benches in the front cabinet, especially those responsible for administrating CSIS and CSE, thought they should warn the 18 parliamentarians, including me, my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan and the member for Calgary Midnapore. There are several of us, and there are members of the Liberal Party. The member for Scarborough—Guildwood is one of the co-chairs of the IPAC group that was specifically targeted for that work. It is immoral. It is unethical. When I then turn around to the diaspora groups, the chatter I am hearing is, “If the government will not protect you, if it will not protect a member of Parliament or a senator, what chance do we have?” No wonder they are self-censoring and so scared to speak out about things that are going on in their country of origin, but also about foreign agents in Canada who are interfering with their rights to free speech as free Canadian citizens in our own country. Now they are afraid, because they look at us. Many of us are human rights advocates. We do pro-democracy work. We help groups organize and we give them ideas on how to lobby and advocate for things on important issues that they care about. However, they then ask, “Well, if I send you the email, is it actually protected? Will you protect my identity?” I have had meetings where members of the public have asked me to turn off my phones and put them away. I mean shut them down and put them away. I know why they are doing this; it is because they are concerned that people can easily tap into these devices, which are generally unsecured, and then they can turn on the microphones on devices. There is a reason why, in our caucus rooms, we do not bring our devices into the room. They are left in little metal cabinets, and we roll them in and roll them out all the time. I remember, as caucus chair, trying to convince my colleagues to leave their devices behind, which is very difficult. I see some members nodding and admitting how difficult it is for them to be kept away from the devices. Especially in the case of APT31, I started to look, and the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman before me kind of started to go into who this group was, because I was interested in this. There is a $10-million reward for seven of them on the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security's rewards for justice program. It has seven persons listed. It says that the hackers have helped China's Ministry of State Security conduct malicious cyber operations against U.S. critical infrastructure through their front company, Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science & Technology Company. It is part of a group of China state-sponsored intelligence officers and contract hackers known in the cybersecurity community as APT31. Again, this was news to me. I would like to have known about APT31. However, they are not just contract hackers; they are China state-sponsored intelligence officers. The rewards for justice website says that if anyone has information on these China hackers, Wuhan APT31, also known as Zirconium, Violet, Typhoon, Judgement Panda and Altaire, or associated individuals or entities, they should contact the rewards for justice program via the Tor-based tip line, and they may be eligible for a reward or relocation. Again, this organization is not just a random group of hackers in mom's basement. Therefore CSE, House of Commons security, the cybersecurity people, CSIS, the government, the public safety minister, the Prime Minister and everybody else seems to claim, “Well, we told somebody; that should be good enough”, but they have a moral and ethical responsibility to inform parliamentarians directly, beyond what the law says, both for our personal protection and for the protection of people that we deal with. What they are essentially saying is that we are on our own but that if someone finds out later, they will tell us. Then they will say, “Oh yeah, whoopsie doodle. True, there was an attempted hack.” It is not enough to say that the hack was not successful. We are being targeted; that is the problem. I am sure that our digital infrastructure, the cybersecurity infrastructure for the House of Commons, is strong and that it is good enough. I remember trying to get Zoom right after the pandemic shutdowns had begun, and our caucus was the first one to go on Zoom. I remember the cybersecurity people telling us, “No, you must send your signals through a House of Commons server based in Canada.” We waited patiently for the three days that they asked us to so we could actually host a meeting of the Conservative caucus right when the shutdowns began across the country. Therefore I trust them in that security infrastructure, but what I have a problem with is the fact that we were targeted and not told, in 2021. I had to be told by a foreign government, the Americans. Oftentimes, because they are our cousins, they are almost part of the North American security infrastructure. I studied in America. I know that few of my colleagues look up my bio because, why would one do that? I have a concentration in counterterrorism and the Department of Homeland Security. It is just a personal interest area, but it is not focused on digital cybersecurity, to be honest. This is why I did not know. These particular individuals, again, are not just a random group of hackers doing it for fun or doing it for money. These are intelligence officers. That is what the U.S. Department of State says. I had to find out from a foreign government, the FBI telling a parliamentary group that I belong to. I had to sign off on letters, listen to what the analysts had to say, get information from them and share information with them. I had to find out from a foreign government that I was being targeted, openly targeted. I have been criticized by foreign governments before. Famously, about two years ago, I was criticized in Pakistan's national assembly for raising very simple questions in the House here about a $50,000 taxpayer-paid trip by a certain chief of defence staff in the Pakistani military. I was highly unpopular. I was very popular in my riding, though, because I have a lot of constituents who are Mohajirs and Sindhis, who are highly persecuted. I did it on their behalf and they deserve to know. However, they are going to come to me and ask me if what they tell me is protected. Am I protected? Can I guarantee to them that what they pass on to me, my email, digital files and the personal security in my offices, is protected? I worry because I worry for them. There is a great Yiddish proverb. I never miss an opportunity to share them. I know members wait for them. If we take the Prime Minister's words and the public safety minister's words and CSE's and CSIS's words, and if their words were a stick, I could not even lean on it. It is a great Yiddish proverb. It is so true in this situation. The claim has been in the newspapers that, because it was not successful, we did not need to know. I have it in the complete reverse. Because we were targeted, we did not just deserve to know; they were morally obliged to tell us and ethically obliged to tell us. Whoever found out should have told us because, for three years, we could have adjusted our behaviour. We could have changed the way we did things. We could have turned around and told the diaspora community leaders, the groups we were working with on petitions, on letters and on starting campaigns to rescue political prisoners in other countries, that maybe we should do it a different way. Some of us travel to regions of the world that are dangerous, like Ukraine. Some of us travelled to Iraq just a few years ago, which is not exactly the safest region to travel to generally. I found, on the ground, that it was very safe. I would have liked to know if I was targeted by, say, an Iranian-based hacker group that works for the Islamic regime, if I had been in the region. I now have to work under the assumption that, even if I were targeted, if the target was not successful in hacking into my emails or hacking into my personal digital files or any of my social media accounts, because it was not successful, I could be the target of one of these espionage or hacker attempts. There are many of us who work with these types of individuals. Because we know that it was APT31, thanks to the FBI, thanks to IPAC, thanks to the U.S. Department of State, not thanks to our government, we have to now wonder if we are individually, because of the work that we do, targeted by another foreign regime. The member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman talked about the work he does on behalf of the Canadian Ukrainian community. He has spoken out repeatedly against the Kremlin. If there was a Russian hacker group, of which they have many, and they are renowned in the Kremlin for both operating state-sponsored groups and also paying contract hackers, and if he were to be targeted, nobody would tell him unless it was successful. If it was successful, then he would likely know about it. One can see where this is going now. This does not make any sense. The government's position makes no sense. In the Speaker's ruling, he said that this matter was in fact a prima facie violation of our privilege. I knew that from the moment it happened that this would be the case. I am very glad that he ruled that way. I am glad that the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan brought it to the Speaker's attention and made a very cogent case on why we should be protected. I want to bring up another fact, which is that this actually happened in Belgium as well. This is not APT31's first attempt. APT31 is renowned. APT40 is another group that has also done it repeatedly against others. It is not just IPAC members. I am going to draw one's attention to one particular group that was targeted in Belgium. It was a series of politicians, including the former prime minister of that country, who were targeted. One foreign affairs minister and several parliamentarians were also targeted by APT31, around the same timeline that we were. In that particular country, those targeted were also not told. In Belgium, they all had to go public and shame their government in that situation. As far as I know, in this particular attack, I think only Finland and one other, I believe, Baltic state informed their legislators that they were victims of such an attack. Then again, they are also much more used to it. They are right next door to the Kremlin and the Russian Federation, which makes it their business to be in all of our business. They want to know what emails we are exchanging. They want to know the people we are meeting with. They want to know what devices we are using as well. This is the problem I have with how this has been handled by the government, with its claim that it is doing enough and that it has introduced this new process. Those five members, like I said, were a former prime minister, the chair of the foreign affairs committee, the vice-chair of the foreign affairs committee, the Belgium-Taiwan Friendship Group and a member of the EU foreign affairs committee. I have the declaration in French and am going to read it into the record. Statement of Belgian elected officials targeted by APT31 It has now been confirmed that all five of us were the target of a Chinese state-sponsored cyber-attack in early 2021. This was not an attack on any single political party or any particular country. It was an attack on any elected official who dares to challenge Beijing. We stand united in condemning these actions, which strike at the heart of the democratic values that unite us and that transcend party lines. Over the past decade, China has shown a growing desire to interfere in the political systems of other countries, including our own. All too often, its malicious actions have gone unanswered. We cannot allow this campaign of cyber-attacks against elected representatives of the Belgian people to remain without a robust and proportionate response. We are calling on the government to do the following: Then they list five items. The statements ends with these two sentences: Chinese intelligence services tried to intimidate us, but they will never silence us. We will continue to actively defend democratic values and human rights in Belgium and around the world. This goes on. There was a case in New Zealand where APT40 as well hacked into legislators' and Parliament's devices. There was a cybersecurity attack committed in Australia, again by another state-sponsored affiliated group also out of Beijing. It is not like this is unique. This is another problem with the line the government has taken, which is to behave as if this is brand new and as if this has never happened before. That is the claim. That is the top-line talking point being printed out of the Prime Minister's Office and sent to all of us. That is simply not true. Since 2012, since Xi Jinping took over the Communist Party in Beijing, there has been a steady increase of attacks, both in rhetoric and in actual actions, by various hacking groups and by various military organizations. Like I said, intelligence officers of Beijing are now targeting 18 Canadian parliamentarians. For three years, we were told absolutely nothing. I only found out a few weeks ago. The moment I found out, on a Tuesday, I immediately began contacting the House of Commons' cybersecurity. I want to get to the bottom of this. Every single member who was targeted should have a chance to speak in the House and to explain exactly how this impacts their work, so it can become a permanent, official part of Hansard, and the next time this happens, the Liberals cannot claim that they did not see anything, that they did not hear anything or cannot say that it did not work, so we should not be bothered by it. We were targeted by a foreign government because of our parliamentary work. That should be enough. It was immoral not to tell us. It was unethical not to tell us.

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

May/8/24 10:58:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, all members of the House would be very much aware that foreign interference is something that happens around the world and that there are a number of stakeholders. It is not just China. As a government, we have taken a number of proactive legislative actions to be able to address the issue and to protect the integrity of our system. All sorts of committees have met. I would suggest to the member opposite and to other members of the Conservative Party that there is a role for Canada to play. Even though we have seen more severe threats in other countries, we do need to be cognizant. The government has consistently been not only cognizant of the issues but also taking actions where we can. Does my colleague not agree that we can play a strong leadership role on this, if we can dial down some of the politics and allow the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to do some of the important work to demonstrate and to reinforce confidence in the system?

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

May/8/24 10:59:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is a line I hear from the government whenever it has made a mistake. “Do not be so partisan” is the response Conservatives get from the government benches. I have made the case that the government followed its own process, but the process is immoral. It is unethical. The Liberals' line is that, because the interference was not successful, we did not need to know about it. That is not good enough. Just being targeted places a moral responsibility, an ethical responsibility, on the persons who knew. In this case, the government and the ministers of the day, which are the Liberals, and the front-benchers especially, had a responsibility to inform the 18 parliamentarians who were targeted by a foreign government. If they had informed us, we could have changed our behaviour, asked some questions and done the follow-up that we needed to do. We were not given the opportunity to protect ourselves.

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Mr. Ziad Aboultaif (Edmonton Manning, CPC)

May/8/24 11:00:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for a wonderful speech about a very important issue. When the government gave all these excuses, I do not know how Canadians felt, but we definitely know how we felt as parliamentarians sitting in the House. We got those threats from around the world, and the government did not move on it or take the issue seriously. What message is the government sending to parliamentarians, to politicians and to Canadians?

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Threats

Mr. Tom Kmiec

May/8/24 11:01:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Edmonton Manning is absolutely correct. The message the government basically sends to the diaspora communities, to former political prisoners whom we meet with and to people in civic organizations in Canada is that they do not matter. They will not be protected by the government. It is a free-for-all, with foreign agents and foreign hacking. It is not just their physical health they have to worry about; it is also their digital health. The government will not protect parliamentarians, and the message it is sending is that people are on their own; this has been heard loud and clear. There is a lot of fear out there in the community. Conservatives do not have to raise anyone's anxiety. We are just raising voices and pointing out what has been done. The government had a moral and ethical responsibility to act and inform the 18 parliamentarians, and it failed to do so.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

May/8/24 11:02:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one issue I did not have a chance to talk about during my speech, and I am glad the member spoke about it, is the nature of APT31 itself. Part of this discussion needs to be the appropriate response to a foreign state attacking members of Parliament. Of course, we need to talk about what the government should have done, what we can do differently and processes within Canada. However, we also need to talk about accountability for the people who perpetrated the attack. One call to action that the IPAC suggested is sanctions against those who target legislators in our country. This seems to me like a no-brainer. When a group controlled by a foreign state is targeting and attacking members of Parliament in our country based on their parliamentary activities, we should be sanctioning the individuals involved in the attack. This is something that is within the jurisdiction of government, not within the jurisdiction of Parliament. Could the member comment on that call to action for the government, calling on the government to sanction those involved in this cyber-attack?

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

May/8/24 11:03:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member is right. As with many things with the Liberals, they are not leaders on anything. They are followers on where other governments have gone. The U.S. State Department has already listed seven of these intelligence officers connected with APT31. Let me just read some of the targets mentioned. It goes to why we should list them, why we should penalize them and why we should sanction this group. It reads: APT31 has targeted a wide range of victims linked to U.S. national security including staff at the White House; the U.S. Departments of Justice, Commerce, Treasury, and State; members of the U.S. Congress, including both Democrat and Republican Senators; the United States Naval Academy; and the United States Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute. It goes on to include the industrial base, telecommunications, energy and financial sectors. It is very specific in what has been targeted. The fact that it would now broaden its interests to 18 Canadian parliamentarians is just the beginning. What I did not mention before in my opening speech and some of the responses is that I am also the vice-chair of the Canada-China select committee. There is a reason we would be targeted for the work we do, both at the IPAC and in Parliament.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis

May/8/24 11:04:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that response. It is notable, as it relates to sanctions in general involving the PRC, that there have been various calls for sanctions from parliamentary committees. For instance, the member mentioned that he is involved in the special committee on Canada-China relations. In the last Parliament, we had a very detailed report on Hong Kong in which we called for sanctions against those involved in the human rights violations that are taking place in Hong Kong. The government has not taken up that call, despite the fact that it came from a unanimous report of members of Parliament on that committee, including a parliamentary secretary. There has been a reluctance to apply these sanctions. I do wonder, also, if the issue of our not being informed and the issue of sanctions are related in this sense, that if members of Parliament had been informed they were being targeted by a foreign state, they would have expected the government to respond to hold those who were attacking them accountable. However, if the government had decided, for whatever political reasons, that it did not want to impose consequences on those involved in hacking, that it did not want to impose sanctions on foreign actors involved in both human rights violations and foreign interference, it would then be easier for them to avoid taking those actions that it, for whatever reason, did not want to take if as few people knew about it as possible. I wonder if members—

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The Speaker

May/8/24 11:06:26 p.m.
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The hon. member for Calgary Shepard.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

May/8/24 11:06:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member raises a very good point. It is possible that one of the reasons the government chose not to inform us, those 18 of us who were targeted, is not just because the attacks did not succeed but also because there would have been an expectation from us, and calls by us, for sanctions on the people, organizations and governments that were doing this. This is, again, not something new. The government of Beijing has targeted Hong Kong democracy activists in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Canada as well. There are many Hong Kong diaspora community members who are fearful even of taking pictures with us. I have been to community groups. I have been to community meetings where people jump out of the photo. It is not for partisan purposes because they are not voters in this country. It is not that they have friends who are Conservative or New Democrat or Liberal. That is not the case. They plainly tell me that they are worried about a picture being posted online, with me specifically, it being distributed out there, and people seeing that they are both in Canada and hanging out with this particular Conservative politician. I am sure the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan gets the same treatment. That is a worrying trend. The government does not seem to be taking the protection of these people seriously.

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Ms. Niki Ashton (Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, NDP)

May/8/24 11:07:52 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-59

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that this issue merits proper examination. At this hour, we have heard from many speakers that this must be taken seriously. Will the member agree that this should be referred to PROC as soon as possible? Obviously, we gathered here to debate Bill C-59, which has issues of great importance to the citizens we represent. Will the member agree to speeding up the process and moving this to PROC as soon as possible?

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

May/8/24 11:08:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first, I would never tell members not to rise in the House when it is their opportunity to speak on a particular issue. Second, I think every single member who was targeted should get an opportunity to rise in the House and explain exactly how this impacted their work. Third, I note that it is after 11 o'clock. I doubt PROC will be meeting tonight. The debate should continue until every single member who wants to speak to the issue and how it has impacted their work is given the opportunity to do so.

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Mr. Michael Cooper (St. Albert—Edmonton, CPC)

May/8/24 11:09:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to participate in the debate arising from your ruling earlier this evening of a prima facie breach of privilege involving 18 members in the House who were targeted by the Beijing-based Communist regime as part of a hacking operation, a progressive reconnaissance attack, due to their affiliation with the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, or IPAC. This attack occurred in early 2021, and for three years, these members were kept in the dark, which is completely unacceptable, so I welcome your ruling, Mr. Speaker, because here we go again one year later. One year ago, we were having a very similar debate in the House based upon the ruling of your predecessor, Mr. Speaker, of a prima facie breach of privilege concerning the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. That was referred to the procedure and House affairs committee through which a report was recently tabled in the House finding that indeed the privileges of the member for Wellington—Halton Hills were violated, and for the very same reason that those of the 18 members of Parliament who were subject to the matter of your ruling were, which is that the member for Wellington—Halton Hills was kept in the dark that he was being targeted by Beijing and that his family in Hong Kong was being targeted by the Beijing-based regime. This hacking attack did occur in 2021. It was reported by the U.S., by the FBI, to the Communications Security Establishment, to this government, in 2022. However, like the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, many of the 18 members first learned that they were being targeted by Beijing not through a briefing but through a report in The Globe and Mail. It raises serious questions as to why it is that this came to light because of The Globe and Mail reporting on it, and not based upon information from this government but from the U.S. government. Indeed it was an unsealed indictment of the justice department earlier this year that resulted in the IPAC secretariat becoming aware that members of IPAC were targeted, and not only Canadian members of Parliament but parliamentarians from around the world who were part of IPAC. That, in turn, led IPAC to ask questions of the Department of Justice in the U.S. as well as the FBI as to why members were not informed. The FBI, in effect, said that due to jurisdictional issues, it could not communicate directly to them and could not directly brief them, but it did, as soon as possible, provide that information to the Government of Canada, more specifically to the Communications Security Establishment. From there, that information went into a black hole, just as it did with respect to the targeting of the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. What is also disturbing is that, once again, the excuse being offered by the government is that it is not its fault; it is someone else's fault. When The Globe and Mail reported that the member for Wellington—Halton Hills was being targeted by the Beijing-based regime, the Prime Minister first claimed that he learned about it in The Globe and Mail. Then, he said that it was the fault of CSIS. He said to the media at the time, “CSIS made the determination that it wasn't...needed [to] be raised to a higher level because it wasn't a significant enough concern”. Then, it was revealed that what the Prime Minister said was not true, that the information had in fact been passed on to the Prime Minister's department, the PCO, to the Prime Minister's national security and intelligence adviser and that the information was not acted upon and was not shared with the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. Nothing was done. Again, the Prime Minister was very quick to blame someone else, to blame CSIS. The same is true of the Minister of Public Safety. It was learned at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, during the study we undertook on the question of privilege, that in fact CSIS had sent an IMU to the Minister of Public Safety, to the deputy minister of public safety and to the Minister of Public Safety's chief of staff, alerting them about the fact that the member for Wellington—Halton Hills and his family were being targeted by Beijing. When the Minister of Public Safety came to committee, he, just like the Prime Minister, said that it was not his fault, that it was the fault of CSIS and that somehow CSIS had made an operational decision not to inform him. He said that repeatedly and unequivocally. It was not a misstatement. Those were carefully selected words by the Minister of Public Safety that were patently not true. How could CSIS have made an operational decision not to inform the Minister of Public Safety when it sent to him an IMU, addressed to him, his deputy minister and his chief of staff? It is patently absurd. When the director of CSIS came before the procedure and House affairs committee, I asked him what the significance of an IMU was. He said that it was a matter of high importance. It was not just any memo that was sent, it was sent specifically to get the Minister of Public Safety's attention. Not only did the minister not act upon the intelligence concerning the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, not only does he bear responsibility, along with the Prime Minister and the government, for keeping that member in the dark, which led to a breach of that member's privilege, but also the minister may not have been entirely forthcoming with all the facts, in a desperate and pathetic effort to blame someone else. The Liberals and the Prime Minister are not responsible, and that is true. They are not a responsible government. However, when it comes to taking responsibility, it is always someone else's fault. Here we go again with another instance. This time, 18 members of Parliament were kept in the dark for two years. It was three years from the time of the attack, but two years from the time that the government was informed by the FBI. What is the excuse offered by the Liberals? It was a decision of House of Commons administration. Somehow it was the House of Commons administration's fault, not the government's fault. I say that is completely unacceptable in terms of an excuse for keeping members of Parliament in the dark about something as serious as a progressive attack against them. It was an attack that, yes, began at a low level, but it was an attack aimed at gathering information about them, information that could have impeded their ability to do their work as members of Parliament and that could have threatened their safety and security and that of those with whom they meet, including members of the diaspora communities that are targeted by the Beijing-based Communist regime. For the Liberals to simply pass the buck to the House of Commons administration on something like this is a complete abdication of responsibility. At the end of the day, the ultimate responsibility lies with the government and, in that regard, the government completely failed. I would submit that it was more than just a failure; for the Liberals, the information that had been passed on to them by the FBI was inconvenient. The Liberals did not want to pass the information on to members because it could have resulted in members' putting pressure on the Liberals to actually do something, to take action in response to the Beijing-based regime, which, I will remind members, the Prime Minister said was a dictatorship he admired. He admired its basic dictatorship. The Prime Minister extended his hand, time and again, to the Beijing-based regime and who turned a blind eye to Beijing's interference in our democracy because, as he saw it, it was benefiting the Liberal Party. Therefore we need to get to the bottom of what happened, who learned what, where the information went and why members were left in the dark. Why was it information from the U.S. Department of Justice, in an unsealed indictment, that led to IPAC's raising questions that in turn resulted in members of Parliament being informed in some cases by IPAC and in other instances through the report in The Globe and Mail? Let me observe it more broadly. When it comes to foreign interference, and specifically interference by the Beijing-based regime, which is the largest threat when it comes to interfering in Canada, targeting diaspora communities and interfering in our democracy and our sovereignty and impacting the safety of Canadians, the current government's record is an abysmal one. It simply cannot be trusted to stand up to the Beijing-based regime. The current government is a government that turned a blind eye to Beijing's interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections, notwithstanding the fact that the Prime Minister had been repeatedly briefed about that interference. He covered it up when Global News and The Globe and Mail first reported on it in the fall of 2022 and early 2023. He tried to downplay it. He is not able to downplay it now that the first report of Madam Justice Hogue was issued last week, which is a damning indictment on the Prime Minister in many respects. Under the government's watch, police stations have been operating in communities across Canada, targeting Chinese Canadians. At least two of those stations remain open. The government was actually funding some of the organizations that were operating the police stations. There was a major national security breach at the Winnipeg lab, Canada's highest-security lab, in which agents of the Beijing regime transferred sensitive materials to PRC institutions, including the transfer of two of the most deadly pathogens, Ebola and Henipah, at the direction of one of those scientists. That happened even after PHAC's fact-finding report indicated that the scientist had breached multiple security and intellectual property policies of PHAC and that the individual had collaborated with Beijing on an unauthorized basis. Nonetheless, under the government's watch, Henipah and Ebola were sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. At the Winnipeg lab, a military scientist had access to the lab, someone who was working with Beijing's foremost expert in bioterrorism and biodefence. The list goes on and on. It is pretty incredible. It is what happens after nine years under a Prime Minister who is not serious, does not take foreign interference seriously and does not take these threats seriously. The Prime Minister's chief of staff said at committee that the Prime Minister reads everything put on his desk and that he is frequently briefed. Then we learn, when the Prime Minister appears at the foreign interference inquiry, that he actually does not really read anything at all. We have a Prime Minister who, at best, is asleep at the switch and, at worst, has turned a blind eye, at times, and even been willing to go along with Beijing's interference if it benefits the electoral interests of the Liberal Party. In closing, the facts underlying this prima facie question of privilege that the Speaker has ruled on are a matter that should never have happened. The government can point blame at everyone else all it wants, but a directive was finally issued in 2023 to inform members of Parliament. It should not have taken until 2023, but it was issued then. Still no action was taken and the members were kept in the dark. Why were they not informed, at the very least, after that directive was issued? These are among the questions that need to be answered. There needs to be accountability for this very serious breach. I believe that it was not just a prima facie breach but that the privileges of those 18 members were violated.

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

May/8/24 11:28:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would really encourage those who might be following the debate to read what the Speaker's ruling stated. It is very clear that, over the last number of years, we have seen the Prime Minister deal with the serious issue of international foreign interference, whether it is in legislation surrounding elections in Manitoba years ago, the directive the member just referred to, the legislation with regard to the registry or something more. Let us contrast that with the previous prime minister. Foreign interference not only happens around the world and by more countries than just China, but it has been happening since 2011-12, when Stephen Harper did absolutely nothing, nada. However, the member has the tenacity to say that the Prime Minister has not done anything. That is a joke.

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Mr. Michael Cooper

May/8/24 11:29:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the record of the government has been an abysmal one. The member spoke of the May directive in 2023 to inform MPs. Why was that directive issued? It was after the Prime Minister and the government got caught not informing the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. It was only then that all of a sudden they said they were going to issue this directive. They did not take any responsibility, of course. It is about lessons learned, they always say. The member spoke about the foreign influence registry. This is the Prime Minister who opposed a foreign influence registry when the former member for Steveston—Richmond East introduced a private member's bill. Not only did the Prime Minister oppose the foreign influence registry, but, based upon evidence that came at the ethics committee, the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party actually amplified Beijing's disinformation targeting the member for Steveston—Richmond East at the time, Kenny Chiu, which contributed to his defeat. In other words, the Prime Minister and the Liberals did not just turn a blind eye or stand by as Beijing launched a disinformation campaign against Kenny Chiu; they actually amplified it and were, therefore, participants in it.

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Mr. Philip Lawrence (Northumberland—Peterborough South, CPC)

May/8/24 11:31:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we heard earlier from the government member that there was no mistake made by the government, implying that the government was right not to tell this member and other members that they had their personal, private emails potentially hacked by a foreign power. Does the member agree with that?

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Mr. Michael Cooper

May/8/24 11:31:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister said that it was CSIS's fault, that CSIS had not prioritized it. That was the line that was used by the Minister of Public Safety, as well, with respect to the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. Of course, we know that the government was briefed, that the minister was briefed and that the Prime Minister's department was briefed. Ultimately, responsibility fell on the Prime Minister and the government for why the member for Wellington—Halton Hills had been kept in the dark. Similarly, in this instance, the government had the information. Just because it was passed on to the House of Commons administration, that does not mean that, at the end of the day, it is not up to the government to inform members. Further, I should note that the other excuse that is offered is that it was unsuccessful and, therefore, it is no big deal and members should not know. I think every member would like to know if they are being the target of a hostile foreign state like the PRC.

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Ms. Niki Ashton (Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, NDP)

May/8/24 11:33:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are now at 11:30 p.m., eastern time zone. We have all acknowledged that this is a serious matter and PROC is the best-placed body to deal with this matter. I am hearing a lot of Conservative talking points that we have heard before with respect to their position on China, and tonight we heard references to Israel and Iran. This seems to be a real show of political talking points from the Conservative Party. Would it not be in all of our best interests to have this dealt with by PROC as soon as possible? Will the member agree to send this matter to PROC as soon as possible, so that we can actually move on this?

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