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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 328

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 10, 2024 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 328 - Jun/10/24
Hon. Michael Chong (Wellington—Halton Hills, CPC)
  • Jun/10/24 1:05:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one week ago, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians released a report containing its findings. The report came after more than a year of work by the committee. The committee reviewed some 33,000 pages from 4,000 classified documents. The committee members were briefed, and they interviewed dozens of top intelligence and government officials, including the Prime Minister himself. It was found that a few members of the House are witting participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in our politics. This is shocking. The report revealed that these parliamentarians had responded to the requests or instructions of foreign officials to inappropriately influence parliamentary colleagues or parliamentary business for the benefit of a foreign country. The committee noted in its report that some members in this House had violated the solemn affirmation or the oath sworn at the beginning of their term. I will quote from the report, which found “examples of members of Parliament who worked to influence their colleagues on India’s behalf and proactively provided confidential information to Indian officials.” It also found “a textbook example of foreign interference that saw a foreign state support a witting politician.” Furthermore, it found “a particularly concerning case of a then-member of Parliament maintaining a relationship with a foreign intelligence officer.... [This] member of Parliament sought to arrange a meeting in a foreign state with a senior intelligence official and also proactively provided the intelligence officer with information provided in confidence.” The report found that the People's Republic of China had established a “network [that] had some contact with at least 11 candidates and 13 campaign staffers, some of whom appeared to be wittingly working for the [People's Republic of China].” The report also found similar activities by another network in the riding of Don Valley North. The report also found that parliamentarians communicated “frequently with foreign missions before or during a political campaign to obtain support from community groups or businesses which the diplomatic missions promise[d] to quietly mobilize in [their] favour”. The report found examples of parliamentarians “[a]ccepting knowingly or through willful blindness funds or benefits from foreign missions or their proxies which ha[d] been layered or otherwise disguised to conceal their source”. Furthermore, the report found that parliamentarians had provided “foreign diplomatic officials with privileged information on the work or opinions of fellow Parliamentarians, knowing that such information [would] be used by those officials to inappropriately pressure Parliamentarians to change their positions”. The report found that parliamentarians had responded “to the requests or direction of foreign officials to improperly influence Parliamentary colleagues or Parliamentary business to the advantage of a foreign state” and had provided “information learned in confidence from the government to a known intelligence officer of a foreign state.” The report also identified those parliamentarians who wittingly and knowingly collaborated with foreign governments to the detriment of Canada and its people. We do not know the identities of those members of the House who wittingly and knowingly worked in favour of the interests of a foreign government. That is because of an order by the Prime Minister, under subsection 21(5) of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act, that the report be redacted. Every single member of this chamber swore an oath or made a solemn affirmation that they would be faithful and bear true allegiance to the sovereign. What we swore to or solemnly affirmed was to be faithful and to bear true allegiance to our constitutional system, which is enshrined in the Constitution Acts, in orders in council, in rulings of the Supreme Court of Canada and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and in the unwritten conventions that have governed Parliament and parliamentary democracies for centuries. In other words, we swore or solemnly affirmed that our first and foremost duty was to the people of Canada. In its report, the committee found that a few members of this chamber had violated that oath or solemn affirmation. Those members need to be held accountable. Members who willingly, knowingly and wittingly assisted a foreign government to the detriment of members of this place and their privileges, as well as the interests of Canada and its people, need to be expelled from the House. The way expulsions work in this place is that all 337 members of this chamber need to vote in public after a debate on expulsion. I have had the difficult experience of participating in exactly such a debate on a former member several parliaments ago. It is not a pleasant thing to do, but it is necessary to protect the integrity of this institution. It should not just be a criminal standard to which we are held in this place. The oaths and solemn affirmations we take are to the people of Canada. Our conduct needs to be becoming of those oaths and affirmations. Canadians also need to be able to go to the polls in the next election knowing whether their incumbent member of Parliament was one of the few parliamentarians referred to in the report. That is why the Prime Minister needs to name the names of those members, along with the relevant information to allow the House, its caucuses and its committees to hold parliamentarians accountable and take action to protect the integrity of this place. That brings us to the motion in front of the House today. We once again find ourselves in the situation that we had a year and a half ago, three years ago and four years ago, where the government is not willing to respect the norms of parliamentary democracy and provide the House and its committees with the information necessary for them to fulfill their constitutional role. The government is not willing to release this information. A year ago, we ended up in the same situation. We began debate and hearings on investigations related to foreign interference in the House and its committees in 2020. On November 18, 2020, a motion I had moved was adopted by the House, calling on the government to produce a robust action plan to respond to the threats of foreign interference. In the subsequent years of 2021, 2022 and 2023, four committees of the House of Commons conducted hearings. The procedure and house affairs committee, the Canada-China committee, the foreign affairs committee, and the Subcommittee on International Human Rights conducted hearings with 70 meetings, 364 witnesses, 152 hours of testimony and some 1,902 pages of evidence, trying to get to the bottom of foreign interference. A year ago, the government punted it to NSICOP. NSICOP has done its job and given its report, which contained the names of members of the House who knowingly and wittingly assisted a foreign state to the detriment of the interests of the people of Canada. Here we are again with the government refusing to release the information. Therefore, once again, we are left with having to go through an extra-parliamentary process to get this referred to Justice Hogue at the public inquiry so that we can get to the bottom of this and understand who was involved. The House can then take action. We had the same problem with the Winnipeg lab documents. It took us three years to get the information. We had to resort to an extrajudicial, extraparliamentary process through the ad hoc committee to get that done. We support the Bloc motion, but in a spirit of collaboration, I would like to move an amendment to the motion as follows: That the motion be amended by replacing paragraph (c) with the following: (c) demand that the government provide the unredacted version of the special report, together with all the intelligence documents and testimony which the committee considered to the public inquiry into foreign interference in federal electoral processes and democratic institutions, the Hogue commission; and that the Hogue commission's terms of reference be expanded in order (1) to require the Hogue commission (a) to assess the statements made at paragraphs 55 and 56, the text box following paragraph 57, and paragraphs 58, 59, 61, 64, 68 and 164 of the special report concerning officials who wittingly assisted, supported or participated in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in Canadian politics; (b) to question the individuals named or referred to in those paragraphs and, out of respect for procedural fairness, to offer those individuals the opportunity to make representations concerning the statements; (c) to make findings of fact concerning these statements; and, (d) to produce and publish a report by October 1, 2024, on these matters, including its findings of fact and the names of any current member of the House of Commons it concludes engaged in these foreign interference activities so that this House may take appropriate remedial action; and (2) allow the Hogue commission to investigate other foreign interference efforts in relation to Canada's federal democratic institutions, including members of the House of Commons elected in the 43rd and 44th Parliaments, as well as senators.
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