Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, where do I even begin? This legislation before us is — for unnecessary, unreasonable and cynical reasons — long overdue.

While I support this bill and its quick passage, many of you won’t like what I have to say about this government’s and this chamber’s track records on dealing with foreign interference.

I don’t doubt that I’ll be accused of partisanship in my remarks, but there’s no greater partisanship than that which has been displayed by the Trudeau government — and by many of you — when it comes to Conservative efforts to fight foreign interference and transnational repression, through the creation of a foreign agent registry in particular.

Let’s start there, colleagues. Let’s start with, if you check the scroll, Bill S-237.

I tabled this bill in February of 2022. That’s more than two years ago, and it has sat in this place collecting dust. With one exception, none of you found foreign interference to be interesting or pressing enough to stand in this place and utter one word about it in relation to this bill. Is it good, positive or neutral? Should it be amended? Should we take it and run with it?

I didn’t hear from Senator Woo, who earlier espoused his great concern about foreign interference. He didn’t rise to speak about Bill S-237. Could that be because many of you received calls from the PMO or from a minister telling you not to? Probably not, but I know one thing for certain: None of you received calls from the government or the Leader of the Government asking you to deal with the bill because it was of such importance to national security and foreign interference wouldn’t be tolerated.

There are two possible reasons why there was no interest on that bill. Perhaps the government thought there was no problem with foreign interference and carried on. Or perhaps there were partisan considerations and they didn’t want to debate a serious issue put forward by the official opposition. Whatever the reason, colleagues, your silence and the silence of the government on this bill speak volumes.

The only one who showed true independence on this issue, true concern over foreign interference and transnational repression and chose to speak from a principled position was the Honourable David Adams Richards. I thank him for it.

With that said, I would be remiss if I didn’t also acknowledge that this bill was resurrected from a private member’s bill tabled during the previous Parliament by former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu. All credit must go to him, even if the government currently refuses to acknowledge that. Kenny became a victim of the very foreign interference he was trying to expose and fight.

During the subsequent election after he tabled his bill, Mr. Chiu was the target of an aggressive campaign of disinformation spearheaded by the Communist regime in Beijing and propagated by those acting on their behalf here on Canadian soil. This campaign was largely conducted through Beijing-controlled social media apps and Beijing-infiltrated Chinese-language media, right here in places like British Columbia.

Disinformation was used to create fear amongst Chinese Canadians by invoking a very dark chapter in Canadian history — disinformation in which Mr. Chiu’s Liberal opponent and now MP Parm Bains was all too happy to engage.

In the dying days of the 2021 election, Mr. Bains, a former Liberal staffer, was quoted by a media platform believed to have close ties with the Communist regime in China, saying he believed Chiu’s bill to be a discriminatory policy. That same day, the magazine publicly endorsed Mr. Bains, urging readers in the largely Chinese-Canadian riding to vote for him and for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

It didn’t stop there, according to investigative journalist Sam Cooper in “The Bureau,” who wrote:

. . . one Chinese community leader campaigning for Bains with CCGV has so much power in Vancouver’s diaspora that he was later personally recognized in a meeting with President Xi Jinping and Beijing’s United Front Work Department cadres, after the RCMP opened investigations into his group’s alleged involvement in Chinese police stations in Canada.

Mr. Cooper’s piece also reports that Mr. Bains was seen in a video echoing Beijing’s allegations of racism and Sinophobia against Mr. Chiu and former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole.

Does that sound familiar, colleagues? It should because it’s the exact same regurgitation of Beijing’s talking points that have been levelled against me in interviews, private and public events and right here in this very chamber. It’s nothing new. Beijing’s talking points were also repeated here in this chamber when we were scolded and told that Canada had no place to speak on the genocide being carried out against the Uighurs because of our own history with residential schools. If you’re noticing a pattern, it’s because there is one.

We have so many human rights advocates in this chamber and so many who are concerned about the rise of Islamophobia but collectively not concerned enough about the Muslims being eradicated by Beijing to condemn it as a genocide. How many of you met with Uighurs here in Canada in recent years, colleagues? How many of you listened to their heart-wrenching stories about their loved ones being rounded up and forced into detention camps in the Xinjiang region? How many of you have heard their stories about the phone calls they receive here in Canada from authorities in the People’s Republic of China, or PRC, or people here in Canada acting on behalf of the PRC, telling them their mother is dead, their brothers are all dead, and threatening them to stop talking about the genocide or more of their family members will die? We heard testimony right here in a Senate committee.

This is the kind of transnational repression, threats and intimidation happening right here on Canadian soil that my bill and Mr. Chiu’s bill were designed to combat. This legislation wasn’t racist. The motivation behind it wasn’t racist. On the contrary, it was Chinese Canadians themselves who came to us begging for help for years.

I also hear it through my work with Hong Kong Watch. That’s why I became involved with them and follow their work. I’ve had meetings with Hong Kongers in Canada who are afraid to show their faces or use their full names for fear of repercussions from Beijing, especially now, with the draconian national security law the Communist regime has enacted in Hong Kong.

It’s not just the Communist thugs in Beijing that are engaging in these activities here on Canadian soil, not by a long shot. I’ve also met with Iranian Canadians who share similar stories of feeling threatened here in Canada by representatives of the malign regime in Iran, including members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. We also have Cuban Canadians who fear for the safety of their loved ones in Cuba every time they speak out for freedom here in Canada. We see the handiwork of Putin’s attempts at disruption, especially through social media accounts and by funding protests like the ones we are seeing now on our university campuses from coast to coast to coast.

Speaking of Putin and Cuba, how must it make Cuban Canadians feel to see Canada send one of our naval vessels to dock alongside a Russian warship as a sign of our “long-standing bilateral relationship” with the Communist regime there? That’s the latest lunacy from this government, who claim to be fighting authoritarianism and taking seriously the threat of foreign interference. Over the weekend, we learned that a Canadian warship had been sent to anchor in Cuba alongside a Russian warship as a token of friendship with the Communist regime of Cuba. Wonderful.

What’s worse is that when our Minister of Foreign Affairs was asked about this during a television interview, she replied this weekend that it was news to her. Doesn’t this sound like something our foreign affairs minister ought to know, especially if it was a well-planned decision, as it has since been described by Minister Blair? Then again, this is the same minister who also supposedly didn’t know that her staff attended a garden party at the Russian embassy shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

This is the same department — Global Affairs — that we now know, thanks to NSICOP’s confirmation of a story in The Globe and Mail, had been warned numerous times about the suspect action of a Chinese diplomat here in Canada. We had to learn that from The Globe and Mail.

They claimed that CSIS didn’t have a proper understanding of what regular diplomacy looks like. I would argue that these officials and the Trudeau government don’t have a proper understanding of what foreign interference looks like. It’s something that’s highlighted in the NSICOP report — don’t take my word for it — the lack of a common intervention threshold.

We talked about this in our Defence Committee right in this chamber. While other nations and Five Eyes partners have legislation in place and have empowered their national security forces to take action, we are still debating the definition of foreign interference in Canada. This is where we are in 2024.

This is the same diplomat who was ultimately expelled from Canada, but only after someone at CSIS anonymously blew the whistle. That is when Global Affairs Canada took action. And yet, Minister Joly had the unmitigated gall to go on television this past weekend and tell Vassy Kapelos that Canada is the most “forward leaning” of the G7 countries in combatting foreign interference. Colleagues, I fell off my chair when I heard that: “forward leaning.”

Canada has become a laughingstock among the Five Eyes allies when it comes to fighting foreign interference. They are ahead of us not only in the implementation of measures included in this legislation pertaining to intelligence sharing but also in establishing foreign agent registries. We are the last to come to this party, and Ms. Joly thinks we are the most forward leaning because we are having a public inquiry right now on foreign interference, which her government was dragged into kicking and screaming. We have the Hogue inquiry in spite of Justin Trudeau’s best efforts not to call one, and this minister wants to point to that as a measure of the government’s success. Like everything else with this government, they say all the right things, then do the very opposite, and then act like something’s being done to them, not by them.

The Trudeau government has been, at best, one abysmal failure after another every time they’ve been faced with the threat of foreign interference, especially in our elections, and in some cases, wittingly turned a blind eye because the foreign interference was politically beneficial to them.

CSIS warnings were ignored not only by Mélanie Joly and Global Affairs but also by the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister’s Office and senior officials within the Liberal Party and the Liberal campaign team. They turned a blind eye, did nothing to guard against the meddling in our democratic institutions, and when the truth started coming out, they lied about having any knowledge of it. Instead, they focused on finding out who leaked the information. Because we want to get the leakers — that’s the real problem, the people telling the truth.

When reports first surfaced that CSIS had briefed Justin Trudeau about Beijing’s interference in the previous two federal elections, he returned to one of his favourite phrases. He claimed that the story in The Globe and Mail was false. He denied repeatedly, including in the House of Commons, knowing anything or even having been briefed by CSIS. It was also news to him. He denied it repeatedly.

In March 2023, he was asked point-blank in a television interview:

Did you know that there was interference in those elections, not prior to but during that campaign? Were you made aware that there was interference?

The Prime Minister’s response to this very simple question was, “We put together a panel so that the question could be looked at.”

He put together a panel to do what? Tell us what was in his own head? He’s the Prime Minister. When it comes to national security, the buck stops with him.

In April of that year, at the public inquiry, the Prime Minister was shamed into finally telling the truth by the commissioner. It was revealed that the Prime Minister’s Office was briefed by CSIS on foreign interference at least 34 times between June 2018 and December 2022 and that the Prime Minister himself was personally briefed on at least three occasions during that time. That’s the public inquiry. I am not making this up. These are the facts, Senator Gold. CSIS drew his attention to foreign meddling in the 2018 and 2019 elections and offered recommendations to guard against it in future elections.

Since then, we have had two bills go through the House. There is a bill collecting dust here, and we needed a public inquiry to get the Prime Minister to come clean. Our Prime Minister ignored all of the recommendations. He did nothing with the information he was provided through those briefings.

Furthermore, he went on to lie about those briefings. He lied to the Canadian people, and he lied to Parliament. Mr. Trudeau tried to claim that the information didn’t reach him. During his testimony at the Hogue inquiry, he claimed that he doesn’t really do much reading — shocking — and the only way to ensure he’s aware of something is to tell him verbally. Yet, during a previous appearance at a House of Commons committee, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Katie Telford testified that Mr. Trudeau reads every document that he’s given. Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

Whichever it was, those were 34 missed opportunities to do something about foreign interference, and Justin Trudeau chose to ignore the warnings instead.

In December 2019, December 2020 and again in February 2022, the Prime Minister was briefed about electoral interference and was asked to sign-off on measures to combat it in future elections. On all three occasions, he refused to do so. He has also received three reports from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP, outlining concerns of foreign interference, and he’s done nothing to respond — hardly what can be described as forward-leaning.

We also now know, thanks to Justice Hogue, that the Prime Minister was made aware of Beijing’s meddling in Liberal member of Parliament, or MP, Han Dong’s nomination in Toronto and that he wittingly chose to do nothing about it because, as he himself admitted to Justice Hogue, he didn’t want to lose that riding. That’s the Prime Minister, colleagues, and not anyone else. The Prime Minister put his own electoral interests ahead of the interests of Canadian democracy. He put his political fortunes and thirst for power above national security and above the fundamental integrity of our elections. That is beyond rich for someone who constantly accuses others of eroding confidence in our democratic institutions.

Mr. Trudeau also failed to act again on information about a Chinese diplomat here in Canada targeting sitting MP Michael Chong, including threats to Mr. Chong’s family in Hong Kong. This is the diplomat I mentioned a moment ago, the one the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, repeatedly warned Global Affairs Canada about, only to get blown off by the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The latest NSICOP report supports what was reported in The Globe and Mail last year about Global Affairs Canada ignoring those repeated warnings. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s own words last fall belie his failure to act on this information when he was first presented the opportunity to do so. The Prime Minister said that he ordered an investigation into the matter as soon as it became public, not that he ordered an investigation into it when he first learned about it two years previous; it was only after it became public.

By the way, those threats against MP Chong and his family came at the time the House was debating a motion to recognize the Uighur genocide. It was a similar motion to the one that was shamefully defeated here in the Senate. Senators had previously been issued a warning against such motions by China’s then ambassador to Canada. The point of him doing so while in my hometown of Montreal was not lost on me. It was at a public event.

Beijing’s meddling didn’t work in the House — even though I have to remind you that the government did not vote for the motion — but it worked perfectly well in this chamber, the only chamber in the Western democratic world to vote down the recognition of what is happening to the Uighur people. It was a shameful day when it happened in this institution, and I still can’t get my head around it.

Another motion that did pass in the House of Commons, not once but now twice, is a motion calling on the government to declare the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, a terrorist organization. The first motion passed six years ago and a second one during this session of Parliament. The Trudeau Liberals continue to refuse to adhere to either motion. This government doesn’t just refuse to list the IRGC as a terrorist entity, they’ve allowed members of this murderous death cult to come to Canada to do things like lecture at our universities. What could possibly go wrong?

For starters, the malign regime of Iran is the world’s worst sponsor of state terrorism, and you can be sure they are involved with some of the pro-Hamas protests we have been seeing on our university campuses and in our streets for the past several months. Why isn’t our government asking questions about those connections, especially where the funding is coming from?

Speaking of asking questions, remember all the questions we had about the firing of two scientists from the country’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, scientists we now know were intentionally working to benefit the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, not Canada? Was it forward-leaning when the Trudeau government did everything in its power for several years to prevent Canadians from learning the truth about what happened at that lab? We only recently learned the truth because, again, the opposition relentlessly pursued it. The Trudeau government tried for as long as they could to cover it up by, first, invoking privacy and security concerns to avoid four motions of the House and its committees requiring the tabling of relevant documents. That eventually resulted in the House holding the President of the Public Health Agency of Canada in contempt of Parliament, followed by Justin Trudeau taking Parliament to court. Imagine it: The Prime Minister used the federal court to block the parliamentary order.

That cynical move not only underlines how unserious Justin Trudeau has been about foreign interference but is just another example of the contempt he has for the supremacy of Parliament. He wanted the court — the judicial branch — to insert itself into the privilege of the legislative branch. It’s really quite something that could have done untold damage to our parliamentary system and democracy.

That’s how far he’s willing to go, not to fight foreign interference but to cover up his government’s inaction on fighting it.

The court was saved from having to rule when the Prime Minister conveniently dissolved Parliament. It was eventually an ad-hoc committee of four MPs and three former justices who ultimately made the decision to release the pertinent documents on this issue. In doing so, they said that while some amount of secrecy was warranted as it pertained to certain CSIS documents, most of the documents were held back by the government out of concern for protecting the organization from embarrassment more so than any legitimate national security concerns.

The Trudeau government is using the same play even now with the Hogue inquiry on foreign interference. They are either heavily redacting or withholding altogether all relevant cabinet documents that were proposed to the inquiry by Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc last September, regardless of their sensitive nature.

Again, they are saying the right thing one minute but then doing the very opposite.

I’ll remind everyone here that the Prime Minister can and should waive cabinet confidentiality, as he promised he would. He has the power and authority to do so, just as he does with the NSICOP report.

Justin Trudeau is the only one who can release the unredacted report or parts of it, including the names of any parliamentarians believed to have wittingly or unwittingly been implicated in foreign interference. Canadians and Parliament deserve to know, regardless of their political stripes. Instead, we have the fourth- and fifth-place party leaders making public statements that do nothing more than muddy the water on what is or isn’t in the report. Between Elizabeth May and Jagmeet Singh, Canadians can’t make heads or tails of it.

By the way colleagues, there are two things that we heard during our committee study on Bill C-70 that must be on the record here. First, claims that the allegations against parliamentarians can’t be discussed because they are under RCMP investigation are bogus; and second, there likely aren’t mechanisms in the Criminal Code to investigate these allegations because what’s being described doesn’t likely give rise to the very high bar of treason.

This testimony made it all the more clear that these allegations will have to be dealt with by some other measure, such as publicly naming the implicated parliamentarians. Parliamentarians are politicians, and there is political accountability in Parliament. That is where we get to the bottom of political accountability.

However, again, the Trudeau government says one thing and does the opposite. After initially appearing to agree to send the NSICOP report to Justice Hogue to investigate the allegations against parliamentarians — publicly named MPs and senators — that she believes are implicated, Minister LeBlanc balked during his Senate committee appearance when asked if the relevant documents would be turned over. It was a pointed question, I think from Senator Carignan. He just balked; he did not give a clear answer.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, the Minister of Foreign Affairs decided to add some mud of her own. She doesn’t know that we have a warship docked alongside the Russians in Cuba, but she had no problem confidently telling Vassy Kapelos that there are no Liberal caucus members implicated in the report. That’s odd because when the Prime Minister was asked at the G7 this weekend if any Liberals were on the list, he refused to answer one way or the other. Either the Minister of Foreign Affairs is, as usual, confused and the Prime Minister is back to not reading his briefing notes or they’re not being honest. I will give them the benefit of the doubt, of course.

What the Prime Minister did say to Canadians and the media at the G7, though, was to call into question the work of NSICOP. The Prime Minister echoed the words of the Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc in saying that he disagrees with NSICOP’s interpretation of foreign interference and that he made clear to them the problems he has with their work. That is NSICOP, about which we all talk and about which we’re all so confident. He certainly isn’t.

Why is it with this guy that he’s always the ultimate authority on everything and resorts to degrading and dissing the work of anyone who disagrees with him, even if they’re his own hand-picked experts? Here is a reminder of what Mr. Trudeau said about this committee of parliamentarians in March 2023:

. . . NSICOP is well placed to look at foreign interference attempts that occurred in the 43rd and 44th federal general elections, including potential effects on Canada’s democracy and institutions . . . .

It’s one thing today, and another thing tomorrow.

I will remind you about what his Senate leader — our very own Senator Gold — said less than two weeks ago about the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP. In his latest report, he highlighted the value of the work that committee does and said that his government thanks them for their work. Well, send a memo to Prime Minister Trudeau, Senator Gold, because you guys are not on the same page — not at all.

Mr. Trudeau will also call into question the work of Justice Hogue’s inquiry when it concludes. Do you know whose work he didn’t question? He didn’t question the work of his Independent Special Rapporteur on Foreign Interference: family friend and, yes, former governor general David Johnston. The fact that Mr. Harper wasn’t dissuaded from appointing such a close Trudeau family friend shows his lack of partisanship in such matters. It’s too bad Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Johnston don’t have the same lack of partisanship.

At any rate, Minister Joly and Prime Minister Trudeau like to cite the special rapporteur as another example of how Canada is the most forward-leaning G7 country in combatting foreign interference. Remember, appointing the special rapporteur was the initial response by the Trudeau government to Conservative calls for a public inquiry and for a foreign registry. The special rapporteur was going to solve all problems.

It was never about accountability or taking foreign interference seriously, colleagues. It was about ragging the puck. It was about delays. The special rapporteur didn’t even talk to Liberal MP Han Dong, who was at the centre of the electoral interference allegations. On June 6, 2023, the rapporteur admitted before a House committee that he didn’t even have access to the intelligence that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, provided in a briefing to former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole. The rapporteur said, “The evidence we had before us . . . was what was available to us at that time.”

Later that same day, in a CBC interview with David Cochrane, he said, “the amount of information available was an ocean and we saw a very large lake.” Yet, after all that, the rapporteur exclaimed, “Nothing to see here, folks! Carry on. Canada is a picture of national security.”

My colleague Senator Plett asked Senator Gold in Question Period the day after that CBC interview, “. . . who chose the CSIS information that the rapporteur based his report on?” No answer was given, but we all know the answer. We know where the information came from. What an unmitigated disaster and waste of time and taxpayer money, and what a sham. Canadians deserve better.

The bottom line is that Justin Trudeau is the one person holding the power to come clean with Canadians about foreign interference, whether it be in our elections or our Parliament, through security information he’s gathered. The various institutions that we know are porous are being infiltrated by regimes that do not respect democracy, freedom, the rule of law and human rights. He talks about the importance of Canadians having confidence in our ability to defend our democratic institutions. He uses that as an excuse to not disclose the names of parliamentarians implicated in the NSICOP report. In fact, his lack of transparency and lack of forthrightness is having the opposite effect, colleagues. When a cloud of suspicion is left hanging over the head of every parliamentarian, how can Canadians have any faith in us or in our institutions?

I understand the consequences that must be considered when disclosing these names, both when considering the sources who provided information to our intelligence agencies and regarding the principles of due process. Where was that concern for protection of sources and due process when the Prime Minister stood up in the House of Commons last year and, out of nowhere and without offering any evidence, accused the government of India of being involved in the killing of a British Columbia man last June? All he gave Canadians was, “Trust me. I have seen it, and I believe it.”

As for the work of NSICOP, this committee of parliamentarians has provided three reports to the Prime Minister outlining concerns about foreign interference. Similarly, CSIS has provided several reports regarding foreign interference with recommendations to safeguard against similar meddling. Those briefings and reports from NSICOP go back to 2018. That’s six years ago, and only now are we getting around to legislation that deals with it. Like everything else with this government, they do it fast and they do it hastily — because they only had nine years to think about it. That’s not something of which we should be proud, Senator Gold. This is not a valuable use of the skill sets and the goodwill that parliamentarians, and especially senators, have. In the case of this government, that doesn’t sound like someone eager to lead the fight against foreign interference.

Despite Justin Trudeau’s revisionist history — as recently as this weekend, he told the media that he did things the Harper government fought against — the truth is that the first thing this current government did when they took office was to repeal a previous government’s foreign interference legislation, Bill C-51. It was the first step. Red flags were raised in 2013 and 2014. Bill C-51 was that first step in 2015 to start strengthening our national security laws, and it was a precursor of what would eventually become the foreign registry.

I’ll tell you what happened, colleagues. The first thing the government did when they came into power was to repeal the bill. They revamped it, repealed it and took the teeth out of it in a bill called Bill C-59. Go read it for yourself. Go read Bill C-51, and then go read the revamped Bill C-59. Senator Gold was the sponsor of that bill. That was the first thing the government did. Then they spent the next nine years doing everything they could to further fight Conservative attempts to combat foreign interference and transnational repression, including lobbing accusations of racism and bigotry against us and Liberal MPs even taking part gleefully in disinformation and conspiracy theories online.

The only reason we’re here today with this legislation before us is due to the government exhausting every avenue available to avoid getting to this point. They ragged the puck in ways that we have never seen before, basically trying to prevent the foreign registry from coming into place. Now, of course, I’m not even sure we’ll get this foreign registry into place, because the truth of the matter is that I don’t share Senator Dean’s enthusiasm. I’m somewhat skeptical of the bureaucracy being capable enough in 12 months to have it in place before the next election. That is the concern of most parliamentarians who will face the Canadian public in the next general election — those of us who want to have a fair election and an election that isn’t tampered with by foreign entities. I hope, somehow, there’s goodwill on the part of the government and the bureaucrats to have it in place.

I will support this legislation, colleagues, even though it has been put into place hastily and has been facing delay after delay. We all know, at the end of the day, that the government rushed to put this out after Justice Hogue had a scathing preliminary report about the foot dragging of this government when it dealt with foreign interference. Like everything else they do, they rushed quickly to get this out the door to make it look like they’ve done something and put something in place before the next election.

It’s still better than the alternative. I still believe this piece of legislation is just the first step. I’m confident the next government that will come into place will take national security and foreign interference seriously and will add all the subsequent measures this bill requires, including giving tools and resources to the RCMP and to CSIS to make sure there can be cross-communication between our police agencies in this country in order to combat the serious threat to our democracy and, more importantly, the serious threat to the Canadian people.

I became interested in foreign interference many years ago for one simple reason. Canadians of Cuban descent came to my office. I had Hong Kongers and Canadians of Chinese and Persian descent. They came into my office one after another, giving me horrid stories of intimidation and threats from foreign governments toward Canadian citizens. This is what foreign interference is all about: It’s about regimes — like China, Iran, Cuba, Russia and Türkiye — that believe they can intimidate people in their homelands and, unfortunately, they can, and there are limited things we can do. However, when these nations come onto our soil and go after Canadians just because they happen to originate from those countries and intimidate them and their families to the benefit of these rogue dictatorships, then there’s a serious problem.

I don’t care who the Prime Minister is or who the government is. This is not about politics. This is about the essence of our Canadian citizenship and what has brought us all to this country. I’ve said this a thousand times: We’re all immigrants to Canada, and we all come here for freedom, democracy and rule of law. That’s what we hear: It’s for fundamental human rights. We as parliamentarians should fight for that above all else at all costs.

Thank you colleagues. I support this bill, and let’s make it pass as soon as possible.

Hon. Marilou McPhedran: I wonder if Senator Housakos would take a question.