So V ote

Jun/10/24 12:29:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, trust is the ultimate goal. Trust means not having to prove anything. How can trust be restored? There are several ways. Obtaining a security clearance is one way. The committee that was set up to deal with the Winnipeg affair is another. That all-party work produced all kinds of results. I think there are a few ways. It is up to us to make the right choices.

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Jun/10/24 12:25:55 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-70

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Laurentides—Labelle for raising this matter. Last week's special report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians followed the testimony given by many witnesses at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security and the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, as well as numerous other reports. Communication was identified as a problem, along with siloing. Bill C-70 seeks to solve part of this problem, but we will study that tomorrow. For now, I feel we should allow a culture of intelligence sharing, but above all, we should develop a culture of protecting ourselves and realizing that interference exists in 2024, that it is already here and that, whether we like it or not, it is spreading. I am in complete agreement with my colleague. I hope this type of procedure can be put in place.

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Jun/10/24 12:23:51 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-70

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague. We had the opportunity to work together to examine Bill C-70 in depth. His comments were always insightful. At this time, we know that the NDP leader has gotten security clearance, that the Prime Minister has automatically received the information and the leader of the Bloc Québécois is completing the process to receive security clearance. Of course the Conservative Party does not want to do so. I like my colleague's expression, when he talks about a veil of ignorance. It reminds me of my studies in philosophy with John Rawls. I think that we cannot afford not to push together. I repeat, interference has no political stripe. It is a real threat. It is financial, it is democratic. It is steamrolling everyone. Parliaments all over the world are interested in foreign interference. Last week, a law was passed unanimously in the European community. I think we cannot be against it. If we are against, I have serious doubts and I have a problem with that.

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Context: House Hansard - 309 - May/6/24

Jun/10/24 12:20:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague opposite for that very relevant question. I said it, and my colleague said it: Foreign interference has no allegiance, no political stripe. It affects everyone. The offer to get the clearance necessary to see the documents ought to be taken up and is worth following up on. People will be able to find out for themselves, within their own party, whether there is anything there or not. Of course, they will not be able to reveal the content of the report, that is clear. Still, it is worth considering. Yes, any political party leader who respects Parliament should request that security clearance.

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Context: House Hansard - 299 - Apr/15/24

May/6/24 11:30:40 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will keep the public interest in mind while making my remarks rather than uttering sentences in the future tense about some potential future government. No one can be against virtue. This is hardly a new idea. In fact, the greatest philosopher ever, Socrates, once said that “no one knowingly does evil”. Let us bear that in mind. This morning we are studying Motion No. 112, which deals with interference and violence. The motion is divided into three parts, which I will summarize to ensure that our arguments are placed in the proper context. The first section moves that the House of Commons recognize that “Canada takes global security very seriously.” As we know, Canada is part of the Five Eyes. Canada is maybe the fifth and a half country, but it is nevertheless a member of the Five Eyes and, as such, it receives and provides information on the national security of member states. In recent years, questions can certainly be asked about the effectiveness of this, because it seems that when it comes to interference, we have not reacted in a very timely way. Nevertheless, there is a desire to see Canada take global security seriously. The motion also discusses the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in a place of worship on Canadian soil. This is an example of threats and interference by a country. India, Iran, Russia, China and many others are recognized for their practice of interfering in some way or another in the affairs of numerous states. The motion goes on to say that “the government should immediately review its measures that hold to account any person or agents of a foreign state undermining democratic institutions, engaging in acts of violence, or violating human or international rights, in order to bar these persons from entering Canada, and report to the House”. No one is against virtue. Reading Motion No. 112 made me smile a bit, I have to say. The motion—and it is a good motion—calls on the government to play the role it should have been playing. There should be no need for Motion No. 112 because these measures should already be in place. In concrete terms, Motion No. 112 talks about reviewing the measures Canada takes to hold to account foreign agents seeking to undermine democracy. No one can be against that. When it comes to ignoring measures, the government is number one. We have only to think of the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, the incidents involving Chinese interference, the incidents during the election that Justice Hogue commented on last week and the harassment of certain members of the diaspora. It seems to me that we should have started demanding accountability a long time ago. When we talk about accountability, we have to differentiate between matters of influence and matters of interference. Influence is leading someone to come on side of their own accord. Interference is meddling in someone’s affairs. We know that, since 2015-16, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service warned the government on a few occasions that there were risks or information that had to be taken into account. We know that in November 2020, the House of Commons adopted a motion to create a foreign agent registry, but that has still not happened. Actually, last November, I proposed introducing a bill to create such a registry, which would have some teeth and a very broad scope, but so far we have not seen anything. It has not yet happened. The interference issue, however, has been known for a long time. We could say that the government had a slightly naive view of China and was a bit complacent toward that country. Indeed, in all these years they have not done much, other than denying the bill or attempting to dodge the issue. This struck me in the case of the Winnipeg laboratory. Six hundred pages of the report were redacted, and now the equivalent of about 14 remain. That is certainly cause for concern. The same goes for the federal election. They said that nothing happened, but they realized that something perhaps did happen in the case of the member for Don Valley North and the former Conservative member for Steveston—Richmond East. In fact, it is interesting, because, although this report says there was interference, it also says there was no impact on the outcome of the election and that the same party would have come to power. However, it might not have been the same member sitting in the same place. It is important to realize that. These types of missed opportunities include the 2023 Rosenberg report. There was an investigation into interference and the Trudeau Foundation. It is funny that just 23 out of the 23,000 words in the report referred to interference or to China. Here again, this looks like a missed opportunity or an attempt to dodge the issue. In the case of the Trudeau Foundation, cheques were written in Mandarin, donations were reimbursed and the board of directors was a bungling mess; in short, this was a crisis. The Trudeau Foundation is not the government, let us be clear about that. However, there is a connection, and there is a need to rebuild trust. In a democracy, trust is key. Trust is the act of delegating one's future to someone else. That requires a relationship of trust. Otherwise it does not work. Morris Rosenberg filed his report. I was rather dissatisfied with it. After that, we figured there would be an independent special rapporteur appointed. We recognized Mr. Johnston’s capabilities. However, we challenged his independence. We did not approve. He said that there was nothing there and that there were documents that could not be made public because they were classified as secret or top secret. Pressure was applied to help us get to the bottom of things. In short, Mr. Johnston resigned. Then there was the Hogue commission, which promised transparency and did a thorough job. It recently tabled a report confirming foreign interference, with nuances, of course. It was only once it had lost the people’s trust that the government agreed to take action. That is not reassuring. It does not build public trust in the government, since Canadians do not know whether our elections are working, if the nomination system is working, or if—getting back to my initial point—everything was done to protect national security. Personally, I like Motion No. 112. However, I cannot say that the government was quick to take action. Rather, it tried to make us believe that the Prime Minister was doing something. Not doing anything is not exactly taking action. With a foreign policy that, in my opinion, is vague at best, and perhaps even naive, we cannot manage these incidents piecemeal. We need a coherent vision to be able to provide a coherent response. For now, we appear to respond only when we are forced to do so, on a case-by-case basis. I believe we need to think about the rogue states around us, because there is an increasing number of them, and see what we can do. Since it would be hard to be against virtue, the Bloc Québécois will support motion Motion No. 112, despite the fact that it is a timid measure at best.

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Context: House Hansard - 199 - May/17/23

Apr/15/24 11:32:52 a.m.
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Re: Bill C-377

Madam Speaker, the Conservative member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound is proposing that we examine Bill C-377. It is an important bill that requires serious consideration. The bill summary states the following, and I quote: This enactment amends the Parliament of Canada Act to specify that a member of the Senate or the House of Commons who applies for a secret security clearance from the Government of Canada is, for the purposes of the consideration of their application, deemed to need access to the information.... The whole issue of confidentiality is rather vague in the bill. Like my kind neighbour from Barrie—Innisfil, this morning, I received an email because I am a member of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. The committee had asked Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada for some information about TikTok because we are doing a study on that app. This morning, we got an email saying that it is none of our business. Come on. The question that has to be asked is whether parliamentarians, who have the privilege of obtaining information, should be able to get it. The answer is yes. Now, let us look at how that should be done, what the guidelines are and what could be done. What are we talking about here? If we want to define privacy, we are talking about a secret. What is a secret? A secret is what is not said. It is as simple as that. However, that includes things that we do not wish to say, things we cannot say and things we must not say. It can be a bit tricky. Everyone agrees that the government must be accountable. However, it cannot be the sole judge of what it is to be accountable for. The member who spoke earlier cited the example of the special committee that studied the documents concerning the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. I was part of this committee. It was a good initiative, but, quite frankly, we had to twist the government’s arm for nearly two years before this came about. Yes, it was a good choice, but there were many bumps in the road. The member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound wants to promote a bill aiming to rectify certain situations and to ask Parliament to act wisely when it comes to accountability. The topic of secrets is by no means new. According to Voltaire, “To say the secret of another is a betrayal, to say yours is a stupidity”. The current government seems to be taking a page from Voltaire. What is a secret? For the purposes of our discussion, it is the redacted portion. The French term for redaction, “caviardage”, dates back to the time of Nicholas I in Russia. At the time, it meant to conceal or remove. I am going to stay with the idea of conceal. To redact something is to conceal it. Over the years that I worked in the ethics field and the months that I spent on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, I came to realize that redaction is one thing, but preventive redaction is another. Preventive redaction is when something is excessively redacted just in case. That is problematic. According to an article that appeared in the spring 2022 edition of Foreign Affairs entitled “Keeping the Wrong Secrets”, the preference is to conceal more so as not to conceal too little. The article goes on to say that information that is kept secret often should not be. Certain information is treated like the Crown jewels, but at the same time we fail to even protect private data. This is all frustrating. The example cited in the article, which was positively ridiculous, had to do with a Christmas card that someone had redacted. Frankly, this makes no sense. The sheer number of “overredacted” documents is huge. At the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, historians have come to tell us they cannot learn anything about the Second World War because the information is classified “Top Secret.” There are things that will always remain secret, but I cannot believe that the entire body of government decisions concerning the Second World War must be off limits. When documents are needlessly redacted, we cannot attain wisdom, we cannot do as our good friend Socrates suggested, which is “know thyself”. If we do not know our own history, we cannot know ourselves as a population, as a people. There are things that must be kept secret, but for how long, for what purpose and from whom? These questions must be asked as part of the debate sparked by Bill C-377. That said, I understand that certain things, of an intimate, sacred, delicate or dangerous nature, must be kept secret forever. These are things we have always sought to keep secret. However, the bill does not deal with the intimate, sacred, delicate or dangerous. It deals with classified information. We know from experience that there is a confidential level, a secret level and a top secret level. There is also a “for Canadian eyes only” level for certain documents. We can see that classified documents are often classified at too high a level. This prevents people who should know from being able to know. Of course, many pieces of information marked “Top Secret” come from a foreign source, such as a member of the Group of Five, and making the information public could well harm that member. We have to be careful and use judgment. It takes judgment, but the Winnipeg report basically consisted of 600 redacted pages, pages that were redacted by the ad hoc committee. When we see 600 pages redacted under the pretext of national security and in the end there are only 13 or 14 pages left, then no wonder we have questions about the “overredacting” at issue, the “overclassification” or the excessive secrecy, if you will. Unfortunately, keeping too many secrets leads to mistrust. Not keeping enough secrets, of course, is unworkable. Too many secrets breed mistrust, and, in today's world, with its echo chambers and the conditioning created by some social media, this leads to defiance. We saw some of that defiance in the streets last winter in front of Parliament, but that is not the only form of defiance. Let me come back to Bill C‑377, a bill to provide access to documents under two conditions. First, individuals must pass a personnel security screening process. That makes sense. Second, they must need access to the information for the purposes of their work. Of course, it is easier to define the scope and parameters of that work for public officials than it is for parliamentarians. In the case of a parliamentarian, it may be more complicated, but it can still be done. As I said earlier, the government is accountable to Parliament for all of its activities. It should not have the right to decide on its own what needs to be kept secret from the get-go. That is a first recommendation. Bill C‑377 takes this into account by proposing subsection 13.1(1), as follows: A member of the Senate or the House of Commons who applies for a secret security clearance from the Government of Canada is, for the purposes of the consideration of their application, deemed to need access to the information.... The proposal is good, but let us just say that it seems an automatic approach that could go awry at times. Bill C-377 considers parliamentary privileges. It is a step forward, but it could be dangerous. One thing I do like about this bill is that the government will not be the sole judge of its own secrets. That is a very good thing. However, it does not mean that information should be handed over lock, stock, and barrel simply upon request. That could be dangerous. My colleague spoke earlier of the Winnipeg lab. I sat on the ad hoc committee that studied that issue, which was made up of parliamentarians from four parties. I will say again that the committee was struck as a result of a wild discussion. Nevertheless, we four parliamentarians were able to issue an opinion on the redaction in question and that opinion was submitted to three judges for arbitration. To my great surprise, their verdict was identical to that of the committee members. The document was released “unredacted”. There was no national security issue concerning that document. There was certainly some embarrassment, along with some shame and discomfort, but no national security issue. As La Rochefoucauld, another soul I greatly admire, said, everyone agrees that a secret must be inviolable, but we do not always agree on the nature and importance of the secret, and we consult only ourselves on what we should reveal or withhold. That is the dilemma here. The problem is that the government itself decides what should be kept secret. As a second recommendation, I propose that steps be taken to put an end to overclassification and preventive redaction. Redaction keeps us from knowing who we are and what happened, and it exacts a great cost in terms of maintaining the secrets in question. With Bill C‑377, we have an opportunity to initiate a discussion on the very concept of secrecy. That kind of reflection is healthy for democracy. It can only make parliamentarians more confident, while boosting Canadians' confidence in parliamentarians and government, which admittedly could really use it. Let us begin this reflection.

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Context: House Hansard - 169 - Mar/20/23

May/17/23 2:51:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Public Safety has issued a new directive to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, a directive that was so important that it had to be made public. It says, and I quote: “CSIS will seek, wherever possible...to ensure that parliamentarians are informed of threats...directed at them”. What does that mean? Should the directive not be telling CSIS that it always has to inform parliamentarians of any threat? What does “wherever possible” mean? Whose discretion is it up to? Are we talking about CSIS, the minister, or maybe my brother-in-law Luc? Who? Quite frankly, this directive is causing more confusion and concern than it is providing reassurance. Will the minister explain it clearly?

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Context: House Hansard - 169 - Mar/20/23

Mar/20/23 2:45:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if they want to know what independence looks like, they should be asking us. It would be easy to criticize Mr. Johnston's appointment as special rapporteur, but that would be letting the government off easy over its most significant ethical failure. CSIS is saying this is the greatest threat to national security, yet the government is choosing to cover it up. Seemingly unaware that foreign interference is spreading, it is choosing to buy time. To put it bluntly, there are only two possible conclusions to the special rapporteur's review. The first is to sweep the whole business under the rug, and the second is to propose an independent public inquiry, which is what everyone is asking for. Why not cut to the chase, be ethical for once and launch the inevitable inquiry?

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Context: House Hansard - 139 - Dec/1/22

Mar/20/23 2:44:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, China's interference is the greatest threat to democracy and national security. That was the blunt statement made by CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, last Friday. The government's response should, at the very least, be on par with CSIS' fears, yet appointing a special rapporteur without a mandate or timeline does not rise to that level. At best, this is a case of wasting time until the special rapporteur comes to the only appropriate answer. At the end of the day, there is only one answer, one transparent and non-partisan solution, for combatting foreign interference. Will the government finally launch a transparent and independent public inquiry?

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