SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Caucus Chair

Alistair MacGregor

  • Member of Parliament
  • Caucus Chair
  • NDP
  • Cowichan—Malahat—Langford
  • British Columbia
  • Voting Attendance: 62%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $140,733.69

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 320 - May/29/24
Mr. Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, NDP)
  • May/29/24 4:50:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to let the minister know that the NDP will be supporting the bill at second reading. In fact, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security unanimously agreed to start a prestudy of the bill tomorrow morning because we do want to get important work under way. I want to note a couple of things. First, the amendments to the CSIS Act, especially with respect to the dataset regime, follow a fairly scathing National Security and Intelligence Review Agency report that had found that CSIS had repeatedly breached the statutory authorities given to it with respect to handling datasets. Therefore, again, it is good to see legislation bringing analog laws up to speed in a digital age. Second, I totally agree that foreign interference is very real. In fact, it has affected members of our caucus. That is publicly known and is something that we have to watch out for not only at the federal level but also at the provincial level and, indeed, at the municipal and indigenous levels. Creating a registry is one thing, but I can only surmise that in Canada, as elsewhere in the world, there are serious clandestine efforts under way to do this kind of interference. I know that the actors are not going to be paying attention to a registry. Under existing laws, what success has Canada had, both in terms of charges and convictions against actors who are going to completely ignore this type of registry? We want to make sure that we are being effective on the whole spectrum of dealing with the problem.
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