Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 20th, 2023

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I'm going to let my colleague speak. I would ask you to put my name back on the list.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

You don't want us to hold a vote on that motion.

Is that correct?

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I can't vote right now. There are a lot of points that I'd like to clarify. I'm being rushed, but we need to understand each other. I don't know whether my colleagues have read what I saw on the Réseau d'information, on RDI, but they're talking about a possible agreement by Friday.

What have we understood? What do we have to do?

Someone has to step up and start acting.

How can I vote when there may possibly be an agreement.

We've been working on this for four months, since November 7.

Madam Chair, if my colleagues come and push and shove me around, I'd like them to look me straight in the eye and tell me they're proud of what's happening. We're coming to the end of the session, and we're dragging things out right to the end. I think we're just laughing at our constituents.

The voters are watching us, Madam Chair. Just look at the social media of every one of us. People asked me on the weekend if I had stopped repeating the same thing all the time because I've been asking questions during question period for four months. I told them I thought it would take an eternity to understand anything here.

If you push me to vote, I'll keep giving away my speaking time. That's not systematic obstruction. It's because we have to take the time. We've been examining this affair for four months.

We'll be back here this evening.

I'll turn the floor over to my colleague, and I'd like you to put my name back on the list.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you, Ms. Gaudreau.

Go ahead, Mr. Berthold.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I have a number of things to say. First, I want to thank my colleague Michael Cooper for working with his team on a motion to enable us to get to the bottom of things and to act on the request that the House of Commons has submitted to us to consider Michael Chong's question of privilege. It's important to recall certain parts of that motion in French, Madam Chair, to be certain that the people watching us, as Ms. Gaudreau said, know where we stand in our investigation into foreign interference.

However, first I would like to recall a few facts regarding the special rapporteur, who resigned after all the opposition parties called for his resignation in the House of Commons. Some witnesses strongly challenged some of the findings in his report. He was unable to convince Canadians that the government was doing everything in its power to prevent the interference by the Beijing regime in the next election, which will be held we do not know when. It's important to remember as well that, since we have a minority government, an election could be called at any moment.

Point (a) of my colleague's motion is very important. It requests that we expand the scope of the study we're conducting on the intimidation campaign being conducted against Michael Chong and other MPs, and in particular to include the situation raised in the House of Commons by the Hon. Erin O'Toole on Tuesday, May 30. We can't overlook that because Mr. O'Toole was one of the first members to be briefed directly by CSIS on what had happened to him. He is the first MP to have received a full briefing.

Here in the committee, we’ve heard the comments of experts from CSIS and other national security experts. They explained to us what kind of information was circulating at CSIS. There was raw intelligence, more detailed intelligence and analyzed intelligence. What we understood from Mr. O'Toole's testimony is that he had unrestricted access to all the information. He subsequently took great care in the House of Commons to provide a summary of the information that he had received, voluntarily withholding certain information that he thought might have undermined national security and the protection of the members of the House of Commons. He therefore acted appropriately in so doing. His speech was acknowledged by many analysts, and I must tell you that Mr. O'Toole has a lot to tell the committee.

We can't continue this study without hearing from Mr. O'Toole for at least two hours, particularly since the Speaker of the House, pursuant to the question of privilege raised by Mr. O'Toole concerning the fact that he had been targeted by the Beijing regime, included the questions raised by Mr. O'Toole in the study we're conducting. The same is true of NDP member Ms. Kwan. She didn't want to make this a question of privilege, but she would've had the right to do so. The Speaker would likely have referred her question of privilege to the committee as well.

Madame Chair, it is essential that the committee officially expand the scope of its study to include the matters raised in the House by the Hon. Erin O'Toole on Tuesday, May 30. That testimony, incidentally, was cited at length by Mr. Cooper in his testimony today.

Mr. O'Toole's testimony will provide many answers to our questions, and it's extremely important that the committee note that fact.

Second, it is requested that the committee continue holding meetings over the summer period. Why? Because foreign agents don't take vacations. They will continue to adapt and change their methods until Canada has passed stronger legislation to prevent the Beijing regime from intervening in our elections.

How can we explain to Canadians that we want to take a break when those watching us expect us to shed light on Beijing's interference in our democratic system, in our 2019 in 2021 elections, and likely in future elections. We could tell them we're going to take a two-month break, stop asking anybody any questions, happily stay at home and wait for it all to blow over, but that won't get the job done. That won't happen until we can shed light on the situation and the Prime Minister decides to open an independent public inquiry.

Right now, our committee is the only public space where people can come and testify to what they know about the Beijing regime's interference in our elections. Nowhere else can people do that. The two committees that deal with national security, the names of which have been abundantly cited since the committee started this study, are holding their meetings in private, in camera. If it weren't for the revelations made by journalists and this committee, which has made it possible for the testimony of witnesses to be heard and to shed light on the situation, we wouldn't know what's happening or how to move forward.

Without this committee and without journalists, a diplomat who intimidated an MP wouldn't have been expelled. The Beijing regime's police stations established and operating on Canadian soil probably wouldn't have been shut down or disrupted. This situation isn't absolutely clear, however. Some police stations are still open, but no Beijing police activities are under way. It's not clear. This is one of those situations that absolutely must be investigated further. Without this committee, there would have been no special rapporteur, but one was appointed because the Prime Minister wanted the situation to remain concealed for as long as possible. We wonder why. Why make every effort to prevent Canadians from learning the whole truth about foreign interference in our elections?

These meetings would be held from July 4 to September 8, and it is requested that there be at least eight of them. The idea isn't to hold meetings all summer. Canadians won't criticize us if we hold eight committee meetings over the summer to continue hearing testimony on foreign interference. Some important persons would be among the witnesses. I've obviously mentioned the Hon. Erin O'Toole, but we'll have to hear once again from Dominic LeBlanc, whom the Prime Minister made responsible for establishing a process for next steps in view of the resignation of the special rapporteur, who wasn't that independent. That may lead to an independent public inquiry, but we don't exactly know when that will happen.

Incidentally, I would note that the leader of the official opposition reminded the government today that we're prepared to discuss the mandate of that inquiry and to assist in appointing a commissioner. The one basic step that must be taken is for the Prime Minister to clearly announce that an independent public inquiry is being held. After that, the opposition will move quickly to propose a mandate and names of potential commissioners. Then we can move forward and truly begin getting to the bottom of things.

That's all we're asking. The idea here isn't to give Mr. LeBlanc a mandate to come up with a process that may perhaps, eventually, lead to an independent public inquiry if the Prime Minister doesn't think it's too damaging for him. We have to remove politics from the entire process. The official opposition is prepared to do that. We're ready to cooperate. We want to go to work on developing the mandate of an independent public inquiry.

We want to help and support the eventual commissioner who will have to shed light on the entire situation. However, before submitting names, ideas for mandates and examples of what we could do, we want the Prime Minister to commit clearly and firmly to holding an independent public inquiry.

That's why we have to hear from Mr. LeBlanc, but he's slow in answering us. We don't know where he's headed. We want Mr. LeBlanc to come and tell us exactly what he has in mind and why no independent public inquiry has yet been announced. What's he so anxious to hide?

Many people whose names are on the list of people we want to see appear before the committee so we can find out what happened to CSIS's memoranda have been mentioned either by the witnesses or in the newspaper articles.

We've learned that there are several types of notes. Some are used to transmit information and others state that they must absolutely be sent to ministers. I believe those are internal management memos. I don't exactly remember what they're called.

We're learning a lot about intelligence and national security, but it's always superficial information. These memos are expressly designed to draw the attention of cabinet members, officials and ministers.

Two, three, five or six of those memos are sent every week at most. There aren't thousands of them. But how did they get lost down black holes?

How is it that no one in the Office of the Prime Minister or the office of the Minister of Public Safety was alerted by those memos?

There's also the secure email system that Mr. Johnston talked about, which none of the witnesses who work in the national security field seem to be aware of, judging by the way the special rapporteur describes it, the way Mr. Blair understands it and the way it's presented by the CSIS people.

So it's important that we hear testimony from these people from the Department of Foreign Affairs, the national security advisors, the deputy ministers who were in those positions at Public Safety at the time and deputy secretaries to the cabinet, primarily Zita Astravas, chief of staff of the President of the King's Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Emergency Preparedness, who appears to have played a role in this entire process.

It's important that we not wait until the fall to hear from these people. We have to do it as soon as possible. I think the public expects that.

We've also learned that, although the special rapporteur says he wrote his report himself, he was actually assisted by consulting firms, particularly in questioning witnesses. We have noted that a large part of the report must have been written by outside consultants because, when the special rapporteur testified before us, he often seemed not to understand his own words when he consulted his report.

To my great disappointment, the representatives of those firms that unfortunately assisted in drafting the special rapporteur's report, may have been more numerous than we thought. So we need to know what they told and advised the special rapporteur regarding the drafting of his report.

We also need to hear from the representatives of the firm that represented one of the individuals targeted by the investigation of the special rapporteur. We also need to hear from Don Guy and Brian Topp, the founding partners of GT&co, and other volunteer advisors, it would appear. We'll see if the motion that we introduced for the production of documents can make its way through the process.

Following all these revelations, we've learned that CSIS apparently provided the Department of Foreign Affairs with a list of names of diplomats that it could consider expelling because they were apparently Beijing regime diplomats who were still conducting foreign interference activities in Canada.

We know that the department has a list, but we don't know what it has done with it or what the minister did with it. We are very proud to say that we've expelled a diplomat, but it took months to do it. The revelations had to be published in the newspapers and the committee had to conduct studies. What happened to that list? What does the Minister of Foreign Affairs know about it? It's important that she testify before the committee again. She was silent about the list the first time she testified. Did she have it or not at the time of her testimony? I think it's important that you provide the committee with an explanation.

I think it would obviously be worthwhile to re-invite Cong Peiwu, ambassador of the People's Republic of China, to testify for two hours. If he's open to the idea of coming and candidly answering questions from committee members, I'm certain the members of all parties will have good questions for him. We would like the meeting to be two hours long, the minimum length that the committee must schedule for such a meeting.

In addition, the testimony of Sheila Block, legal advisor to the special rapporteur, and Valérie Gervais, communications officer, is essential for the committee to understand the process that the government has put in place since all these revelations were made.

Why did the special rapporteur, who stuck to his report, who stood by it and who said he would stay on in his position until the end—I remember that his comments on that were quite clear—ultimately decide to resign? He said he was resigning, but he's still in the position. He wants to resign, but not right away. He resigned, but he wants to write a report.

How much credibility can we assign to that report if the special rapporteur isn't credible in the eyes of the House of Commons, the opposition parties and Canadians? All that does is give $1,200 to $1,700 a day to a special rapporteur so he can continue drafting a report containing findings that no one wants to read.

Mr. Blair must come and explain to us his department's various accounts regarding the memo that was transmitted. That memo, which was drafted by CSIS, was for the minister's eyes only, but he didn't see it. Was it wilful blindness on the part of the minister or his office? I don't know, but I think it's important to find out.

Consequently, it's important that we meet this summer to hear the testimony of all these witnesses.

I also have much to say about the information that has not been made available to the committee since the start of our study. I'm referring to the documents.

A motion has been introduced, but debate thereon was adjourned. The motion sought the production of documents. Those documents will be essential in giving the committee a clear view of the Beijing regime's interference in Canadian elections. Unfortunately, every request we make for documents is met with resistance. I don't know why the Liberal Party and the NDP are reluctant to allow the committee to examine certain documents, even though it's done under the supervision of the law clerk of the House of Commons, who informed the committee that he was authorized to see documents of that nature which would be provided to him should the motion be adopted.

These reports are important, and the committee must be able to form its own idea of them. Today, my Liberal Party colleagues doubted the veracity of the articles published by Samuel Cooper based on those documents. A portion of the documents was released after we filed an initial request for production of documents, but they were extensively redacted. All things considered, however, they appear to be consistent with reality in most instances. A diplomat was expelled following those revelations; that's not nothing. Those documents contain important information, and that information must be transmitted to us.

As you've seen, my colleague Michael Cooper was very cautious with the motion. He made sure that intelligence that, if disclosed, could undermine national security and our relations with our allies, that is to say, the other countries of the Group of Five, or any other information of a sensitive nature that might come from other countries, was protected to preserve the relationship of trust that we have with those countries in the area of intelligence gathering.

I think the motion is very well drafted. It explains the procedure for us parliamentarians and Canadians to access information that may be made public. At the same time, we must also have access to information that must not be made public but that could be seen by MPs and members of this committee. It very clearly describes the process of a meeting in which documents could be printed for MPs in a cell phone-free room, in camera, accompanied solely by the personnel required. It would not be possible to annotate the documents, and they would subsequently have to be returned to the clerk to ensure confidentiality. All other documents that, if disclosed, could jeopardize national security will be redacted. Information that we do not need to know for the purposes of our study would not be transmitted or provided to MPs.

That's the reality. That's the beauty of the motion introduced by my colleague. It's why we were very cautious. I think this motion for the production of documents should be supported by all parties because we've listened to what the law clerk of the House told us when he came here to explain how we would have to proceed so that he could see the documents. Based on that, we drafted a motion that I'm sure will address all the concerns that committee members may have about the importance of protecting secrets. That's why we have access to the information, Madam Chair.

I want to say one thing in conclusion. The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs has a very important role to play. We offer a path. We offer a way to carry out our mandate to avoid having to hold committee meetings throughout the summer and to avoid having to hold them in accordance with Standing Order 106(4), Madam Chair. We don't want that. We want clear and precise planning.

My time is up, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Monsieur Berthold, the clerk has just confirmed that we don't have the resources.

Because of that, we'll see you all at 6:30 tonight.

I'm adjourning this meeting.