John McKay

[Business of Supply, May 29th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, if possible, I would appreciate it if my vote in the first vote could be recorded as nay as opposed to yes.

[Committees of the House, May 12th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the fourth report of the Standing Committee on National Defence, entitled “Main Estimates 2023-24: Vote 1 under Communications Security Establishment, Votes 1, 5, 10 and 15 under Department of National Defence, Vote 1 under Military Grievances External Review Committee, Vote 1 under Military Police Complaints Commission, Vote 1 under Office of the Intelligence Commissioner”.

[Privilege, May 8th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, as the hon. member from Newfoundland would know, if someone is in uncharted waters and hits a rock, there are pretty serious consequences. I think this is an opportunity for Canadians to weigh in on debate. I think it should be part of a larger discourse on what our response should be.

The ministers are right to point out that every action will have an equal and opposite reaction, with consequences to whatever decision is made. As long as we know what the consequences are and are prepared to deal with those consequences, we can move forward as a nation.

[Privilege, May 8th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I look forward to the report of the Hon. David Johnston sooner rather than later, frankly. I hope that he will at least put a report in the public domain that we can debate. I am going to work on the assumption that it will be a fulsome report. The government has committed itself to responding fully to the recommendation or recommendations. Whatever they are, they will be adopted, but whether that in turn will mean something like a full-blown public inquiry, I do not know. I do think there is utility in moving the debate off the floor of the House into the wider public so that Canadians can come to grips with the existential threat that is the People's Republic of China.

[Privilege, May 8th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, there is nothing like an existential threat to focus the mind. In Taiwan that is very true. It is under constant intimidation, with a million cyber-attacks a day. When we arrived, the PRC brought its greeting party with warplanes and warships, so they live in a different threat environment than we do.

Having gone to Taiwan for a number of times over the last 20 years, I know that the nature of the threat of the PRC to Taiwan was not entirely unanimous. A number of years ago, President Ma was much more friendly with the Chinese government and had even gone to China just before we arrived.

As for us, I think we do not realize the threat. We have not quite figured this thing out, and we have the luxury of partisanship, which I do not think we will always have.

[Privilege, May 8th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, we did not actually vote on the Speaker's ruling. The Speaker made his own ruling on a motion presented by the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. There is a conflation of issues here. What we did vote on was a motion put forward by the Conservative Party, and that was successfully passed. I want to clarify that particular point.

[Privilege, May 8th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, the short answer is that I do not know the answer to the hon. member's question. I am working on the assumption that the facts underlying his question are correct: that the information was available to the appropriate government authorities in a timely sort of way and the information was not communicated to the member in question. I have no basis for disputing those facts.

I also was not there. I was not there to make that judgment. I do know some of the people who would be involved in making that judgment, and I have nothing but respect for their decision. However, it seems me that on the floor of the House of Commons, it is inappropriate for me to speculate on why the inaction taken was not moved on, in hindsight, a lot more quickly.

I would widen the conversation a bit to ask a question that I think members should be asking: Why does China have so many diplomats in this country? I know we have an important trading relationship and important relationship with China, but there does seem to be an extraordinary number of diplomats who have no obvious reason for being here. I think members should be asking that question.

[Privilege, May 8th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I have been sitting here listening to the debate, wondering what I could contribute that would be useful. I do want to express my profound sympathy to the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. This should not happen to any of us and I identify completely with the difficulties in which he finds himself.

I hope that is true of all 338 of us, that we can readily realize how any one of us could be in this situation. I want to make that point abundantly clear, that I was not sitting here because I did not want to participate in the debate, by virtue of not being interested in the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, but that I wanted to contribute something useful.

I had the opportunity to read the Speaker's ruling, while other members were debating, which is what is before us this afternoon. May I say that it is a thoughtful ruling. I agree with his analysis and I agree with his conclusion. He has made a prima facie conclusion that there is something here. That is what prima facie means. It means “on the face of it”. On the face of it, there is something to be addressed here and he made the proper ruling that it be referred to the procedure and House affairs committee.

That is the debate. He made it on three points.

The first point was whether there was intimidation or the appearance of intimidation. He does make the argument, which I think is critical, that he is not making a conclusion of fact, as a judge would. He is simply saying that on the face of it, there appears to be intimidation. He is not, however, concluding that there was intimidation.

On the material that was in front of him, it is clear that there is a case to be made for intimidation and he made the correct ruling on that. He then went on to talk about the timeliness of the report by the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. The events did occur two years ago or appear to have occurred two years ago but only came to the attention of the member recently, by virtue of newspaper reports.

It is a well-settled principle in criminal law and elsewhere that the clock only starts ticking when one becomes aware of the alleged offence. I think the member rightly brought it to the House's attention in as timely a fashion as it could have been brought and the Speaker therefore ruled that it was timely.

The third ruling was whether it was corroborated or uncorroborated, which is an interesting argument. When the PRC and its many minions here in this country carry on what nasty, dastardly things they do here, the nature of the beast is that it is very difficult to corroborate it.

It is not as if they write it out, saying that they are now intimidating member of Parliament X, Y or Z. They operate in the shadows. They operate these police stations where they try to intimidate diaspora members. They operate in universities with Confucius Institutes, where they are try to influence or intimidate students from China, primarily, who are studying here in Canada.

Of course, they run these operations, by definition, in a way in which the evidence, such as it is, or even the information cannot be corroborated. Again, I think the Speaker made the correct ruling, that, yes, it is a newspaper report and, yes, there is a lot of back and forth between what the government knew or should have known or did know or did not know.

However, on the face of it there is a case to be made that should be properly made in front of PROC, which I hope will weigh in on this.

I think there is also a larger issue to be addressed here, which is that we are in a new environment. As members know, I have been around here for a few years and like to think I have seen a few things, but I cannot say that I have ever seen anything quite like this before.

I know some of us receive briefings about threats, not so much intimidation, but that there might be activities that would affect us. That is becoming abundantly clear. I am not sure that we have really figured out how to react. We operate in an open society that runs on the basis that we trust each other, that we have a shared understanding of the facts and information in the public discourse, and that we respect each other even if we profoundly disagree with each other. That is anathema to the PRC and other dictatorial regimes. However, when we are attacked on those core issues, we have difficulty reacting. I think for many years we have not had to worry about the threat we are facing with the rise of misinformation and disinformation, and it is a threat to our very way of life and doing things.

I have shared with the House before the fact that we were in Taiwan a few weeks ago. We visited quite a number of individuals, but clearly one of the most impressive was its minister of cybersecurity. It has a million attacks a day and does not leave anything to chance, so there are generally triple levels of protection in order to be able to keep the core infrastructure of the nation safe. It does not matter whether it is with respect to the military, security, finances or economics, that is expected.

The other person who was very impressive is with an NGO that is expected to respond to misinformation and disinformation. In Taiwan, the standard response time is expected to be two hours. In fact, it is one hour. It is really quite impressive as to how it responds to that level of misinformation and disinformation. That includes bots and all of the ways in which these massive numbers of attacks produce information that appear to be true, may be true, could be true, but is not true. These NGOs respond in a very timely way to I think keep the level of discourse on the matter of truth as opposed to misinformation and disinformation, which is just generally sidebar truth.

While in my opinion this motion is to be supported, I hope that PROC gets to it quickly. It was a well-founded and reasoned approach by the Speaker. It does occur in the larger context that there is not a person in this chamber who knows what we are facing. We are somewhat in the dark on all kinds of issues. I think we should bring to this larger conversation a huge dose of humility, because it is a profound and existential threat we are facing and we need to be united in how we face it.

I will conclude by saying that I am pleased with the Speaker's ruling. It is an appropriate ruling. There is a prima facie case to be made, and I look forward to the report of the procedure and House affairs committee.

[Results Canada, May 8th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, in 2007, I joined Results Canada on a delegation to Kenya, which was far from being a junket; rather, it was a slum tour. Nairobi has some of the biggest slums in the world. What I remember most is the smell of open sewers and the chronic overcrowding.

Results Canada is a grassroots NGO, composed of volunteers who are dedicated to reducing poverty and advancing human rights. Today we are joined in Ottawa by volunteers from Results Canada, including constituents from Scarborough—Guildwood, who have come to Ottawa as part of the national conference of game-changers for achieving the global goals by 2030.

Please join me in thanking all the Results Canada volunteers today, the real game-changers, who would like to end extreme poverty.

[Business of Supply, May 4th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I appreciated the hon. member's contribution to our delegation in Taiwan.

The short answer is that I do not know how to answer the question. I know that is strange in this place. Everybody answers the questions and even answers questions that are not asked.

It is kind of trite, but true. We are at a bit of an inflection point on how to move forward democratically. I was asked by the press yesterday how I would conduct a future election and I now have to think about that. I now have to think about who is supporting me, who is contributing—