Michael Chong

[Privilege, May 9th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I think that we need a full range of tools, which is what experts have been telling the government.

The government needs to implement a full range of tools to counter these foreign interference threat operations, and one of the tools that it needs to start using, which it is not very good at, is sunlight and transparency. The government needs to tell us and the public about foreign interference threats that it has derived from intelligence so that we are equipped with information to ensure that we become more resilient as a Parliament and more resilient as a society to counter the threats coming from authoritarian states.

[Privilege, May 9th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for all the work she has done on countering PRC foreign interference. It has been very constructive.

The member rightfully points out that Justice Hogue found that the PRC interfered in the 2019 and 2021 elections. That is incontrovertible. That is a finding of fact by Justice Hogue. She also concluded that the intelligence relating to the member for Don Valley North led to well-grounded suspicions that the PRC's interference could have impacted the individual who was elected in Don Valley North to this place. She said, “This is significant.”

She also concluded, with respect to the riding of Steveston—Richmond East, it is a reasonable possibility to conclude that the PRC's disinformation operations in Steveston—Richmond East “could have impacted the result in this riding.” Again, these are Justice Hogue's findings. They could have impacted the results in certain ridings. Much of it centres around disinformation operations.

As my hon. colleague stated earlier, we found out that the government did nothing about these disinformation operations in Steveston—Richmond East, but it jumped to attention when a Facebook post was made by the Buffalo Chronicle. A PCO official immediately called up Facebook, using the full weight and threat of the Government of Canada, to tell Facebook to take it down during the election. That shows us how uneven the playing field is with respect to the government's handling of foreign interference during the writ period.

[Privilege, May 9th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I believe that Justice Hogue's initial report is a good start. She will present a second report in December of this year. I will continue working with the commission to ensure that the second report is very strong and contains solid recommendations for building a national security system that will protect our democratic institutions.

I also agree that the government must act. The director of CSIS sounded the alarm in 2018 when he publicly announced that there was a national security problem here in Canada, specifically in relation to the People's Republic of China. That was six or seven years ago. The government dragged its feet over proposing a measure or taking action. As my hon. NDP colleague said, they took too long introducing a bill aimed at creating a registry of foreign agents.

A lot more needs to be done, and I think that the government needs to do these things.

[Privilege, May 9th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I think opposition parties in the House have been highly responsible in how we have handled the information on foreign interference threat activities that have come to our attention over the last two years.

When these stories broke, they did not break because the government informed members of the House or the House's committees about these foreign interference threat activities. They broke because they were printed on the front page of newspapers like The Globe and Mail.

When we received that information, which the rest of the general public received at the same time, we treated it in a highly non-partisan and responsible manner. In fact, I do not recall many questions in this House about Don Valley North or about Steveston—Richmond East over the course of the last year and a half, because we were not certain what the facts were. It was not until May 3, last week, when Justice Hogue released her initial report, Justice Hogue having found certain things in those ridings, that we began to raise questions, because she received the evidence and made findings based on her judicial judgment.

I think, in this whole matter, opposition parties have been highly responsible in how we have treated this information. I expect that we will be highly responsible going forward if this matter goes to the procedure and House affairs committee.

[Privilege, May 9th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, what we do in this place matters. This place is the only place at the federal level that is a democratic institution. This is Canada's democratic institution. The other place is not; it is appointed. The Prime Minister and his cabinet are not; they are appointed.

In Canada, we do not elect governments. We do not elect prime ministers. We elect a legislature, a single national legislature of 338 Canadians to sit here on behalf of Canadians to make decisions. The way we make decisions in this country, under our constitutional order, is not through the tip of a sword but through debate. It is through our words, and the words we use in this place influence the votes, which are votes on motions and bills that lead to decisions taken by Parliament.

Therefore, protecting members of Parliament in their execution of their duties, in the words they are freely allowed to use on the floor of the House and in the actions they take, whether it is in respect of legislation in front of the House, motions in front of the House or administrative matters, is incredibly important. Members should be free from interference, from coercion and from threats. That is why what is in front of us today is so very important, because what we do in this place matters. What we did in this place in 2020 and 2021 mattered.

On November 18, 2020, the House adopted a motion calling on the government to ban Huawei from our national core telecommunications network and also calling on the government to come forward with a robust plan to combat foreign interference. That motion ultimately put enough pressure on the government to make a belated decision to ban Huawei from our national telecommunications network.

Several months later, in early 2021, the House, on February 22, 2021, adopted a motion recognizing that the PRC's repression of some 12 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang province in western China constituted genocide under the 1948 genocide convention. That mattered, because what came out of that was coordinated action between the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada to impose sanctions on a number of individuals and one entity in Xinjiang in response to these gross human rights violations.

What we did mattered back then, and the PRC noticed. The PRC implemented a full-spectrum response against members of this House, some legitimate and some illegitimate. It pursued legitimate diplomatic action. It pursued legitimate counter-sanction action. That is not in question. What is in question is that it illegitimately violated international law and targeted members of this House.

Justice Hogue, as the previous member outlined, has outlined how the PRC interfered in the 2021 election. CSIS concluded clearly that the PRC interfered in the 2021 election, and Justice Hogue found exactly that in her initial report of May 3, last week.

The PRC also illegitimately targeted six members of this place, who have come forward on this point of privilege, and that is the question in front of us today.

These members were cyber-attacked by the PRC. Six members among 18 legislators in Canada were cyber-attacked by the PRC, and some of those 18 are members of the House, six in particular. They were attacked for being members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and simply attacked for doing their job in upholding the international rule of law and criticizing the PRC for its gross violations of international law, whether that is related to the genocide against the Uyghur people, which is a contravention of the 1948 genocide convention; whether it is the PRC's illegitimate and illegal crackdown in Hong Kong, a violation of the 1997 Sino-British Joint Declaration, which guaranteed Hong Kongers their rights and liberties for 50 years from 1997; whether it is the PRC's violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, where it is harassing other states, fishing vessels and other marine vessels in the South China Sea; or whether it is the PRC's violations of the trade system that has been established under WTO rules and the status it obtained in 2000 as a most-favoured nation, which it is obliged to uphold.

As a result of these six members of Parliament being targeted, our counter-intelligence agencies and the Five Eyes alliance started to take action. They started to monitor what was going on with APT31, a hacking group that is an organ of the state of the People's Republic of China, a hacking group that is run out of Hubei's State Security Department, which is an arm of the People's Republic of China's Ministry of State Security. It is a massive secret service state apparatus that is monitoring not only its own citizens in the PRC but citizens of countries abroad.

The FBI discovered this hack by APT31 in 2022, and it immediately passed it along to the Communications Security Establishment, part of the Government of Canada's national security apparatus. CSE, in turn, did its job. It passed the information along to parliamentary officials, and this is where the system broke down. While I have absolutely no doubt that the IT officials and personnel in the House of Commons administration did their job to ensure the integrity of our IT systems, that is not the question in front of us today. The question in front of us today is transparency. The question in front of us today is sunlight and transparency and why six members of this House who were targeted by the PRC through a cyber-attack were not informed at the time the Government of Canada became aware.

The government tells us all the time that we need to be situationally aware. We cannot be situationally aware if we are not armed with information. What the procedure and House affairs committee should be looking at, if this motion is adopted, is why these six members were not informed at the time when the CSE and parliamentary officials were made aware. That, ultimately, is not only the responsibility of the executive branch of government and the CSE, but also the responsibility of the Speaker and officials the Speaker is responsible for.

In the United States and the United Kingdom, elected members of national legislatures are regularly informed about foreign interference threat activities that are directed at them. That is a fact. That has not happened here in this case, and it has not happened in the past. The argument about security clearances in this place, that parliamentary officials knew about these attacks two years ago but could not tell members because they did not have security clearance, does not hold water.

Philippe Dufresne, the former law clerk and parliamentary council, gave a legal opinion to committees of this House on many occasions, indicating that section 18 of the Constitution Act, 1867, makes it clear that in this place, members of Parliament have an unfettered right for documents and information that is not restricted by anything else, not restricted by laws that have been adopted by this place or by whatever views the Government of Canada may hold on classified materials. Therefore, when parliamentary officials became aware of it, they should have informed these members.

I will finish by encouraging members of this House to vote for the motion so that the procedure and House affairs committee can take this matter up and ensure that in the future, when a Five Eyes intelligence agency notifies part of our national security establishment, whether it be the Communications Security Establishment, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Department of National Defence intelligence unit or any other part of the security establishment, that Canadian members of Parliament are being targeted by a foreign state or by non-state actors, those members are informed forthwith so that they can be situationally aware and protect themselves and their families against these hostile threats.

[Democratic Institutions, May 6th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I will tell the government what Justice Hogue concluded in Steveston—Richmond East. She found that “there are strong [indications] of PRC involvement and there is a reasonable possibility that these narratives could have impacted the result in this riding.” Again, the Prime Minister said, just several weeks ago, that in “every single constituency election...election integrity held and it was free and fair.”

Does the government agree with Justice Hogue that PRC interference could have impacted the election result in Steveston—Richmond East?

[Democratic Institutions, May 6th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, on April 11, the Prime Minister said that “it wasn't simply, an overall the election was free and fair”, but that in “every single constituency election...election integrity held and it was free and fair.”

Justice Hogue concluded otherwise. She concluded that well-grounded suspicions about PRC interference in Don Valley North “could...have impacted who was elected to Parliament. This is significant.”

Does the government agree with Justice Hogue that PRC interference could have impacted who was elected to Parliament in Don Valley North?

[Committees of the House, April 15th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to support concurrence of the 21st report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, a report that touches on the human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is a report that draws attention of these abuses to the government in the hope that the government would act. We are having this debate here in the House on this very issue in the aftermath of the Iranian regime's attack on the State of Israel this past weekend.

I think it is a timely debate for us to have. I hope members of the House will support concurrence of this report. It also allows us to draw attention to the gross human rights abuses and the violations of international law that the Iranian regime has been perpetrating in recent years. In particular, we need to draw attention to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is a key part of the state apparatus of the leaders in Tehran. It permeates its security apparatus internally in Iran and its military. It is an entity that we believe should be listed as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code of Canada.

Six years ago, in June 2018, the House adopted a motion calling on the Government of Canada to immediately list the IRGC as a terrorist entity. It has been six long years since the House adopted that motion, since members of the ministry of the government, including the Prime Minister, voted for that motion. However, here we are, six years later, and in the intervening years, the IRGC has continued to promulgate its ruthless and vicious campaign persecuting Iranians in Iran, including people such Nasrin Sotoudeh, an esteemed human rights advocate in Iran, and its campaign of destabilizing the region by attacking liberal democracies, such as the State of Israel. It also continues to attack Canadian interests here at home.

It was in January 2020, some four years ago, when the IRGC fired a missile at Ukrainian International Airlines flight 752, which killed dozens and dozens of Canadian citizens. Those families continue to mourn the loss of their loved ones to this day. They were people who held such promise in their future contributions to this country, whose lives will never be known and who will never be able to make a contribution to this country.

We have had these things happen over the last six years, yet the government continues to stubbornly refuse to take the leadership to list the organization as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code, despite the fact that the Prime Minister himself has called the IRGC a terrorist organization. Despite the fact that the government has labelled it as such, it still refuses to take the ministerial authority they are entrusted with under the Criminal Code to list the entity as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code.

The reason this is so very important is that it would allow FINTRAC and our other investigative bodies, such as the RCMP, our provincial police forces of jurisdiction, our CSIS intelligence analysts and operatives, who all work so hard to keep our country safe each and every day, to have another tool to prosecute the flows of money that are so often associated with the threats the IRGC presents, both to the people of Iran in that region and to Canadians here at home.

Iran is subject to vast sanctions regimes. That makes it very difficult for the Islamic Republic of Iran to get the cash it needs to operate. The flows of money that so often accompany the threats that we see, both here and in the region, are essential in cutting off the ability of the IRGC to function.

However, our security forces here in Canada, our intelligence agencies here in Canada and our police forces of jurisdiction have one hand tied behind their backs because they are not allowed to go after people in Canada who are helping the IRGC with flows of money, whether it is helping them clandestinely sell oil on the black market to fund the projects they want to fund or whether it is going to proxy agents of the IRGC who are operating here on Canadian soil and threatening Canadian citizens, doing so with resources they have clandestinely been provided with.

These are the reasons we need to list the IRGC as a terrorist entity. We are calling on the government to do exactly that in the context of the shooting down of Ukrainian International Airlines flight 752, in the context of the attack this past weekend by the IRGC on the State of Israel and in light of its gross human rights abuses and imprisonment of people such as Nasrin Sotoudeh and so many other people in Iran.

We have a government that says it supports the motion that was adopted in the House some six years ago, a government that calls the IRGC a terrorist entity, and a government that still refuses to list the entity as a terrorist organization under the Criminal Code of Canada.

In response to the government's reasons for not listing the IRGC, which is that it is worried about capturing innocent individuals who are compelled to join the IRGC while they are in Iran, its members forget the fact that there is prosecutorial discretion here in Canada. Crown prosecutors have the discretion about whether or not to pursue charges under a terrorist entity listing under the Criminal Code of Canada. Their explanations for why they continue to refuse to list this entity does not make any sense, and we are calling on them to support this concurrence motion and list the IRGC as a terrorist entity.

[Questions on the Order Paper, April 8th, 2024]

With regard to the data security breach at Global Affairs Canada (GAC) which was reported around the end of January 2024: (a) how many users' information was impacted, in total and broken down by (i) GAC employees, (ii) government employees outside of GAC, (iii) the general public, (iv) diplomats from other countries; (b) on what date did GAC become aware of the data breach; (c) on what date were the impacted users informed of the breach; (d) if impacted users were not informed, why were they not informed; (e) for impacted users, what types of information were breached; (f) did the data breach only impact users who accessed the GAC-operated Secure Integrated Global Network (SIGNET) between December 30, 2023, and January 24, 2024, and, if not, what other users, time periods or networks were impacted; (g) what action, if any, did GAC take to prevent data security breaches in response to the December 2022 announcement by the United States Secret Service that entities working on behalf of the government of the People's Republic of China, including APT41, were hacking and conducting espionage; (h) is the actor(s) responsible for the data breach a state or non-state actor(s); and (i) what is the name of the actor(s) responsible for the data breach?

[Questions on the Order Paper, April 8th, 2024]

With regard to Global Affairs Canada's (GAC) reaction to two Canadian Hells Angels named in an indictment in the United States related to a plot to kill an Iranian defector: (a) did GAC request of Italy, which is Canada's protecting power in Iran, to make representations to Iran regarding this matter; (b) if the answer to (a) is affirmative, what specific message was delivered and on what date; and (c) if the answer to (a) is negative, why was no request made of Italy?