Bill C-76 (Historical)

Elections Modernization Act

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make certain consequential amendments

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to establish spending limits for third parties and political parties during a defined period before the election period of a general election held on a day fixed under that Act. It also establishes measures to increase transparency regarding the participation of third parties in the electoral process. Among other things that it does in this regard, the enactment
(a) adds reporting requirements for third parties engaging in partisan activities, partisan advertising, and election surveys to the reporting requirements for third parties engaging in election advertising;
(b) creates an obligation for third parties to open a separate bank account for expenses related to the matters referred to in paragraph (a); and
(c) creates an obligation for political parties and third parties to identify themselves in partisan advertising during the defined period before the election period.
The enactment also amends the Act to implement measures to reduce barriers to participation and increase accessibility. Among other things that it does in this regard, the enactment
(a) establishes a Register of Future Electors in which Canadian citizens 14 to 17 years of age may consent to be included;
(b) broadens the application of accommodation measures to all persons with a disability, irrespective of its nature;
(c) creates a financial incentive for registered parties and candidates to take steps to accommodate persons with a disability during an election period;
(d) amends some of the rules regarding the treatment of candidates’ expenses, including the rules related to childcare expenses, expenses related to the care of a person with a disability and litigation expenses;
(e) amends the rules regarding the treatment of nomination contestants’ and leadership contestants’ litigation expenses and personal expenses;
(f) allows Canadian Forces electors access to several methods of voting, while also adopting measures to ensure the integrity of the vote;
(g) removes limitations on public education and information activities conducted by the Chief Electoral Officer;
(h) removes two limitations on voting by non-resident electors: the requirement that they have been residing outside Canada for less than five consecutive years and the requirement that they intend to return to Canada to resume residence in the future; and
(i) extends voting hours on advance polling days.
The enactment also amends the Act to modernize voting services, facilitate enforcement and improve various aspects of the administration of elections and of political financing. Among other things that it does in this regard, the enactment
(a) removes the assignment of specific responsibilities set out in the Act to specific election officers by creating a generic category of election officer to whom all those responsibilities may be assigned;
(b) limits election periods to a maximum of 50 days;
(c) removes administrative barriers in order to facilitate the hiring of election officers;
(d) authorizes the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to provide the Chief Electoral Officer with information about permanent residents and foreign nationals for the purpose of updating the Register of Electors;
(e) removes the prohibition on the Chief Electoral Officer authorizing the notice of confirmation of registration (commonly known as a “voter information card”) as identification;
(f) replaces, in the context of voter identification, the option of attestation for residence with an option of vouching for identity and residence;
(g) removes the requirement for electors’ signatures during advance polls, changes procedures for the closing of advance polls and allows for counting ballots from advance polls one hour before the regular polls close;
(h) replaces the right or obligation to take an oath with a right or obligation to make a solemn declaration, and streamlines the various declarations that electors may have the right or obligation to make under specific circumstances;
(i) relocates the Commissioner of Canada Elections to within the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, and provides that the Commissioner is to be appointed by the Chief Electoral Officer, after consultation with the Director of Public Prosecutions, for a non-renewable term of 10 years;
(j) provides the Commissioner of Canada Elections with the authority to impose administrative monetary penalties for contraventions of provisions of Parts 16, 17 and 18 of the Act and certain other provisions of the Act;
(k) provides the Commissioner of Canada Elections with the authority to lay charges;
(l) provides the Commissioner of Canada Elections with the power to apply for a court order requiring testimony or a written return;
(m) clarifies offences relating to
(i) the publishing of false statements,
(ii) participation by non-Canadians in elections, including inducing electors to vote or refrain from voting, and
(iii) impersonation; and
(n) implements a number of measures to harmonize and streamline political financing monitoring and reporting.
The enactment also amends the Act to provide for certain requirements with regard to the protection of personal information for registered parties, eligible parties and political parties that are applying to become registered parties, including the obligation for the party to adopt a policy for the protection of personal information and to publish it on its Internet site.
The enactment also amends the Parliament of Canada Act to prevent the calling of a by-election when a vacancy in the House of Commons occurs within nine months before the day fixed for a general election under the Canada Elections Act.
It also amends the Public Service Employment Act to clarify that the maximum period of employment of casual workers in the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer — 165 working days in one calendar year — applies to those who are appointed by the Commissioner of Canada Elections.
Finally, the enactment contains transitional provisions, makes consequential amendments to other Acts and repeals the Special Voting Rules.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to begin our discussions this afternoon.

I must express my deep disappointment with the way we ended our last meeting three hours and twenty minutes ago. Mr. Cooper's comments were not befitting a parliamentary statement or the man I know. I offer him the opportunity to interrupt me at any time on a point of order to apologize to Minister Joly for his intemperate comments. I think it is important to do that. It's been over three hours since he made those comments, and I still haven't seen an apology on social media.

Let's get back to this amendment proposed by my colleague Mr. Turnbull. One of the reasons why it is important to focus on the individuals on the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force and invite the participants that my colleague is proposing is that this is a very important institution that was set up to combat foreign interference. In addition, members of all recognized political parties in the House of Commons can become members. All parties except the Bloc Québécois have taken advantage of this.

Not only did these parties have access to secret information related to foreign interference, but they also had the opportunity to speak with experts and the other members of this task force to ask questions, to bring forward their concerns, to pass on information that they or their candidates heard, and then to compare that with the information provided to the task force by the national security experts. That is very important and very helpful.

This is part of a long record of actions taken by our government after the 2015 election. We took these steps because it was clear long before that that state and non-state actors were trying to interfere with our elections and our democratic institutions. It is unfortunate that the former Conservative government did not take steps to reassure and protect Canadians from this.

The Harper government's former minister of democratic institutions offered an explanation this week. He said he didn't take action because the supposed government of China wasn't taking a stand for his party and therefore it wasn't in his party's interest to take action. This is ridiculous.

Not only did we create the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force, but we also created the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. This is important because unlike all of our allies with whom we share security intelligence, especially those who are in the Five Eyes alliance with us, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, we were the only country that did not have a group of parliamentarians to review, question and receive information on the activities of our intelligence and security services.

Early in its tenure, our government created this very useful committee. I did not have the privilege of being a member of it, but I know that several people around the table had that privilege in previous Parliaments. From what I could gather without people divulging information, it was an interesting experience, to say the least. I imagine there were a number of issues that were discussed. Canada is facing real risks. We need to take action and our government has done that.

In 2018, we also introduced the critical election incident public protocol and launched the G7 rapid response mechanism.

In addition, two very important bills to counter the effects of foreign interference were introduced and passed. These were Bill C‑59, which became the National Security Act, 2017, and Bill C‑76, which became the Elections Modernization Act. And to complete all that, we created and supported the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.

All of these institutions and tools are designed to protect Canadians and their freedom from foreign interference. That is so important. That is why my colleague Mr. Turnbull's amendment is so important. It would give us a chance to bring forward the people who know what happened in the 2019 and 2021 elections.

When people come here, they won't be able to disclose secret information. That makes sense. However, they will give us as much information as they can, as will the people who came before the committee last Wednesday and Thursday. We had a chance to ask questions of excellent officials from the Communications Security Establishment and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, deputy ministers from Global Affairs Canada, people responsible for public safety, and the national security and intelligence advisor to the Prime Minister, Ms. Thomas.

These are dedicated experts whose sole purpose is to ensure our protection, and they find every way to do so. What was their conclusion? They acknowledged that information had been leaked in the newspapers, but they said that this information was not intelligence and did not paint a complete picture of the situation. They were careful to explain to us that while incidents may be reported, an incident does not necessarily represent the truth.

They said we need to put this in context first. Last week, I reminded people that text without context is just pretext. That means you have to look at the big picture. The so‑called findings that are published by some journalists do not present the big picture that would allow us to determine whether the findings are legitimate or not.

I can imagine my colleagues asking me why I don't want the chance to look at this information to get the full picture. This suggestion raises a couple of weaknesses or problems.

First, to get the full picture, you have to rely on national security information, which by its nature cannot be discussed in public. Second, I don't have that security clearance and I don't think most people around the table do either. However, the good news is that there is a committee whose members have that security clearance, and that is the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. These parliamentarians, our peers, our counterparts, have the security clearance to access this information. So why not entrust them with this study so they can have all the information?

Some will ask how Canadians can trust this work since it is not public. This is assuming that the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians does not publish reports. That is not true, because it does so regularly. I had the opportunity to read one of its reports. I have not read them all, but I have read at least one report in its entirety. I learned some things. That report painted a pretty important, comprehensive enough picture of the situation to allow me to draw conclusions.

We, as members of Parliament, need to have confidence in our sisters and brothers who serve on this committee. These people deserve our trust. They have undergone a very serious background review to ensure that they deserve the highest possible security clearance. I have confidence in them. That committee is the right place to have those kinds of discussions.

I said that my colleagues might ask me why we would not investigate ourselves here in the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. The first answer is that we don't have the security clearance.

Secondly, and I say this with great sadness, I don't think Canadians who watch our deliberations in committee or in oral question period see the best of us. They see that we are too partisan, that we ask questions that we don't want answered, that we ask questions without giving others time to answer, and that when we get an answer, we don't accept it and we talk about something else. That's a shame. We are capable of doing better, but at this point I am not convinced.

I'm going to digress for a moment, if I may. Last night my goddaughter visited me with her brother and her parents. I took them to the House of Commons after the parliamentary session, and we chatted. They are 14 years old. They talked about oral question period yesterday. They were not impressed with the attitude of some members of Parliament, who were not up to the task. It's sad.

My goddaughter, whom I love dearly, knows the difference between the various political parties, but the vast majority of Canadians do not distinguish between Conservatives, Liberals, Bloc, NDP and Green Party members. To them, we are just politicians, and they see politicians that are not up to the job. So how can they trust us when we can't even ask a question and let people answer without braying like donkeys? That is what I had to say.

The third reason is that we have allies who share information with us. This is a very serious matter and it is important that there be a parliamentary committee to oversee these issues. However, none of the other parliaments, whether in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand or the U.S., conduct public inquiries using top secret documents; they leave that to specialized committees. That's the main reason I think this committee is not the right place to get to the bottom of this, which I assume is the goal of everyone around the table.

For these three reasons, I think this is the wrong place. Everyone says they are taking into account these leaks, which are not confirmed or corroborated by the experts and officials who have appeared here. This information, if it is legitimate, is by definition partial, incomplete. Witnesses have even denied some of the things revealed by these so‑called leaks.

I remember the first day of our debate, during which my colleague from St. Albert—Edmonton said that one could not question the credibility of the journalists who published this information. I agree with him. I'm going to assume that these people are acting in good faith. They are professionals, journalists. They are going to reveal information that was presented to them.

However, I started reading the report issued by the distinguished Justice Dennis O'Connor on the events surrounding the Maher Arar case. What is the conclusion of this report? The so‑called information leaks were not information leaks.

The judge was very tough on some people, some of them bad apples at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Communications Security Establishment, and on journalists who didn't take the time to verify their information, young journalists at the time, like Bob Fife.

I think it is important to remember this, because a great injustice was perpetrated against Mr. Arar. Not only did it destroy him physically, because he was tortured for a year, but we were complicit in it. Maher Arar claimed to be innocent and Judge O'Connor concluded that he was.

Not only do I have the great privilege of serving on the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, but I also have the privilege of serving on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. We will be talking about foreign interference there tomorrow, but we will approach it from a different perspective: We will look at its effect on diasporas in Canada.

I am not an admirer of everything the government of the day in Beijing does, but we have to be very careful about pointing fingers at China. Reputations are being destroyed with information that officials in our institutions responsible for the safety of Canadians say is not true. These officials have seen the big picture and have received information from both our allies and their employees, agents, Canadians who, in some cases, put their lives on the line to provide us with this information. All have come to the conclusion that what we are reading is not true.

Sometimes you have to trust the experts. If we only want to play partisan games, there are advantages to talking about these things as if they were the Good News, the kind found in sacred texts.

These claims are not entirely true according to the experts. I find it very frustrating that every time this is discussed, these claims are talked about as solid, truthful information, when they are far from it. The experts have told us that this is not the case, but the temptation to play political games is too great. The temptation to manipulate news and rumours to try to find political advantage is great.

We have to rely on what we have the capacity to do at this committee, and we have to do it while respecting the rights and privileges of others. One does not want to unnecessarily damage the reputation of others without justification.

I have colleagues of Chinese descent, who were either born in China and came to Canada when they were very young, or who have parents, grandparents or great-grandparents who were born in China. It's very hurtful for them when, on social media, people lose it and say anything.

Some of them have already received often hateful, sometimes threatening messages. This does not only affect the Chinese Canadian community, but almost all Canadians of Asian origin or with Asian ancestry. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to confuse people. I hope my colleagues do not do this, but some Canadians do not hesitate to do it. That's when we realize that there are consequences to what we are doing.

We have to be very careful and use words very carefully. We should not assume that everything leaked to the media is true, especially not when we ask questions of those responsible for national security and those people tell us that the information is not true. With the big picture, these officials were able to see that this information didn't hold up and that it didn't paint an accurate picture of the situation.

I remember the early days. In the newspapers, it was claimed that Canadian Security Intelligence Service officials had told the Prime Minister that electoral candidates had to be withdrawn because they were under foreign influence. However, experts said that this did not make sense and that the service did not do such things. Two days later, the reporters changed the story and said that part of their report was not true. Yet the damage was done and everyone believed the worst, when it wasn't true in the first place.

This really does sound like what Justice O'Connor had called a real injustice. You have to be extremely careful before you come to these hasty conclusions, and that's why we have intelligence agencies that cross-check all the information.

I recall Mr. David Vigneault, Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, saying that news reports were not intelligence sources. The Service has to put this in a broader context. They often receive information, but they have to be patient and put it all together before they draw conclusions, because they can't present the Prime Minister with partial or incomplete information. As much as possible, they must give him justifiable information. It is because of the vast experience of the service's staff that it has this ability.

It is really important to remember the wrongs done in the past. Justice O'Connor's report is lengthy, but it is important to read it. I don't want to say that it makes you feel uncomfortable, because it's more about wisdom, the wisdom of asking yourself if the information you have in front of you is complete enough to draw conclusions. That's very important. My mother always told me that you have two ears and one mouth, so you should listen more than you should talk.

I think it's the same with the information we're reading. We need to try to get a more complete picture. If we're not able to access that information, we have to trust those who are charged with doing that work. We had all the best sources in front of us. We had access to these people to ask them questions, and I think they answered them very frankly. Without giving away any secret details, they gave us a bigger picture of how they came to their conclusions. They determined that the information that was reported in the newspapers was very incomplete, and that the conclusions that many of them had reached were not correct, but wrong. That's one of the reasons I don't want this committee to get it wrong.

I am proud of our record on intelligence and national security issues. As I said, several important new tools have been made available to the government to combat foreign interference. They are not necessarily complete, but they are always being reassessed to see if there are new ones that could be put in place to protect Canadians, which is very important.

Before I conclude, I would like to say this: It is 5:23 p.m., and it has now been four hours since my colleague made disparaging remarks about the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He did not take advantage of my offer: He could interrupt me at any time on a point of order to apologize. It is disappointing that he has not done so to date.

I hope my colleagues will at least acknowledge that they have all these important and appropriate tools to get to the bottom of this and access all the information. It would be much more appropriate for them to use these tools to educate themselves. When they investigate foreign interference, they will come to the same conclusion as our experts, the men and women charged with protecting us.

I will stop here and hope that people will be convinced of the wisdom of my words. I also hope that my colleague will use this break to burnish his image, do the right thing, and apologize.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Democratic Institutions

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind my colleague that, like him and all members, we take foreign interference very seriously, including as it relates to potential foreign interference through funding.

That is why the government put into place Bill C-76 to crack down on that threat. In addition to that, we set up two independent panels made up of our top public servants who verified that the elections in 2019 and 2021 were free and fair.

Now we will continue to work with public servants as well as with the independent expert in the special rapporteur to do this work together.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Okay, it was Monday, and he was 45 minutes late. Now I remember. We have to do something about that.

On Monday, at one point in his press conference, the Prime Minister said that the institution needs to outlast every single member of Parliament. That needs to be the focus of everything we do when it comes to analyzing, assessing and making recommendations about how to protect our democracy.

We have to remember that the institution absolutely must outlast every single one of us, so when we play politics—as Mr. DeLorey, the campaign manager for the Conservatives, is suggesting the opposition party is doing—and when we spend so much time going down that road, quite frankly, in my opinion, we're not doing that service. We're not doing everything we can to ensure that our democracy will outlast every member of Parliament.

I like to think that everybody here agrees with that. I would never cast aspersions otherwise and suggest they don't. I don't think it's in our best interest to be having these heated exchanges to try to score political points. It's much more incumbent upon us to find solutions and to work together.

This brings me to why I support Mr. Turnbull's amendment, as opposed to the motion. We're respecting the domain in which the conversation can be had. We can have a conversation in this room about public information and what was known to the public.

Mr. Cooper and others from the Conservatives are hell-bent on trying to drag staff before this committee, but even if those staffers, whomever they are, have various levels of clearance and are able to discuss information, they will not be able to say anything more than what we heard from Jody Thomas, which was it's important that we respect the fact that different pieces of information have to be treated differently, and we can't have open conversations in a forum like this about classified information. Her main concern when she came before this committee was about having similar open conversations in a public inquiry.

When we talk about ensuring there is an opportunity to have these conversations, I think what we should be having in this room are conversations that have more to do with the public aspect of this. What did those campaign managers experience? Those conversations are the ones we need to have in this room.

I would like to hear from Mr. DeLorey. I'd like to hear from the campaign managers of all political parties about what they experienced. That's public information. To Ms. Blaney's point, if we want to try to strengthen our institutions, we can get real recommendations from these individuals, which we can then relay back through a report to the House and to the government on how they can make changes. I think that is what we can do in this venue. We can't drag staff before this venue, even if they are in a position to answer the questions, and ask them to answer questions that Ms. Thomas has said are outside the scope of what can be discussed in a committee like this and in a public forum like this.

I want to find ways that we can further strengthen the institution. I want to hear from Mr. DeLorey. I want to hear from the campaign managers of all the political parties so they can make recommendations to us.

I also think this was very interesting. Ms. Thomas made a point, and this is what I wanted to address after what I heard Ms. Blaney speak about a few moments ago. These were Ms. Thomas's words; I wrote them down. She said that intel often doesn't convert into evidence. I think that's very important.

We heard from Mr. Morrison, the deputy minister of foreign affairs, a couple of weeks ago as well. I'll get into what he said about this. He specifically went on about it. He was trying, in any way he could, to caution the committee about going down this road and being careful about information that is received. He made very clear the difference between intel and evidence. More importantly, all of them made very clear how you get from intel to evidence and how you get from intel to arresting somebody for doing something.

I want to read to you what Mr. Morrison said in committee. I think this is very important and that it has been glossed over by the committee. He said:

...I will not be commenting on any individual media reports, but I wish to acknowledge—as members of the committee are well aware—that there is an active debate going on right now about how reputable media organizations could be reporting that highly classified intelligence documents describe how a foreign power did this or that to influence the most recent Canadian elections, including by engaging in patently illegal activity, such as funnelling money to candidates. How could that be going on while, at the same time, others, including me, maintain there was no foreign interference detected in 2019 or 2021 that threatened Canada's ability to have a free and fair election nationally or at the level of individual ridings? How can these two sides of this ongoing debate be reconciled?

I believe much of the answer lies in the questions recently addressed on social media by professor Stephanie Carvin of Carleton University. These same questions form the crux of a recent interview given by former clerk of the Privy Council Ian Shugart, who, as you know, was a member of this panel in 2019.

This is where it really gets interesting. He said:

The key questions are these: What is intelligence, and how is it used? Without repeating all the points made by Dr. Carvin and Mr. Shugart, let me simply say that intelligence rarely paints a full, concrete or actionable picture. Intelligence almost always comes heavily caveated and qualified in ways designed to caution consumers such as me from jumping to conclusions, while at the same time helping us at least to gain a little more awareness.

An example would be a report based on “an uncorroborated source of unknown reliability”. In layman's terms, I would call this a report based on rumour.

Those were Mr. Morrison's words, and I found them really interesting because, during my opportunity to question him at that meeting, I specifically asked him about his thoughts on that. I remember painting an example. I said that he might have various reports based on “intel”—for what that's worth—come across his desk. Then he assesses that intel and makes the decision on what to move forward, what not to move forward, what to act on and what the proper course of action on each piece of intel is. He said to us that some pieces of intel end right there.

To Ms. Blaney's point earlier in the debate when she was talking about intel, I think it's really important to remember that, first of all, not all intel is real, not all intel is true, not all intel converts into evidence and not all intel even goes anywhere beyond a report about intel. As he said, there are many caveats. You have to look at the source. You have to look at the context in which it's being said. You have to look at the reliability of the information, and then they make decisions and move them on.

One thing we also heard them say repeatedly.... The RCMP said this when they were here at the same meeting: It has no active investigations going on right now. I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to read between the lines that intel comes in, decisions are made with respect to that intel and then action is taken. We heard that no action was being taken. To me that says that any intel that may have been picked up through a leak by Global or somewhere else was not actionable. I'm making those assumptions because they can't even confirm or deny any of that, but I'm at least able to read between the lines.

From my position, this doesn't in any way suggest that Canadians shouldn't be concerned. That's not the case at all. I think Canadians should be concerned. A certain part of me is glad to see that we are having these conversations—although not necessarily that we're running around in circles—and, more importantly, that Canadians are having these conversations on this very important issue. That says to me that Canadians are aware of this, they're paying attention to it and they care about it. I think that's very important.

What I'm looking to get out of this is how we ensure that Canadians are getting what they want and what they need. How do we ensure that they get information in a public forum, that they get feedback and that they get the confidence they need while still respecting the classification and highly sensitive nature of the work that CSIS and the other agencies do? That's where the line gets drawn. All members are concerned about foreign interference. I think the line is between those who want to actually do something about it and those who want to use it for political opportunity.

I genuinely feel as though the NDP and the Bloc want to use this opportunity to do what's best, so I'm not against the idea of having the public weigh in and making sure the public is aware of what's going on. I just don't think a public inquiry into a Global News article is the right way to do it. I think the right way to do this is by putting the information in the hands of those who are tasked to do it.

To that end, I'll go back to Minister LeBlanc's comment, which I referenced earlier. He said that we've done a number of things, and indeed we have. I think it's important to reflect upon them in the context of this discussion.

The first is that we established the National Security Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP. This is a committee of parliamentarians—Liberals, Conservatives, Bloc and NDP—and some senators who have the opportunity to review information that has come forward, review all intelligence and work hand in hand with CSIS and NSIRA to get to the bottom of this and get questions answered. They do have to do this in a manner that respects the confidentiality of the information.

The unfortunate part about it is that it has to be done in a way that respects the classification of the information, but NSICOP does report to Parliament. I'm sure my colleagues sitting around the table have taken the opportunity to read all of the NSICOP reports that have come forward from the committee and made sure that they're fully aware of everything that's contained within them, because there's a lot of good information. Just because NSICOP has to evaluate information behind closed doors does not mean that it cannot make recommendations. It does not mean that it cannot report to Parliament and provide insight into what it has come to conclusions on. NSICOP does do that.

To suggest that NSICOP is not the right venue because the information just goes into a black hole that nobody ever gets to see isn't true. What happens is NSICOP and its members—in particular the parliamentarians and senators who sit on that committee—will review the information. They get to ask questions of those who gathered the information. They get to dive deep into it. Mrs. Romanado mentioned that Mr. Ruff is one of the members on that committee. I believe Mr. Motz, a Conservative, is too—or at least he was previously.

These are individuals who had the opportunity to put their eyes on this information and then, working with the committee, make recommendations back to Parliament. They've done that and have reported to Parliament already based on what they have been able to gather through that intelligence-gathering exercise.

That's a perfect venue for this information to be analyzed. That's why Mr. Fred DeLorey, the Conservative campaign manager from 2021, agrees with that assessment. He agrees with the fact that that's the best place to assess the information. I'm inclined to support him on that. I never thought that I would have such a close alignment on what we should do with the Conservative campaign manager, but I do. That's the one thing we established.

I will remind members of this committee that NSICOP, which was created by the government and which Stephen Harper, the former prime minister, was not interested in, is unfortunately a committee that the Conservatives have a history of playing politics with. Look back to the previous leader, the member for Durham, who by all accounts looks like a centrist now. What did he do? He pulled his members from that committee out of defiance, in order to somehow suggest that they were not going to keep their membership on that committee because it doesn't serve Canadians.

Conservatives have a history of playing politics with NSICOP, and unfortunately we're seeing that again. As I indicated in a previous intervention, maybe a week ago, it's unfortunate, but Conservatives seem most interested through this exercise in just ensuring that they have sound bites and opportunities to continually bring up this issue through a public inquiry. In my opinion, they're more interested in the politics of it than in genuinely coming to any kind of solution. That's why I find it very troubling that they would treat this committee in such a partisan way.

The other thing this government did, which I think is really important to point out, and this was in time for the 2019 election, was to establish a group of independent experts who would review in real time and have the authority to respond in real time to foreign interference that was occurring during a writ period. I think this is very important, despite the fact that Mr. Cooper, when the witnesses of the panel were before this committee, was berating them at length and treating them as though they had done something that in my opinion they hadn't. I think we're very lucky to have a group of experts in the field of foreign interference who include bureaucrats, top civil servants, who by nature of their employment are non-partisan and whose interest is in ensuring that our democracy remains free, fair and transparent during election periods. It always makes me worried about foreign interference specifically in an election period, because the policy-makers, the members of Parliament, are busy in the election campaign, working on connecting with constituents in their ridings, running around doing the incredibly time-consuming work and, by default, they don't have the ability to also be monitoring this stuff very closely.

Knowing that we have this panel monitoring this in the background, a panel that Mr. DeLorey and other campaign managers could funnel what they're seeing on the ground back to and reply if necessary, knowing that this is going on, I think, is something that all members of Parliament should take great pride in, namely, that we have individuals who are trying to safeguard our elections while the elections are ongoing. Having that panel in place, something that this government brought in, is extremely important.

What's more important is that after the election is over, a third party works with the panel and provides a report. That won't stop Mr. Poilievre from making comments, as he recently did, that the only thing we did was hire somebody to write a report and, at the same time, making disparaging comments with regard to these dedicated public servants who have worked for decades, suggesting they're somehow corrupt or politically motivated. It doesn't stop him from attacking them, but the reality is that we do have individuals who care deeply about our democracy and through their work and through the work that's being reported back, we were able to learn that no interference occurred that jeopardized our election and that our election and its results were free and open and occurred properly.

It's incumbent upon us to reflect on the fact that they do incredible work and that we're obligated to ensure that we give them the supports they need moving forward. Rather than dragging in and trying to dig up dirt and making more unsubstantiated claims, why aren't we focusing on that? Why aren't we focusing on talking to the panel and asking what we can recommend to the government to allow them to do a better job? That, in my opinion, is what our job as policy-makers is.

I talked about NSICOP and about the special panel that was set up for the writ period, but we even did something before that, and that was Bill C-76. Even before any of that, we brought in Bill C-76. One of the things that Bill C-76 did right off the bat was to make it easier for individuals to vote. This was in response to the minister at the time, who happens to be the Leader of the Opposition now, who, when he was the minister of democratic institutions, brought in legislation that made it more difficult for Canadian citizens to vote. When you try to limit the ability of people to participate in democracy, I think Canadians should be taking great notice of that as well. I think many of them did, and perhaps that contributed to why the Conservative Party lost the trust of Canadians and Mr. Harper wasn't re-elected.

However, the reality is that Bill C-76 did more than just undo some of what Mr. Poilievre did through his legislation when he was democratic institutions minister. Bill C-76 also tightened up rules around financing and, in particular, foreign interference and foreign financing, to make sure that we could limit that to the best of our ability, because we don't want individuals funding our elections who are not from within this country. What I find really interesting about Bill C-76 is that the Conservatives voted against it in 2018, despite the fact that they sit at the table, throw their arms up in the air and raise all hell about foreign funding in elections. We had a bill, parts of which made it more difficult for foreign actors to participate in the funding of our elections, and the Conservatives voted against it, yet they sit here today from a place of all high and mighty suggesting that they are the authority when it comes to looking out for democracy.

It really goes back to my point, and Mr. DeLorey's point too, about how Conservatives are just using this as political theatre. They're using the opportunity here just to try to ensure that, at all costs, they can do whatever they can to try to smear the government. They don't appear to care about what the genuine impact is on our democracy—at least not from my perspective.

Madam Chair, I talked about the three main things that we have done since we came to power: Bill C-76 with respect to foreign funding, NSICOP, and the expert panel we established for the writ period. These are three major things this government has done when it comes to combatting foreign interference.

I find it very rich, as I think I read from Mr. Poilievre's intervention a couple of days ago, that he says we haven't done anything. That's simply not the case. We've done more than what I've just indicated, and we're proposing to do even more, because there is a legitimate concern out there right now, whether it's fuelled by Conservative rhetoric or by unsubstantiated reports or by Global News articles based on what could be just rumours. As a witness before this committee said, there is genuine concern out there. As Canadians, if there's anything to be concerned about, we should obviously take concern.

I'm actually really happy in some regards about the Conservatives, who have finally come on board and said, “Hey, maybe we want to have something to say about foreign interference too, because we voted against Bill C-76, we stripped our committee members from NSICOP and haven't really shown an interest in this”—and now they do. That's great. They're here. They're here at the table, better late than never, and it's great to see Conservatives interested in foreign interference.

The question is, how do we make it better? How do we change the processes we have in place, because we always have to be changing, as the threats are always going to change? Is a public inquiry the best way to do it? Are we going to get out of the public inquiry anything of substance, according to Mr. DeLorey? No. According to all the experts who came before this committee, we won't. But what we can do is work with NSICOP and with the legislation that's already in place. We can identify where we can improve it.

One thing I forgot to mention about the public inquiry, and I think Mr. DeLorey said this himself.... Gosh, I never imagined that I would say the name of a Conservative campaign manager so many times in this speech, but here we are. He hit all the points and hit the nail right on the head. The other issue that I heard him bring up, and I've heard others bring it up, is with respect to the time a public inquiry would take. If there were to be a public inquiry—which Ms. Blaney seems to be in favour of—the average public inquiry takes two to four years. What are we going to get in terms of recommendations? Will it even report before the next election, if the NDP stays true to its word on working with this government? I guess if we're on the short end of those two years, we would get that just before the election, but if we are on the long end of that, it would be after the next election.

Notwithstanding that fact, Madam Chair, so much can happen between now and then. New threats come along and suddenly this public inquiry is almost out of date because it's not even addressing the threats of the day. There's the issue of time, which I think is something we need to be very concerned about.

These aren't my words; I didn't come up with that. I didn't go and research how long the average public inquiry takes and what the pros and cons are. I'm genuinely listening to the experts. As a matter of fact, if I'm being totally honest with you, Madam Chair, because I do like to do that, I'm going to come clean with you. It's time to do that. When the idea of a public inquiry first started floating around, there was a part of me that said, “Hey, why wouldn't we do this?” It kind of made sense. I really had an open mind about it. I thought it might be something that would put a lot of.... Why wouldn't you do that, if it's so easy and if it would provide Canadians the comfort they're looking for?

Then I started listening to the experts, and expert after expert—and top security advisers, NSICOP, the people who had been on the panel, the people who are tasked with holding this information and gathering this information—started to say, “No, no, you can't do this in a public forum because we can't give the information to the public as it would jeopardize our sources.” I started to think to myself that maybe that does make sense. It's never an easy position to take, because you want to be as open and transparent as possible, but the reality is that, according to what they were saying, you have to be careful with that information. Quite frankly, they even said.... I think Ms. Thomas said at this committee that she couldn't share any information with a public inquiry that she couldn't share with this committee, because this is an open forum. That makes sense. Then I started to change my mind. I thought that makes sense—it's obviously not going to be the most comforting thing for people to hear, but it does make sense.

Then I started to hear people like Mr. Fred DeLorey, the former campaign manager for the Conservatives, say exactly the same thing. I thought it kind of makes sense and I understand. I know it doesn't put Canadians' minds at ease with respect to what's going on with the entire situation, but it certainly does make a lot of sense. It made a lot of sense to me when I heard them talk about that. I very quickly came to agree with what the experts were saying.

I find it interesting that expert after expert will come before the committee and tell us that, yet there are members of the committee who are just so blatantly willing to disregard it, with all due respect to my NDP and Bloc colleagues, and just toss aside the information. You have people coming before you saying, “This is vitally critical information.” This is me reading between the lines. “If we share the information with the public, we can burn our sources; we can reveal our sources; we can jeopardize the integrity of being able to work with our allies.” Can you imagine if our allies knew that we would hold a public inquiry and just share all of the information? Our allies would say they are not sharing anything else with us ever again, and that kind of makes sense.

Ms. Blaney brought up the point when she was speaking earlier—and I heard her colleague Mr. Boulerice say this as well when we were on a panel together—that you can put some information in closed session, and some information in public, and you can operate it like that. The problem is that the vast majority of the information you need to hear, notwithstanding the fact that people don't have the proper security clearance to hear the information, would have to be held in such a manner. So what's the point of having a public inquiry if the majority of the information that's being shared and talked about in that inquiry is not accessible to the public? This is where it goes back to the comments from Mr. DeLorey and from the experts and from all of those before about why it's so important that the information be treated and used in the right venue.

I think it's very important for us to reflect on that, and I think it's also important for us to reflect on this concept of interference not being new. Perhaps the manner in which interference occurs now is changing; it's evolving. It has probably changed a lot in the last 20 or 30 years with the Internet and the ability to influence situations and influence public opinion. It's something that has certainly been talked about a lot more and in different venues, but it is not something that is brand new. Foreign interference is something that has been going on in one form or another for a long time, and governments have been seized with this for a long time, both Liberal and Conservative governments throughout our history.

The part of this that becomes very alarming is more specifically with respect to how we can allow it to happen in a way that perhaps is much more covert and therefore so much easier to hide. That's why we have put in place the mechanisms we have, the mechanisms of allowing the members of NSICOP to look at all of the intel so they can see it themselves in an unclassified manner and, for the first time ever, a panel that monitors in real time.

This is the point I was trying to make. With the advent of technology, we see the ability to interfere more quickly and in a much more covert manner. That's why we need rapid response mechanisms that are able to deal with this in real time. That's where the panel comes in, but the panel has to review the information. Quite often it's in a classified manner. Then the panel has to report back to the public after the election. That's what we see them do when they bring that information forward later on, and they can provide it to us in a manner that does not jeopardize the classification of the information that went into making it. It is important to reflect on the fact that foreign interference in some capacity or another is not something that is brand new.

I will now turn, Madam Speaker, to the last meeting we had, at which we did have the individuals who came forward to the committee—we had Foreign Affairs, and before that we had CSIS, and it started off with Elections Canada. I think it is important to reflect on the number of times Elections Canada has come to this committee. They are interested in working with us in an open and transparent way. That's a vehicle for us to give recommendations as to how we can make changes and how we should suggest changes. We need to be doing more of that.

To Mr. Turnbull's amendment here, what he's basically trying to do, in my opinion, is to say let's strip the politics out of this. Let's put aside the political rhetoric, let's have the individuals who were receiving the information, any who were on the ground in the last election and who would have been subject to receiving information from their candidates in terms of foreign interference, and let's hear what they have to say. It's actually a really good group to listen to, not to hear their partisan spins on everything but just to hear about what they were experiencing at the time. That's what Mr. Turnbull's motion is attempting to do, Madam Chair.

We know the Conservatives want to bring forward every staffer they think they can get a sound bite out of. They want to drag them before the end of this table and subject them to the same aggressive attack style that Mr. Cooper had with government officials. If he is willing to do that to non-partisan public servants, we can only imagine how he would treat an individual who came before the committee who actually worked in the office of a minister or of the Prime Minister.

We're not going to gather much intel and much information from them in order to make recommendations. We would be better off if we were to have information about what was going on in the last election on the ground. His amendment specifically says to invite the 2019 and 2021 national campaign directors of each recognized party in the House of Commons and the security-cleared party representatives to the security and national intelligence threats election task force during the 2019-21 federal elections. That would provide more insight for this committee if the objective of the committee really is to get down to understanding what was going on and how we can provide meaningful input into ensuring that there are substantial recommendations that we can make through a report back to Parliament and to the government on what they can do.

When we reflect on how we've gotten to this point, Madam Chair, I know I talked about NSICOP and the special panel and Bill C-76. We've also heard from a number of experts at this committee. We've heard from Global Affairs and CSIS, who came before the committee and provided us with as much information as they could. They confirmed that there were no active investigations going on, or at least the RCMP in the same panel did.

We also heard from the RCMP and CSIS in their panel, specifically that their job is to collect secrets and keep secrets. They are very interested in protecting their sources. I think it is very easy for us to point fingers and try to suggest that there's some kind of nefarious activity going on. I know that the opposition wants to try to suggest that the Prime Minister is covering something up. But the reality is that any information that has been relayed back to us, at this end of the table, by the experts who have come before has been that they have no information that suggests there was any foreign interference. That's what we heard Ms. Thomas and others say at this end of the table.

Madam Chair, I think I have made the majority of the points that I wanted to contribute to Mr. Turnbull's amendment. I think that he brings forward a good amendment in terms of trying to gather information that we can genuinely use and that can be useful to us in order to provide our recommendations.

I will perhaps end my discussion today where I began, and that is with respect to the manner in which I've been witnessing members of Parliament treat other members of Parliament and disparaging their character. Specifically, I reference Mr. Calkins' attack on Mr. Dong and the manner in which he treated him, the manner in which he attempted to stir political division—or to fundraise or to do whatever he was doing—by suggesting that a sitting member of Parliament is an agent of Beijing. I think it's extremely unfortunate.

I think Mr. Berthold can defend Mr. Poilievre's claims and what Mr. Poilievre said of the Prime Minister. I think he can do that. I think he can skate around and try to explain away what Mr. Poilievre said—which he already did in this committee—but I don't think he can explain away what Mr. Calkins said. I think it's extremely unfortunate when we go down that road of accusing other members of Parliament, basically, of treason, of working on behalf of another entity by calling them an agent of Beijing. They're saying that their loyalty is not to Canada, their loyalty is not to their constituents, but rather their loyalty is to a foreign country. And that's exactly what Mr. Calkins did.

I think it's extremely unfortunate that we would tolerate this. I think it's unfortunate that Mr. Calkins has not come forward and explained that, apologized for it, retracted it and deleted the video that he posted regarding that. I think it's extremely unfortunate that his colleagues who sit at this table don't try to, at the very least, say that it was wrong for him to have said that. I think that if they're genuinely in this, not for the political gain of this, they would do that, unless of course they felt the same way and therefore felt as though they didn't need to say that.

I really hope that when my Conservative colleagues contribute to the conversation today they could address that point. They could address why, according to the minutes of the agenda, Mr. Calkins' name doesn't appear to be on any of them since a number of meetings ago. Is that in order, Madam Chair? It's a printed document. His name wasn't on the document from the minutes, so I think that's in order.

I think it's very telling. I think the Conservatives are nervous about the fact that he said that. I don't think it's appropriate. They need to own up to it. It would be great if one Conservative colleague on that side of the table could actually do that. I think it's important for us to respect the fact that we are all honourable members. To suggest that somebody is working for another country, I think, is extremely unfortunate.

With that, Madam Chair, I've said my bit for now. I do have more to add, but I think for now that may be all I have to say. Were members expecting a little bit more? Is everybody good? Okay.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm very sorry about that. I hope I didn't cause the interpreters any discomfort or injury. That was never my intention. I got a little carried away, there. It's probably from sitting through the many hours of this committee and doing all this research. I apologize.

I keep coming back to this point: The truth really does matter in our democracy. What we've seen is, these misinformation campaigns have an impact. They are a real threat. We need to be evolving our approaches and strategies to combat them.

In this particular case—where we have Conservatives claiming things that are, quite frankly, not verifiable or corroborated by any evidence—we have to be very careful and cautious. We have to hone in on the key questions, here. Are these misinformation campaigns having an impact on Chinese Canadian voters' intentions, as has been claimed?

I think the answer in this report, again, is another corroborating piece of evidence, in addition to expert testimony. They came to the same conclusions through independent means. When you have multiple pursuits that are independent of political influence coming to the same conclusion, you have to go, “Okay, maybe those are approximating the truth pretty closely.”

That's the conclusion I'm drawing from all of this, which I think is quite rational. I pride myself on operating on the principle of sufficient reason, which is this test: If you say something that conflicts with my world view, argument or position on something, and I think it has merit—even if it has partial truth—I will take it into consideration. I will try to understand how I can benefit from that and change my perspective based on that. In this particular case, however, I feel as if opposition parties are just denying the facts. They're saying, “No, we're going to believe the allegations flying around and not look at the facts and information.” That's why I'm very animated about this, Madam Chair.

It's a shame that it's in my constituency week. It's not that I'm opposed to doing great work on behalf of Canadians in a constituency week. I would be doing that whether we were in this committee or not. It's just that I'm diving into extensive reports on this topic during a constituency week. I would rather—as Ms. Blaney said, the other day—be meeting with my constituents. I feel they are very important to meet with. I've had to cancel meetings for the day. All of that is fine. If opposition members would rather do this, then it's fine. I will continue to bring facts and information to this conversation. My arguments will be based on that.

I'm going to get back to this report. There are a few other findings, here, that I want to share. I think they're important ones.

Another key finding, on page 66 of this report, is that, “Canadian voters do not consider China to be a top electoral issue during the 44th Canadian election.” They did an analysis of all the federal election issues. China, or foreign affairs related to China, was not one of the top issues in the last election. Again, it's not me saying this. It's an independent report that surveyed all the different issues. I think it's interesting to conclude that. People are claiming things like, “This had an impact on the election”. We've had some extreme cases and claims made by Conservative members of Parliament and the leader of the official opposition related to this.

Other times, we've had more, I would say, benign claims that it's going on. Again, the argument is this. If independently verified groups have done work to say that China and foreign affairs related to China weren't a top election issue and we can also see that the relative response and engagement of the online misinformation campaigns that were state-sponsored had no verifiable impact at all on voter intentions or behaviour and were a very small slice of what was happening during the election, then why would anyone ever try to claim that somehow the overall election results were changed as a result of foreign interference, when we know that the vast majority of it was online? That, to me, goes to the heart of some of the arguments and perspectives that we've heard.

Another finding: “We see no evidence that China-related issues were consequential for the election, nor that the content circulated on social media had any influence on opinions at a national level.” That's another pretty telling conclusion, which I think speaks volumes to how disappointing it is that we're continuing to do this.

Finally, maybe I'll just quickly summarize some of the recommendations. I think there is some real importance to these, and there are only four. Bear with me for a few more minutes and I will wrap up by summarizing these conclusions.

One of them is to develop a community of practice focused on tackling misinformation in Canada. This is the type of recommendation that I would put a lot of weight into and say, yes, this is something the PROC committee could be recommending. It's something that probably coincides with some of what we've heard from the experts in this committee. This relates to that fracturing of the information ecosystem that I talked about at the beginning, which is one of the key vulnerabilities.

If you developed a community of practice that includes government bodies, researchers, media organizations and civil society organizations all working together, that would really help combat that fracture in the information ecosystem. In other words, that coalition or the community of practice, which would share best practices, could really leverage all of the expertise and the reference points and perspectives that people have in order to enhance our ability to tackle this in a really comprehensive way. That, to me, is a really solid recommendation. I think we should heed that advice from these professionals and recommend that in our future report.

Another one is to engage in strategic countering of misinformation. I found this one really interesting as well, because the focus here is on strategic. I think they've concluded throughout this report that there are certain things that spread and have more influence than others, and there are certain segments of the population that are, perhaps, more vulnerable or more predisposed. There are social media platforms that are targeting information based on critical issues, based on polarizing issues. There's the amount of exposure one has. There are a whole bunch of factors, and I don't think they are saying that a spike in misinformation during the election period is the biggest threat. I think they're actually saying the biggest threat is the ongoing ubiquitous nature of misinformation throughout Canadian society, which is being consumed every single day and polarizing the views of our population over time.

To me, both of those kinds of observations would require us to be very strategic about where to focus resources. What's having the most impact on Canadians and what is the biggest threat to Canadian democracy and our electoral process? To me, I think that is another really worthwhile recommendation.

The third one is, “Increase public resilience to misinformation”. I think this is one that our government has done considerable work on, but I think we could certainly benefit from a lot more. This, again, is that public awareness piece, the digital literacy skill building of the public to be able to identify misinformation when they see it, which is not easy. I, myself, have moments in my political career where I'm looking at information online and wondering if I should I really share it. Is that a view that...? I don't know. It's questionable. We need to be promoting that critical lens.

There are a whole bunch of aspects of developing public resilience to misinformation that I think we could do. There are some more specifics in this report.

Lastly, the fourth recommendation is, “Extend initiatives to limit and counter misinformation to non-election periods”. This is something Morris Rosenberg had mentioned in his report. He basically says that we should be looking at foreign interference outside of the caretaker period during the writ. Outside of elections, we should be monitoring and tackling this stuff.

I would say the government has been doing that, but I think we need to step it up. Based on these conversations, I think we could probably all agree that we should be doing that. I think there's a lot of opportunity there to dig in deeper. Outside of election periods, we could look at all the misinformation that's being circulated.

Here's another quote: “The threat to democracy may lie more in the slow, steady erosion of factual agreement, institutional trust, and social cohesion than in a flurry of election activity.” I think that's where we need to focus. That's the true threat to Canadian democracy. It's not just during election times.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be monitoring and doing all we can to prevent foreign interference during election times, but we have set up the processes for doing that and they are working. Could they be improved? Yes. I think we have said that from day one. We're open to that and all of us, I think, take that responsibility very seriously.

I think it involves continuing to adapt our efforts and include more strategies that will work and tactics that are better suited to that evolving threat environment. That includes non-election periods. That would be now. We should be monitoring and trying to combat misinformation online all of the time.

There are some specific recommendations here. One of them is, “Governing bodies may also wish to examine whether a regulatory regime in place during elections should be broadened to cover non-election periods, including but not limited to ad transparency, algorithmic audits, and limits on the use of foreign funds for advertising and partisan activities.”

Our government has done work on that.

Again, I'm not saying we can't improve things, if there are additional things we can do. We should look at those. Bill C-76, the Elections Modernization Act, prohibits third parties from using foreign funds for partisan advertising, and prohibits foreign entities from spending on partisan advertising both during the pre-election period and during the election period. It requires online platforms to publish a registry of partisan advertising. There are significant things we've already done on foreign funds for advertising for partisan purposes. The algorithmic audits and algorithmic transparency are things we've been talking about, and government has had quite a few conversations about them in open forums. I've gone to several events to talk about that with colleagues and debate that topic, and we could be looking at that.

There's lots to do, and there's a lot of benefit to working together, but I don't see how we get past the impasse we're at when opposition members won't agree to being fact-based, and look at the reality of what the government has done, and also look at the independent reports that are corroborating some of the big findings we have all heard now over and over again. It's not as if people can claim they haven't heard, or they didn't know, when they're going out saying misleading things. They know there is credible evidence of all the things our government has done to combat foreign election interference.

We've heard from the national security and intelligence community about all of the independent mechanisms. It said the last two elections were free and fair. We've heard all of this corroborated in multiple ways. The things that are being claimed are just, you know....It calls them into question. It's really disappointing, when you feel, as a member of Parliament, you're putting your best foot forward and want to do good, meaningful work for the benefit of the public, and we end up having to play partisan games. We're roped into it in a constituency week, when we should be with our constituents. I'm sure many of us would rather be working in our communities, meeting with our constituents today.

I'm happy to talk about this, and I have lots more to say. I have quite a few other really substantive reports that corroborate what we've heard from all of the experts, both the folks on the panel, the critical election incident public protocol, and all of the national security and intelligence experts. We've had it mentioned again by Conservative senators, and the former Conservative campaign manager from the last election. We've heard it from the former CSIS director. We've heard it over and over again. Hopefully, we can base ourselves in some factual information, move forward with this study, and get wrapped up with some really solid recommendations that the government can use to protect our democracy from these very serious threats.

With that, Madam Chair, I will wrap up here, and cede the floor.

I look forward to hearing from my esteemed colleagues.

Thank you.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague knows well that this government takes the work of fighting against foreign interference very seriously. That is why we introduced Bill C-59, which gave CSIS the threat reduction measure powers it needed to address and mitigate that risk. That is why we introduced Bill C-76, to crack down on foreign funding that could interfere with our elections, but with the corresponding transparency to create the NSICOP and NSIRA, all of which ensures that we can be upfront with Canadians so we can defend our democratic institutions.

The Conservatives should rise above the fray and see that this is not a partisan issue—

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Kudos to Mr. Nater for getting that in. I'm sure he won some points with somebody somewhere.

Anyway, I'll go back to what I was saying, which was that we have this four-pillar plan and I've only spoken to one of the pillars so far, but there are three other pillars to speak to.

I was just speaking to two pieces of legislation that enhanced both CSIS's and CSE's abilities to combat foreign election interference, but also how Bill C-76, the Elections Modernization Act, also enhanced our government's ability to tackle this very important issue.

The second pillar of the plan was improving organizational readiness. It says, “Government departments and agencies were briefed on how to identify threats, emerging tactics and systems vulnerabilities in order to strengthen security practices and behaviours.” That's important. Again, that all-of-government approach means actually educating and training people across government departments, which was done. Those briefs, that training and that capacity and awareness development did happen, and I'm sure it continues.

It continues, “Political parties and election administrators were provided with technical advice”. This one I find particularly interesting: “Political party representatives were also provided with classified briefings on threats.” This is interesting because Rosenberg refers to this in his report, which clearly demonstrates again a willingness and ability to work on these issues across party lines and to make sure that all parties have adequate information, that they're briefed, that they understand the threats and that they can weigh in on those discussions.

I'd also like to refer to the fact that, in terms of organizational readiness in 2018, our government established the Canadian centre for cybersecurity with a budget of $155 million over five years. CCCS is responsible for monitoring threats, protecting national critical infrastructure against cyber-incidents and coordinating the national response to any incidents related to cybersecurity. That organization didn't exist prior to 2018 and was established by our government. Again, it's another example of a body, an entity, that works across government and is tasked with one piece of the overall ecosystem approach or whole-of-government approach.

I think we can all agree that cybersecurity in the age of disinformation and data monopoly, referring back to the ethics report that was done in 2018, highlights how vulnerable the Canadian public is to disinformation. The use of online platforms for the dissemination of that information certainly has a real impact and changes the threat environment for anyone looking at national security and the seriousness of foreign election interference.

The other pillar that I'd like to refer to is combatting foreign interference. Our government established the security and intelligence threats to election task force. This is the SITE task force. It's the coordinating body and is comprised of the Communications Security Establishment, CSE; the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS; the RCMP; and the rapid response mechanism housed in Global Affairs.

SITE builds awareness to threats to Canada's federal election processes and prepares government to assess and respond to those threats. Each agency brings its unique information and expertise to the table to support the panel by providing up-to-date intelligence and information. The SITE task force has met regularly since 2019 and now meets on a monthly basis. It met daily during the 2021 election.

I think it is really important that the security agencies that are tasked with monitoring and collecting intelligence and identifying threats to Canadian democracy have been doing their work since 2019, meet regularly, meet on a monthly basis and then, during the elections, have daily meetings.

The information they are collecting is being relayed to government officials outside of the caretaker period, and then within the caretaker period, it feeds right into the panel. I don't know how anyone can claim that our government hasn't taken foreign election interference seriously.

That is not to say, Madam Chair, that we shouldn't be constantly improving and evolving our systematic approach and our comprehensive approach over time. That is what our national security advisers and experts have been saying to us, which is that we need to continue this work in a non-partisan way, in a serious way, in a way that respects Canadian democracy, and in a way that really tries to protect information that's highly sensitive and classified and to make sure that we don't put at risk our reputation with Five Eyes partners or other institutions.

I also want to speak to the fact that our government set up the rapid response mechanism with G7 countries at the 2018 G7 summit in Quebec. Its purpose is to strengthen the coordination across the G7 countries in identifying, preventing and responding to threats to G7 democracies. The rapid response mechanism supports the SITE task force in providing regular briefings to the panel of deputy ministers. You can see how, if you actually draw a picture of the flow of information, the rapid response mechanism basically shares information and coordinates efforts across the G7 countries such that we should find out about foreign threats to Canadian democracy in advance.

It's an early warning system, to my understanding, that feeds right into the SITE task force. That SITE task force then relays that information and briefs deputy ministers on the panel during an election, so this works as a comprehensive set of mechanisms that can identify threats to Canadian democracy.

I'd also like to say that, within the plan our government launched in 2019, which was the plan to protect Canadian democracy, again we acknowledged the need to work with external partners. Those include academia, industry and civil society to support information integrity in elections. These partners often have a unique role to play, it is safe to say, but it's an important role because they provide a unique perspective on the evolving threat environment. They help educate the public, and they alert the public to attempts at interference both before and during the campaign.

It is important that within a whole-of-government approach we also consider the fact that there are external partners that also play a very important role.

The other pillar, the fourth pillar, is building a healthy information ecosystem. One of the things that are obviously important is the degree to which Canadians get information online today. Our government launched the “Canada Declaration on Election Integrity Online” in 2019, and it was updated in 2021 prior to the election. Again, these are actions our government is taking. These are relevant to our work and our study and are exactly the reason why, if we actually look at the facts and information and if members opposite are actually concerned about what's being done, we have to acknowledge and affirm that lots has been done.

The commitment by online platforms and the Government of Canada to “safeguard elections from malicious interference and create a healthier online ecosystem” was endorsed by Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. Again, that was updated before the 2021 election.

I'm not claiming that's the be-all and end-all of election integrity online. I think there's a lot more work to be done. However, I would say that going right back to the 2018 report, when there were many recommendations made about how to protect Canadians from consuming disinformation online, it's great to know that our social media platforms were in agreement and endorsed that declaration, and that they were willing to do it again before the 2021 election.

There's also something that was implemented called the Canadian election misinformation project. This is on page 20 of Rosenberg's report. They did an analysis of the role that social media platforms play in spreading false information. They found that “notwithstanding more assertive moderation and election integrity policies, large social media platforms continued to be home to widespread misinformation.”

This is an area where we could do a lot more, deeper work, calling witnesses and looking within a writ period—but also outside of a writ period—at how we ensure that Canadians aren't consuming vast amounts of misinformation online. Our online platforms are saying that they're committed to that, but the independent research is saying, no, those online platforms, although they're committed to that, still continue to be home to widespread misinformation.

There's a whole area of our work that we need to take seriously that doesn't involve calling political staffers. It involves calling more witnesses who are relevant to the study, and some of the experts who have written these fantastic reports that I have here.

I have one really good one on misinformation and disinformation during the 2021 Canadian federal election from March 2022. It's relatively recent. It's from the media ecosystem observatory, made up of McGill, the University of Toronto, the Max Bell school of public policy and the Munk school. All of them are collaborating on writing these insightful reports that demonstrate that we need to do more work in that area.

I think there is an opportunity there, so why are opposition parties not focusing on that, when these are clear indications coming from experts? It's clear work that needs to continue to happen in order to protect Canadians, yet members on the opposite side don't seem concerned at all with that. Maybe that would be something that we could focus on in our work to come.

The thing that is really not sitting well with me is the fact that we keep hearing these very false assertions made over and over again. I think we have to be really honest with ourselves. We have to be honest and say, if you really want to step outside of the partisan antics, get down to the truth and take foreign election interference seriously, let's stop playing games and trying to win political points by calling political staffers who don't have expertise in national security. Let's start listening to the experts who have come before this committee. Instead of repeating three or four times the same motion with slightly tweaked language, so that we're here debating it over and over, ad infinitum.

I can do it forever. I'm happy to talk about this topic, because I'm reading and consuming information and I care about it. I'm happy to continue talking about this if that's what opposition members really want. However, I don't see why we would waste our precious time. The public has elected us to do important work, and we want to protect Canadian democracy. It's clear from everything I've said so far that our government has a track record. I could paint you a picture of it. It's so clear to me.

I could lay it out in a diagram for any of the opposition members. I just don't see why they would continue to deny the real facts and information that are clearly laid out in multiple reports. There's lots of information to substantiate what I'm saying.

I'm not making this up. I think the Conservatives have a duty, if they are going to make false claims, to back them up with evidence, because they are not doing that, in my view. They are just spouting off things that they think will win them some political points or a little uptick in the polls or something.

I really believe there is a need to continue to adapt our approach to foreign election interference. I think we have heard that loud and clear. If there's a silver lining in all of the partisan antics, it's to say, okay, well let's do deeper, more meaningful work in this area. I think the Prime Minister has made that clear in his announcement and press conference, at which he gave us some substantive actions—some more substantive actions, I should say—that our government is now taking.

I think just before I get to that I would like to point out a few other things. I want to sum up.

An independent review was conducted after the 2019 general election, and changes were made. Removal of a reference to the specific election in order to make the protocol continue in perpetuity, hopefully.... I think the protocol, its panel and that work are all essential. I think we can all agree. I'm sure it could be strengthened, but it should continue, so that change was made.

The change was made to align the protocol with the caretaker convention.

Explicit provision for the panel to consult with the CEO of Elections Canada as appropriate...that change was made after 2019.

Provision for the ability of political parties to alert security agencies of incidents: Listen to that. The Conservatives keep saying that their concerns weren't taken seriously. Well, our government set up the panel and the protocol and then amended them based on James Judd's independent report that was done and the assessment that was done to add a provision so political parties could alert security agencies regarding incidents. That was added by our government.

They are not even listening, Madam Chair. The Conservatives have tuned out because they don't like what I'm saying. They don't like hearing facts and information that substantiate very real truths and claims about what our government has done on this issue.

Another one is recognition of the panel's ability to examine domestically driven interference. That change was also made. The original protocol and panel focused exclusively on foreign election interference. We know that domestic interference is also important, and the panel was expanded to include domestic-driven interference.

Recognition of the panel's ability to receive information from other sources at its discretion was also added. An independent review of the protocol no longer includes an assessment as to whether to establish the protocol on a permanent basis because, of course, our government made it permanent.

I also want to mention budget 2022. Again, this all goes to the false claim that we have heard over and over again by the Leader of the Opposition and the members of the Conservative Party who are making false claims every day they are out there in the House and saying—

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just very briefly, on Bill C-76, Mr. Turnbull just mentioned knowingly making a false statement. I would just like to point out for the record that I made an amendment to that effect, but it was declined by the committee. The courts had to throw out that piece of the legislation. It had to come back in what's called the John Nater vindication act, in which we fixed that piece of legislation after the fact. I just wanted that for the record.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I thank everybody who has had the opportunity to speak prior to me. I've certainly learned a lot. I think there was a lot offered, in particular in the comments made by Ms. Vandenbeld and Mr. Long. We really heard some interesting perspectives.

Ms. Romanado, you speak all the time and I'm always moved by your comments, but we had two special guests today, and I felt as though they were able to bring a perspective to this that was very interesting, a perspective that is perhaps outside of what we're used to talking about in this committee.

I know we are talking to the amendment to the motion, so, Madam Chair, in the interest of making sure that I stay relevant, I want to talk about and read out where we are with this motion and then the amendment.

The original amendment says:

That the Committee, in relation to its study of foreign election interference, invite Katie Telford, Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, to appear alone for three hours during the week of March 13, 2023—

I think there will have to be an amendment to this at some point, given the date prescribed.

—provided that she be sworn or affirmed.

An amendment that was added and since passed says to “invite the following individuals to appear before the committee as part of the study provided that they be sworn”. It lists the national campaign directors of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party for the 2019 and 2021 campaigns. Then it lists the leader of the official opposition's senior leadership adviser and the former chief of staff of the former leader of the opposition.

That amendment was passed, and we are now dealing with Mr. Turnbull's amendment. The amendment asks that the motion be amended by replacing the words after “in relation to its study of foreign election interference” with the following:

Invite the 2019 and 2021 national campaign directors of each recognized party in the House of Commons and the security-cleared party representatives to the Security and Intelligence Threats to Election Task Force during the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

That's where we are right now on this.

I have some comments that I would like to offer in relation to this, but before I do that, I think something bears repeating, because every time I have had the opportunity to speak at this committee since it occurred.... I brought up the fact that a sitting member of this committee, Mr. Calkins, who hasn't spoken a word in quite a while, made a rather offensive comment when he referred to one of our colleagues, the member for Don Valley North, as “an agent of Beijing”. He did that in a video he took of himself when he was walking through the airport on his way to a committee meeting here.

I have yet to hear the member who made the comment, a member of this committee, apologize for it or provide some insight into how he has come to that conclusion. I also have yet to hear any of my colleagues, on the Conservative side in particular, try to either defend or denounce those comments. It is extremely unfortunate, because I think that as members of this committee and as honourable members, it's extremely problematic when MPs start to refer to other MPs as agents of Beijing. I'm still waiting for that patiently. I have yet to see it. I note that Mr. Calkins hasn't contributed to the meeting pretty much since the day he shot that video or the day after. I hope he will soon be here to address it.

It's true—and I don't think it's going to come as a surprise to anybody—that the Liberal members on this committee are filibustering because we don't believe in the appropriateness of this motion. That's why we're doing this. We don't call political staff to question period, do we? Are political staff asked to answer questions in question period? No, they are not.

The accountability lies with the minister. For accountability, the ministers are willing to appear before committee. We've already had a couple come before this committee. It's their job to speak on behalf of the committee.

When I say we are intentionally delaying this, it's because we're trying to ensure that ministers remain accountable. I would say I'm just trying to be consistent. I'm trying to be consistent, but not with our side of the table; I'm trying to be consistent with the Conservative side of the table.

Let me read you something, Madam Chair. These are the words of Pierre Poilievre. Listen to what he had to say:

The reality is that Mr. Soudas—

He was the director of communications for the Prime Minister's Office at the time.

—is not going to be testifying anyway because of a tiny, little inconvenient problem that the coalition parties have, which is this 300-year-old concept of ministerial accountability, meaning that ministers answer questions on behalf of the government and not staff.

We're not going to be changing 300 years of history all of a sudden, at the behest of the coalition parties. We're not going to have staff members appearing in question period to answer on behalf of the government. We're going to do it the old-fashioned way, the way it's always been done right up until the last several months, and we're going to keep ministers, the guys in charge, responsible for their duties.

Those were the words of Pierre Poilievre—when he was a minister—on CBC on June 4, 2010. He was explaining to Canadians why it is inappropriate to be calling staff before committee. As I said, I'm just trying to be consistent with the Conservatives and consistent with the Leader of the Opposition, Pierre Poilievre. Those were his words. He's the one who said this is a 300-year-old tradition. How can we break from this tradition?

If anybody out there watching this is wondering why the Liberals are filibustering this.... If you're filibustering something, it must mean you're up to something nefarious and you're hiding something. However, the reality is that I'm participating in this because I want to be just like Pierre Poilievre. Can you believe that? That's my objective here. I want to live by the words of Pierre Poilievre.

That's why I'm participating in this process. That's why I think it is incredibly problematic to bring staff before this committee. It's not because I think staff can't answer the questions or that they don't have the capacity or the ability to do it. It's because I agree with Pierre Poilievre when he says that the buck stops with the minister. The minister is responsible for answering questions. That's my position on this, and I'll take the great advice given to us by Pierre Poilievre, as minister at that time, when he suggested that it would be completely inappropriate.

If anybody wants to see that video—this won't surprise many people here—I tweeted it. If you want to go to my Twitter feed, Madam Chair, you can see in the flesh a young Pierre Poilievre from 13 years ago saying that. It's available for people to witness and view.

It begs the question: Why the double standard? Why was it completely inappropriate 13 years ago, when Poilievre was in the other position, to be saying that staff should appear before committee, but now, when we're effectively doing the same thing, Mr. Cooper says there's something to hide? Why is that? Explain it to me. I will talk as long as necessary to get an answer from the Conservatives that satisfies my concern over why it is okay for Pierre Poilievre to make that comment in 2010 and to take that position in 2010, but suddenly now, it's not okay for us to take that position.

I can ask questions. I can encourage my colleagues to respond to that. I have a feeling they won't, because it doesn't fit the political narrative that Mr. Cooper in particular is trying to spin out of this whole process.

I think he's underperforming, by the way. I don't think he's convincing Canadians with his approach on this, and I think the vast majority of people would agree. The buck stops with the minister. I would agree with Mr. Poilievre that the buck stops with the minister. It's up to the minister to come testify and appear before committee and answer the committee's questions. We've already had a number of ministers do that.

This goes back to why the Conservatives are doing this. I talked about this last time. They're not doing this because they genuinely care about the outcome. They don't care. What they care about is the sound bites and the clips they can make along the way. It's not just my saying that. Fred DeLorey, the Conservative campaign manager from 2021, recently said in an interview that it seems like the opposition is just trying to create issues and to use this as a political tool. Nobody stands to gain more from it, by the way, than those who would want to interfere with our elections.

I won't stop at Mr. DeLorey. How about former senator Vern White, a Conservative-appointed senator? I know Ms. Romanado earlier spoke a bit about what former Senator White said.

All of my colleagues are bringing me various forms of lozenges, so thank you very much.

This is what Vern White said to CBC on March 11, just a few days ago: “Everybody who wrote about the reports of the committee”—and he's referring to NSICOP—“wrote in glowing terms that we were doing our job. That's all you can do. And my circle of influence never extended into PMO or PCO. That could have caused people to react. I think we did our job.”

Later on, former senator White said:

One is you'll get the transparency that you're allowed to receive. I don't think you'd get more through a public inquiry process either. You're not going to get what you can't get, right? I mean, ultimately, you're not going to get the techniques, all of those kinds of things you heard from the CSIS director last week, who is a spectacular guy. I think he was very clear on what he can and can't tell.

I realize, Madam Chair, that this relates back to the public inquiry, and I'm going to tell you in a second how it comes back to the issue we're dealing with in this motion specifically. Senator White is basically confirming everything we've been saying all along, which is that it's not appropriate to be discussing this information in public and that it should be done somewhere like NSICOP.

If we try to haul before this committee Katie Telford, or other staff who might have the proper security clearances to have seen this, they're not going to be able to provide us any information, even if we thought it would be appropriate to invite them here. This is where Mr. Poilievre and I don't agree. We don't think it would be appropriate to bring staff here.

We can recognize that. Why do you want someone here for three hours to comment on this information when you know they can't do it? It brings me back to my point that the Conservatives must be playing games to create sound bites. They want three hours' worth of video in order to clip something out of it afterwards. That's what they want. That's all that they want. I think everybody knows that. I think the partisan hacks know that. I think anybody in the Ottawa bubble or anybody who's paying attention to this knows that. That's all they're really after.

Senator White goes on to say:

I think NSICOP would be quicker than a public inquiry [and] a hell of a lot cheaper than a public inquiry.... I think this team, both the secretariat and committee, are ready to run. It's too bad politics—

This is coming from the Conservatives.

—is becoming the player here in discussion around whether or not NSICOP should manage it. But you can go back and ask any member of NSICOP. Regardless of whether they were with the Conservative party, the NDP party or the Liberal party, they will all talk about the strength of that committee.

This is the part of his interview Ms. Romanado referenced as well. I think it's very important, because it underlines and solidifies, in my opinion, my argument about taking politics over the genuine interests of this country. The interviewer Catherine Cullen says, “Pierre Poilievre has talked about this as being both a secret committee and suggested that they're under the control of the Prime Minister. You used to be a Conservative. I know you left caucus, but what do you think about hearing that from the leader?”

Of course, I should have referenced that Senator White was appointed by a Conservative, which is what I said. He was a Conservative senator, but then I think the Conservative Party veered way too far into extremes, even for a Conservative senator, and he decided to join another caucus in the Senate.

Here's his response to Catherine Cullen's question. He said, “Obviously it's BS. They're not under control. Look, our work was done unfettered—unfettered—until the report goes forward, and then there are strict rules on things that need to be redacted. Read the legislation. It's very clear.” That's what Senator Vern White says.

This is what Senator White says about Pierre Poilievre:

He's allowing the politics to take over, the same as Erin O'Toole did, to be fair, when he refused to put members on that committee.... I won't be surprised that maybe Pierre will pull his folks off it, like Erin did. I'm not sure, but it's too bad because I think this committee does great work. Nobody has questioned this committee's independence. We had former ministers, a number of ministers under Stephen Harper's time, sitting on that committee. Not one of them ever questioned the credibility of that committee, and it's disappointing to hear people question it.

This is Senator Vern White, a retired senator. He just retired recently. He was appointed by a Conservative and was a Conservative sitting senator until he decided to join another caucus that wasn't so extreme. These are his comments about Pierre Poilievre and the approach he's taking as it relates to “allowing the politics to take over”, in his words.

Madam Chair, here we are, and you can't help but wonder. I started off by telling you about what Pierre Poilievre did in 2010 and the strong position he took on protecting staff and not allowing them to appear before committee. He was so matter-of-fact about it. He said, “The reality is that Mr. Soudas is not going to be testifying”. That was the Conservative approach to this back then. I would suggest to you, Madam Chair, that we're just being consistent with Pierre Poilievre. We said staff will not be testifying, and it's the right thing to do.

I've told you about Mr. Poilievre's position on this 10 years ago. I've told you about Senator White's interpretation of what is going on, the impact it has and what he thinks is really happening. You can't help but wonder: Why would Pierre Poilievre be so invested in this if it wasn't for anything other than partisan and political gain and trying to score cheap points?

I'll tell you what's going to happen. This committee will adjourn today at some point. Mr. Cooper is going to send out an email blast—he's nodding his head, great—or it will be Mr. Poilievre. It will be Mr. Cooper saying, “The Liberals filibustered for 17 more hours. They're hiding something. Help us find the truth”, and there will be a big “donate now” button underneath.

That's why we've been dragged to Ottawa during a constituency week. It's so that the Conservatives can continue to fundraise. I doubt there is any other reason or any other motivation on their side of the table than exactly that. It's partisan cheap shots and political fundraising. That is it, in my opinion.

I think it would be very useful to talk about what another Conservative senator has said. He was a Conservative senator who represented my area, Mr. Barrett's area and Mr. Reid's area before he retired. That's Senator Hugh Segal. Senator Segal had a lot to say about this as well. He was a Conservative senator who, I would note to you, Madam Chair, was appointed by a Liberal Prime Minister, Paul Martin. That was back in the day before Stephen Harper got a hold of the Senate and before the mess and debacles that came about as a result of his appointments. That was back when a Liberal Prime Minister could say, “Hey, I don't care what political party you are. I think you would be a good fit for the Senate and, therefore, you're being appointed.” That's how Hugh Segal, a Conservative, got appointed by a Liberal Prime Minister.

Let's listen to a bit of what Hugh Segal had to say. He contributes to the Toronto Star, and this is specifically about this particular issue and where it all started. After I talk about this, I'd really like to hit on a point that Ms. Blaney made at the beginning of today's discussion when she was talking about the motivation and trying to be careful when it comes to journalistic integrity. Mr. Segal wrote this:

It is possible that Canadian Security Intelligence Service is unofficially correct and that the People's Republic of China (PRC) embassies, consulates and United Front networks and agents have been, and are, involved in specific efforts to unlawfully impact the outcome of Canadian federal elections.

After all, Australia's Security Services has openly discussed evidence relating to their election. And European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pointed out that European countries must keep up their guard against these interferences.

But one wonders what the summary is about the perceived incoherence of Canada’s security establishment reported?

“Leaks” from national security organizations are against the law and are currently being investigated by the RCMP.

Further, the Chicken Little nature of the Official Opposition is apparently resistant to demonstrating any balance or regard for a measured or broad national interest beyond its own narrow coyote approach to public discourse. Yes, there are questions to be answered. But rather than co-operating in an effort to get those answers, the “gotcha” moments appear to be far more important.

He's talking about you, Mr. Cooper.

He goes on to say:

Unfortunately, political gamesmanship can put people in harms' way as has been shown by the 300 per cent rise in anti-Asian hate crimes.

Inflaming segments of the public, who might use the information as rationale for taking matters into their own hands, is dangerous and racist.

As for the media, some seem to favour “the instant over the substantial.” Any suggestion that China, or Russia or Iran interfered in our elections must be investigated. However, any suggestion that classified information must be made public or shared is not acceptable. I would hope the media understands the difference.

A conjured-up crisis about how our Canadian national security was organized (or not) would generate more dislocation, misunderstanding, disunity and apparent national and political incoherence than any alleged gaggle of Chinese spies or agents hovering around or elected to Parliament.

Again, for those who are just joining us, these are the words of Senator Hugh Segal, a Conservative senator, from prior to retirement.

He goes on:

In other words, the purveyors from within Canada's political establishment with no Chinese connection could and would do more harm to Canada’s competitive interests with the PRC, than some potential Chinese agents.

It's as if some of the actors in our political media system have drunk from the same fountain of odd fluids that generate a loss of measured judgment and a tendency to overstate what could threaten national security and dilute any actual facts that protect our democracy.

Public inquiries can be helpful. They can also lead down dark roads—especially when sources, for various reasons, are secret sources that need to stay secret. Should these sources be forced to discuss their intelligence on the record, in public, they would weaken the mission of protecting Canada and Canadians from foreign assaults on our human rights, economy and armed forces. Further, they could imperil Canadian diplomatic and immigration personnel worldwide.

Only governments in power need to worry about this. Coyote-style opposition parties and their media fans do not.

The PRC could very well use the current sowing of discord as a tool equally as helpful as actual espionage or political interference. Just as the Russians had a major impact on U.S. politics by floating the Donald Trump conspiracy—partially true or utterly false—so too would the Chinese see benefit in the apparent overwrought Canadian establishments' both media and political, quixotic overreaction to a leaked CSIS document whose accuracy is less than clear.

Canada has gone through real crises, two world wars, the depression, the War Measures Act, the 2008 recession and Trump, to name a few. The powers-that-be in Parliament, government and the media did not lose their heads.

There is no reason to do so now.

Those are the words of Senator Hugh Segal, the senator who represented my area, Mr. Barrett's area and Mr. Reid's area, a Conservative senator.

I also read to you the words of another Conservative appointed senator, Vern White. They're both retired now. Those are their words about what the official opposition is doing right now: playing political games, dragging parliamentarians to Ottawa on a constituency week when we could be working on behalf of our constituents and dragging us here so they can drum up video and sound bites for fundraising.

Before I started reading that I said I would address Ms. Blaney's point. I think Ms. Blaney has a very good point. We need an independent media in our country that is able to properly do its investigations and properly report. I think that's very important, but I would refer her—notwithstanding the incredible comments by Mr. Segal, who pretty much just addressed this point—to the fact that we had experts here who were sitting on the panel activated during an election. I said to them very specifically that they are getting reports across their desks on intelligence, and they assess those reports and then decide what to do with them. They concurred. The point is that the RCMP also said they're not currently investigating anything.

It doesn't take a lot to conclude that an intelligence report—which as we know does not mean evidence and can feed into the system to determine the validity of it and what to do with it—is something that is not necessarily always true. That's what he said. He said intelligence reports quite often are based on rumours. Those were his words, not mine, when he appeared before committee.

If The Globe and Mail, or any reporter for that matter, intercepted an intelligence report without understanding how it was dealt with or what validity was associated with that intelligence report, if that occurred.... We have been told nothing is being investigated, so it leads me to believe that the intelligence report, or those intelligence reports, didn't contain enough to pursue an investigation. Therefore, they were not given or were not treated as extremely.... I don't want to say how they were treated, because I don't know. That's how the system works. The point is that there are currently no ongoing investigations.

I appreciate what Ms. Blaney is saying, when she says we have to be very careful, and we have to allow the journalists to do their work. I'm sure this journalist was able to verify, by multiple sources, the intelligence report, but we heard very clearly that intelligence reports are not evidence because they are only one part of gathering information in order to determine how to act on information, if it's necessary.

I agree with Ms. Blaney that we have to be very careful, but I also think it's important for people to understand exactly what we're talking about. We're talking about reports that are out there that are based on information and that went to the leadership charged with dealing with that information. I don't know if it was accurate or not. I don't, but it's important to point out that it is possible, especially based on the questions and answers from the witness, that it isn't accurate. It is possible, but I, obviously, don't know because it's not my position to weigh in on that stuff.

One thing I forgot to mention is that not only was Senator Segal—I read out his entire statement in the Toronto Star—a senator, but he was also the chief of staff to former prime minister Brian Mulroney. I can only imagine that former Senator Segal never came before the committee as a chief of staff back in Brian Mulroney's days. It's important to reflect on the fact that you have an individual here that has been on both sides of this. He has been an actual chief of staff to the prime minister and also a senator, and he's basically blasting the approach of the Conservatives.

I must be honest. I didn't expect so many Conservatives were going to line up on this side of the table. So far I've referenced three: Fred DeLorey, the former campaign manager for the Conservatives in 2021; the former Conservative senator Vern White; and former Conservative senator Hugh Segal. All have blasted the Conservatives for their position on this.

Notwithstanding the fact that Pierre Poilievre also blasted his own position on this, although he did it 13 years in advance of taking the position. I guess I should hand it to Mr. Poilievre. He's completely entitled to changing his position on it.

However, I think he owes it to Canadians, to this committee and to parliamentarians to at least explain why the rules should have been different for Mr. Soudas compared to Ms. Telford. Why are the rules suddenly different? He may have very well changed his mind, but he has yet to explain why he changed his mind.

There's more from Mr. Poilievre, and I think this speaks very well to exactly what he's up to. I don't know if he meant to answer this question like this last week, but in doing so, I think he revealed a lot about what his intentions are.

Mr. Poilievre, last week on March 7, was trying to clarify a position he had taken the day before with a reporter with regard to his having access to this information. I believe the exchange centred around the idea of whether Mr. Poilievre would be content if he had access to the information that CSIS and NSICOP have.

Mr. Poilievre responded by saying:

The question yesterday was whether I would go in and personally get briefed about secrets of the state, and the answer—if I could answer your question—I gave was “of course not”, because then they would use that to silence me from speaking out any further. It would then become illegal for me to speak out.

Isn't that fascinating? If you read between the lines there, Madam Chair, you know what Mr. Poilievre is up to. He's more interested in the politics of this, and it's clear from that. He's basically saying, “If I get briefed on this, I'm never going to be able to speak about it again, and I raise a lot of money speaking about this, so I'm not going to stop speaking about it.” That's what I read from Mr. Poilievre's approach on this.

He's basically saying that he doesn't want the information. He doesn't want to know the truth, because if he knew the truth, he couldn't keep up the rhetoric that he's currently throwing at Canadians and that continually flows out of his mouth on a day-to-day basis. He would suddenly, in his words, be silenced, and he could no longer get in front of the microphone, cry foul and suggest that the Prime Minister, in Mr. Cooper's words, is trying to cover something up. He wouldn't be able to do that, because suddenly he would have all the information, and he would have been sworn to secrecy in order to receive that information.

Now what do we have? I have Mr. Poilievre conflicting with himself in his comments from 2012. I have Senator Vern White saying they're just playing politics. I have Fred DeLorey, the Conservative campaign manager from 2021, saying they're just playing politics. I have Hugh Segal, a well-respected senator across the aisle, saying the same thing, that they're just playing politics. They are all Conservatives.

I have Mr. Poilievre's own words, saying that if they briefed him on this, he might know the truth, but then he couldn't talk about it and he couldn't keep scaring Canadians. That is so telling of what the intentions of the Conservatives are here today.

We heard Mr. Long speak at length about NSICOP and the membership on NSICOP. I heard a lot of that and I know others have spoken about it too. I thought it would be important to refresh people, because the Conservatives, through their motion here, which Mr. Turnbull is trying to amend, are basically saying that they want to bring staff here to answer questions, which they know they can't answer for security reasons. I thought it would be beneficial to review who has the ability to look at this information as it currently stands.

As we know, the chair of the NSICOP committee is the Honourable David McGuinty. He has been chairing this committee pretty much since its inception.

Who are the members on this committee? In particular, who are the Conservative members? Mr. Rob Morrison is currently on it, as well as Mr. Alex Ruff. Both are Conservative MPs. Rob Morrison is a retired senior executive chief superintendent with the RCMP, and Mr. Ruff is a retired colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces, with 25 years of service.

I don't even have to know what political party these two individuals belong to, Madam Chair, to know that I have faith in them to look at this information and do what they think is necessary to protect Canada.

I take the words of Mr. White very seriously and to heart when he says that the committee was able to work collaboratively, regardless of partisanship or political party, for the best interests of Canadians. I have great faith in Mr. Morrison and Mr. Ruff, who have that wealth of knowledge and expertise from their lives prior to being elected as members of Parliament, knowing that they contribute along with, currently, Mr. Davies, Mr. Bergeron and Senator Lankin.

These individuals sit on that committee with three Liberal members to review classified information, to formulate and to ask questions where they think necessary, and to formulate responses that go back to Parliament and are tabled for Parliament to review. That is just who is currently on the committee, Madam Chair.

Prior to that, in the last Parliament—the 43rd Parliament—we had Leona Alleslev, who was a Conservative member, and Mr. Falk. They were both on that committee. We had Mr. Morrison and Mr. Motz on that committee.

Again, Ms. Alleslev is a retired captain in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Mr. Morrison is a retired senior executive chief superintendent with the RCMP, as I previously mentioned. Mr. Motz retired from the Medicine Hat Police Service in 2015.

Again, these are extremely qualified Conservative members of Parliament who sit on the committee along with Bloc and NDP MPs and a few senators. Once again, they are charged with reviewing the information that comes before them, asking the questions, getting answers, formulating opinions together and submitting reports to Parliament.

I have great faith in all of these Conservative MPs, regardless of the fact that I might not be of the same political party. First and foremost, I think the nature of these meetings—having to be kept in secret and the information revealed in secret—just by default is going to create a more collaborative environment.

I heard Ms. Vandenbeld tell the story of what Peter Milliken used to do. As Peter was one of my predecessors, I've had a lot of opportunity to chat with him. I can remember him saying that it was always the behind.... Parliament used to break for lunch back in the day. I think it was between one o'clock and two o'clock or something like that. When it would break for lunch, everybody would go for lunch together. It would force members of different political parties to sit together, to chat and to understand each other without having a camera in front of their faces. I think Ms. Vandenbeld made some excellent points about the benefits of that. I've heard Peter Milliken speak about that at length in the past too.

The reasons that those behind-the-scenes, off-camera interactions can contribute to collaborativeness and working together are the exact same reasons that I believe this committee does the same thing. When you are sworn to secrecy, you have to leave all communication devices in a locked cabinet. You have to descend, probably, into the basement of somewhere around here—I don't even know where it is—where special protocols are taken to ensure secrecy and to ensure that the material is handled the right way.

Madam Chair, I think that is when you're going to get people to just be themselves, to ask questions candidly and to not be worried about how the opposition will spin what they just said to benefit themselves? This is where, quite frankly, we need to be sharing these very important conversations and these secrets that are out there.

A lot of people ask, “Why does the information have to be kept secret and why is this stuff classified?” It's not just about the impact that sharing this would have at home. It's not just about the impact that it would have on our adversaries, who are enjoying watching this circus going on right now. It's not just for that, although they do enjoy watching that and seeing this. It's also about the fact that we work with allied partners throughout the world. We work with other countries. We share information. We give them secrets. We rely on them to give us secrets so that we can all stay safe. If Canada suddenly starts showing that it doesn't know how to keep its information safe, why on earth would our allied partners trust us and want to continue working with us and have confidence in our ability to maintain that degree of secrecy where necessary?

When NSICOP was first formed in the 42nd Parliament, Madam Chair, a number of different Conservative MPs served on it: the Honourable Diane Finley, a former Stephen Harper minister; the Honourable Rob Nicholson, a former Harper national defence minister, foreign affairs minister and attorney general; and Tony Clement, another Conservative MP and a former Harper health minister, industry minister and president of the Treasury Board. Gord Brown, Mr. Barrett's predecessor, was on that committee, as was the Honourable Vernon White, senator, who was then a member of the Conservative Party and whose comments on this I previously talked about at length. All of these people were participating on that committee in that collaborative manner with NDP, Bloc and Liberal members of Parliament, as well as the Senate representation that was there.

I think it's extremely important when we reflect on this that we genuinely look at whether or not the objective here is what's in the best interests of Canadians. It's important for us to make sure that we use the information and the tools that we have. I would suggest to this committee that calling staff before it is not appropriate for the reasons that.... Ignore the reasons that I've put on the table. It's for the reasons that Pierre Poilievre has put on the table. Those are reasons enough in themselves. That's why it would be inappropriate to bring staff here. More importantly, it's just inappropriate to be having these conversations. They won't have these conversations with us at this table about highly classified information.

I can't help but wonder what the real motivation is here. It's pretty clear to me that this is more about politics than anything else. When you look back at what this government has actually done as it relates to foreign interference, we've actually done a lot.... We've taken this extremely seriously since day one of being elected. We've brought in a number of various different measures, which we've used to help combat foreign interference. I think it's worth considering that stuff and talking about that stuff.

The special panel that was created to deal with election interference in real time, as it's happening, consists of independent, top civil servants who have access to what they need to have access to in order to monitor what's going on and provide a conduit for political organizations to feed information into as it relates to foreign interference. That panel was established to deal with that, to be the conduit for that, and to assess and to take action where necessary. It was something that was put in place very strategically, I think.

When members of Parliament are busy running an election campaign and are not focused on what's going on in Ottawa, this would be the best time for any actor who is looking to interfere in our democratic process to attempt to do so, in particular as it relates to elections. We have this panel that can receive information from the Conservative Party, Liberal Party, NDP and basically the parties out there running in the elections. It can receive that information, act on it, decide what to do and report back where necessary.

The reports generated from the work done by those panels in both 2019 and 2021 demonstrated, when they reported back, that elections were conducted in a free and open manner. No interference contributed to the outcomes of the elections. The irony is that I know that Mr. Poilievre has even mentioned that. He's even said that he believes the results of the last election were legitimate, but it doesn't stop Conservative members of Parliament on this committee from sowing doubt in people's minds that perhaps it isn't the case. It won't stop them from trying to generate fundraising off this particular issue.

That's one thing we did since we came to power in 2015 to try to assist with what was going on in terms of interference in our elections. Another thing we did, of course, was to pass Bill C-76 in 2018. First of all, Bill C-76 undid a lot of what Mr. Poilievre did when he was minister that was making it more difficult for people to vote. We believe it's important that we have fair elections that encourage as many people as possible to vote. Our democracy, the concept of democracy, depends on people casting their ballots. Why on earth would a government of the day try to limit people's ability? It would appear to me that the only reason they would do that is if they saw gain in doing it, and I'm sure they did. However, we made it easier for people to vote through Bill C-76.

One other thing that happened through Bill C-76 was that it specifically closed some of the avenues by which foreign donations could be made into Canada's election process. I think that was extremely important as a first step in trying to combat any kind of influence, through monetary sources that would come and put money into our election process.

Now, with Bill C-76, regardless of the reason for it.... Perhaps Conservatives just thought at the time, “The Liberals have a majority, so it's going to pass anyway. We'll look better if we vote against this.” I don't know if that was the rationale or if they genuinely had an issue with those things that I just mentioned. I don't understand how they could, other than the fact that Mr. Poilievre was the one who had made it more difficult for people to vote.

Nonetheless, Bill C-76 was voted on. Conservatives voted against it. They voted against the idea of encouraging people to vote. They voted against, more importantly, closing loopholes or closing avenues that allowed foreign actors to donate within our political systems.

Then, of course, there's the other thing the government did—the most important thing, in my opinion. The thing that gets little attention outside these discussions was bringing in NSICOP and ensuring that we had a mechanism in place where parliamentarians had the ability to oversee the secrets that were being collected, gathered and held by our security agencies in this country.

I think that's extremely important, because we do need parliamentary oversight on that, and that's what we had out of NSICOP, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. That gave them the ability to monitor and watch what was going on. It gave accountability and oversight where it was needed.

When we talk about a public inquiry, as the opposition parties have insisted upon, I think it's important that we reflect on the fact that we have these great mechanisms that have already been put in place—that I just mentioned—that are there to ensure that we have the ability to make sure our elections are done in a free and transparent way and that things are kept in the hands they belong.

I think it's also important to reflect on the more holistic discussion that we're having today: that the last election was decided by Canadians, and by Canadians only. The suggestion, as I know the official opposition would like to lead you to believe, is that there was interference that changed the result of the last election. From all of the intelligence reports and from any questions that have been answered at this committee, that is not the case, full stop.

This isn't to say that we don't worry and shouldn't always be worried about what is going on as it relates to the public domain in terms of interference. I know that attempts at interference have been going on for a long time in one form or another, and we know this happens in other countries too. As a matter of fact, by the nature of democracies being open, they give the opportunity for attempts at interference. That's why it's incumbent upon us as parliamentarians to ensure that we put the right processes in place to allow for the necessary steps to be taken when it is determined that interference is potential or ongoing.

Let's not forget that the objective of foreign actors, when they look to interfere in our democracy, is to sow division. What they're trying to do, what they want to see, are the discussions that are going on right now in this committee. They benefit from it. They want Canadians to question their democracy. They want Canadians to stop and think about whether outside forces are interfering in their elections. Those actors become more powerful when we become less confident and less trusting in our systems, and in particular our democracy.

That's why I've always maintained that it is very important that issues like this are done in a non-partisan way. I know I'm the first to jump up in the House and aggressively display my partisanship from time to time. I get that. I know that. It's who I am. I also respect the fact that....

Are you concerned, Madam Chair, because you don't believe that? News flash: I'm partisan from time to time.

My point is that there are certain issues that I think have to be treated in a manner that is non-partisan. Where better to do that then away from the television cameras and in an environment that all stakeholders can participate in and not be influenced by that?

When I know that foreign actors are watching us and seeing the division that exists in our country, I am genuinely concerned, because I recognize it is not something that I would like to see. I think that people, at the end of the day, would rather know that we are capable of handling these things without having to worry about that, but nonetheless, here we are.

I've talked at length about various different individuals who have come forward, in particular Conservatives who have contributed to the discussion that's ongoing right now. I don't know how many more Conservatives have to come forward for Mr. Cooper to realize that Mr. Poilievre is right in that the proper place for staff is not at the end of a committee table answering questions, and that it is up to the minister to properly answer questions. The buck stops at the minister. The minister is responsible.

Let's be honest. If any staff person did something that Mr. Cooper found offensive, I'm sure that he would be calling on the minister to come and take responsibility for it. Why he wouldn't accept the minister's taking responsibility to answer these exact same questions is beyond me. I think it's a bit of an issue to be approaching it that way.

I know I've been dragging on here, Madam Chair, but the last time I spoke, I realized afterwards that I forgot to talk about this and I don't want to miss the opportunity again. Mr. Long brought this up in his conversation. It's about one of the other things we've done. I listed the three: NSICOP, the special panel during an election and Bill C-76.

What the Prime Minister just announced in the last couple of weeks was an independent expert—hopefully that's better terminology for the Conservatives to accept—who will look at where any holes exist within current organizations like NSIRA and NSICOP and determine if there is anything that needs to be done or make recommendations on how to further strengthen those organizations.

The other thing that the independent expert is required to do is to look at the issue of this foreign interference and determine the best place for a study to occur. The Prime Minister said in his statement that he would accept whatever they put forward. If the independent expert or the rapporteur—whatever we're calling them—agrees that Mr. Cooper was right all along that a public inquiry is the only answer here, we will accept that and we'll move forward with that, but we let an independent individual do that. We don't make it a partisan issue.

I don't see why, unless you're afraid that you will never find somebody who's impartial out there who will agree with a public inquiry.... If you're afraid that you'll never find that, then I can understand why you would be against the idea. Based on the information that's come forward, based on the experts who have come to this committee and based on Conservative senators and Conservative campaign managers, they all say the same thing: that NSICOP is the place where this belongs. It doesn't belong in the public forum.

If you're willing to accept a special expert to look at this, if you're genuinely worried about making sure that this is dealt with in the right way, if you strongly believe the right way is through a public inquiry, and if you feel that's the best way, then put your faith in an expert to decide that. Put your faith in that expert coming to the same conclusion.

The only reason they're not putting their faith in the expert is that they know that they're wrong and they know that the position they're taking is inaccurate. They know that, once that happens, the issue is over and they no longer have the opportunity to fundraise off this. That's why they're not giving up on this.

What I actually find really surprising, if I'm being honest, is the position of the Bloc and the NDP. I would have thought they would have come around to understanding two things: that a public inquiry is not.... This is not me trying to convince my Bloc and NDP colleagues. Just listen to the experts. Listen to the people who came to this committee whom we asked.

Not a single person who came before this committee actually said that the best place for this is in a public inquiry, not a single one. I get the Conservatives' politics on this. What I don't get is the Bloc's and the NDP's, because you would think they would be interested in listening to an expert and what an expert had to say about it, but they're not.

The other thing I take issue with in terms of the approach of the NDP and the Bloc is the approach of dragging staff before a committee. I don't know—in 2010 I wasn't here—what their position on it was back then. Maybe the NDP were in favour. They must have been at that time. I don't know the logic behind it. Perhaps they are being consistent. I don't know, but they must know that accountability does not lie with staff people, regardless of whether they are the director of communications or the chief of staff. Accountability lies with the minister. If a senior staff person did something wrong and the minister ought to have known about it, you would be calling on the minister to resign, not the senior staff person.

I've witnessed it many times in the House of Commons. To now suggest suddenly, against Pierre Poilievre's advice, that it is totally appropriate to be holding staff accountable, I think, is disingenuous and I think it's just playing politics.

As I near completion of my intervention at this point, Madam Chair, I'll just end where I started, which is that we all know—everybody sitting around this table knows—that it's not appropriate to bring staff before a committee and to try to interrogate them as though they are accountable to us, because they are not accountable to us. Staff are accountable to their minister, and the minister is accountable to us.

If the Conservatives were sitting on this side of the table, they would be arguing exactly the same thing. As a matter of fact, Mr. Poilievre has argued it in the past, so we know that.

If the NDP were sitting on this side of the table, they would argue exactly the same thing. Come on—this is the NDP. This is the party that purports to be on the side of labour, and you're trying to tell me that you think it's appropriate to drag staff, individuals, before the committee? You would never get away with that in a unionized environment, but it's suddenly acceptable because it's political staff. We know the NDP would argue the same thing we're arguing.

If the Bloc were sitting on this side of the table, the country might look a lot different than it currently does, in fairness to my Bloc colleagues here, but I know they would be doing the responsible thing too, which is saying that, no, staff should not be brought before committee. It's not for parliamentarians to drill down and ask staff questions in that manner.

When I was involved in municipal politics in Kingston, we didn't drag.... The only staff who ever spoke to city council were commissioners. These were the individuals who were charged with answering the questions. If you ever attempted to go and talk to somebody who was responsible to a commissioner, especially without the commissioner's knowing about it, that was considered to be a huge no-no.

That was considered to be extremely egregious, and I would suggest it's the same thing here.

I know that it's not as sensational to do it the way we're supposed to do it, because it doesn't play itself into the hands of the optics that the official opposition would like to see, but it is what it is. You don't have to take my word for it. You just have to take Pierre Poilievre's words for it—and I'll conclude with this, Madam Chair. He said:

The reality is that Mr. Soudas is not going to be testifying anyway, because of a tiny, little inconvenient problem that the coalition parties have, which is this 300-year-old concept of ministerial accountability, meaning that ministers answer questions on behalf of the government, and not staff.

We're not going to be changing 300 years of history all of a sudden, at the behest of the coalition parties. We're not going to have staff members appearing in question period to answer on behalf of the government. We're going to do it the old-fashioned way, the way it's always been done, right up until the last several months, and we're going to keep ministers, the guys in charge, responsible for their duties.

That was Mr. Pierre Poilievre on June 10, 2010, on CBC's Power & Politics, when he was the parliamentary secretary to Stephen Harper.

I don't have to listen to anybody else at this table. I listen to the incredibly insightful words of Mr. Pierre Poilievre to know that we're on the right side of this issue.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

I'll start from the beginning. I move that the motion be amended by replacing the words after “in relation to its study of foreign election interference” with the following:

Invite the 2019 and 2021 National Campaign Directors of each recognized party in the House of Commons and the security-cleared party representatives to the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force during the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

The French translation is there as well.

I'd like to speak to that and address some of the comments that were made by Mr. Cooper at the beginning of our meeting today, which I found quite troubling. I have taken the time to listen to and review all the information we've had at our disposal, as well as the multiple reports. I pride myself on researching and reading through the various documents that are provided and also in doing my own research on these topics, because I take these matters extremely seriously, especially when there are allegations flying around and quite a lot of political rhetoric that I think could be injurious to our democracy as a whole, in terms of undermining our democratic institutions.

In particular, one of the false claims that we keep hearing from the Conservative Party of Canada—over and over again they repeat the same thing—is that the Prime Minister and our government have done nothing when it comes to foreign election interference. This couldn't be further from the truth. Based on all of the documents I have in front of me, there is ample evidence from the very first days of this government, which I wasn't a part of in those days, to show a track record of significant work that has been done on this issue at least as far back as 2017. I think it's safe to say it goes back right to 2015, when the Liberal government that's currently running the country first got elected.

I would like to take some time refuting that claim, but I also want to talk about a couple of other assertions that have been made over and over again that are deeply troubling.

One is that the Conservatives keep saying, and some opposition parties seem to be chiming in with a chorus of support for this, that they're interested in “getting to the bottom” of this. What's interesting to me is that, when you look at all of the non-partisan and independent processes that have been set up by our government, and you look at this committee and how many witnesses have already come forward with significant expertise in national security, you see that we haven't heard anything to demonstrate that this government isn't willing to get to the bottom of this.

What strikes me as just pure political rhetoric and games, to be honest, is this claim that somehow we are not interested in getting to the bottom of these matters. Quite the contrary is true. In fact, our government has been getting to the bottom of these matters and has demonstrated a real dedication and commitment to addressing foreign election interference.

The other thing I found really troubling about Mr. Cooper's claims at the beginning of this meeting today was that somehow the PM has instructed us to do some obstructionary work. I think that is also 100% false. I know I speak for myself, and I probably can speak for all my colleagues, that we're here of our own volition. We take our work at this committee very seriously, and to imply that we're somehow being controlled by somebody else is insulting, to be frank.

I also want to say that there has been a significant shift in the messaging over recent days from the leader of the official opposition, who I would remind people was the former minister of democratic reform. If you look back on the record, you'll see, I'm sure, that not much was done on foreign election interference in the time that Pierre Poilievre was the minister of democratic reform.

The shift in messaging that I've seen is that the leader of the official opposition has gone from saying that, yes, there were attempts at election interference but their party stood by the results of the election, to some very recent remarks that are significantly different from that message.

Let me just read a couple of quotes here. I believe it was yesterday that the leader of the official opposition said that we've never seen an intelligence service so worried about the prime minister and “his collaboration with a foreign power”. He has also said that they are “so concerned” about how Canada is working against its own interests and for a foreign dictatorship's interests.

These claims are somehow implying that the Prime Minister is working against the interests of Canadians and in a way collaborating with a foreign power to undermine our democracy. That couldn't be further from the truth. I don't have words to describe how much I think that's inappropriate language. It's untrue and it's unfounded. It's really risking our entire democracy and the faith that Canadians have in our democracy by making such baseless claims. If they were founded, of course, those claims could be made, but they're unfounded.

The other thing I want to point out is that, further to my colleagues Mr. Fergus and MP O'Connell, both of whom I have great respect for and in their remarks today made some very compelling arguments, we have set up all these different mechanisms within our government's mandate to protect against foreign election interference. We know that, on the one hand, there are non-partisan senior public servants within the caretaker period who are part of the panel for the critical election incident public protocol and panel. They take part in that during the caretaker period. We also know that outside of that caretaker period, our government has implemented what Rosenberg refers to as an “electoral ecosystem approach”, which is an all-of-government approach to combat foreign election interference. This has four pillars—enhancing citizen preparedness, improving organizational readiness, combatting foreign interference and building a healthy information ecosystem.

What I want to say about this is that, on the one hand, our government has set up a process—i.e., the protocol and panel—so that even within an election period, in a writ period or where the caretaker convention applies, there is a rigorous set of non-partisan senior officials who have expertise and are informed by the SITE task force, which is composed of experts in national security from all of our agencies, which are providing them with regular briefings.

That's just within the caretaker period. Then we have an independent assessment done after every election. Let's also be honest. If we actually look at and evaluate from the James Judd report, which was an independent assessment, how many of the recommendations were implemented, we can see that the vast majority of them, if not all of them, were implemented. I think maybe one wasn't implemented. That's because the government didn't necessarily agree with that one or took a different approach.

Similarly, within the 16 or so recommendations that were made by Morris Rosenberg, which I take very seriously.... I read the report. I think there's a lot of substance there that this committee could be deliberating on. We could be really drilling down on those recommendations instead of playing political games.

To me, the original motion that Mr. Cooper put forward, which was to have political staffers here.... I mean, they're not national security experts. We have all the deputy ministers. We have the national security and intelligence adviser to the Prime Minister. We've had the director of CSIS. The list goes on and on. I actually have the list of witnesses here if you want me to read them out.

You couldn't ask for a better list of witnesses to come before this committee. I don't see what the rationale is when you have ministerial accountability outside of the caretaker period and you have the officials and experts who inform them coming to this committee. Then you have the non-partisan public servants who are doing the work within the caretaker period who are coming forward. What more information could you possibly really want?

If your motivation was truly to get to the bottom of this and to take this matter seriously, why wouldn't you be listening to the people who have the expertise?

That's not good enough for the official opposition. It's not good enough because they want to push a narrative that is counter to the interests of our democracy and our democratic institutions. It's one that tries to undermine our democracy and our institutions. That, I will not stand for.

I want to talk for a moment about the fact that our government took up recommendations from an extensive report that was done in 2018.

In 2018, the ethics committee did a study that produced a very significant report called “Democracy Under Threat: Risks and Solutions in the Era of Disinformation and Data Monopoly”. The chair at the time was Bob Zimmer. I know the Conservatives will know Bob. That report is over 100 pages. It has significant recommendations, many of which have been acted on. If you trace back to the government response to that report, you can see that many of the things that unfolded after that report was published were responded to by the government and actually implemented.

Again, it points to the fact that there is no basis for this absurd claim that our government doesn't take foreign election interference seriously and the false claim that the government has done nothing on this.

Let me stack this up a little bit in terms of what the government has done.

I'll go back to that ethics report, which I assume happened over the course of a significant period because it's a pretty extensive study. As we know, these things can take months—to hear from witnesses and then deliberate. What I can see from that is that in 2018 that report was published, a government response came in shortly after—I'm not sure I have the date on the government response, but it was shortly after—and many of these things were then acted on.

First, obviously the critical election incident public protocol and panel were set up. That was first established before the 2019 election. The plan to protect Canadian democracy, which is that four-pillar plan that outlines an all-of-government approach, was implemented as well. That's listed in the Rosenberg report. He takes the time to go through the various initiatives that unfolded and were implemented out of that, so I'd like to speak to those for a moment.

One of the pillars of that all-of-government approach, which is sometimes referred to as the electoral ecosystem approach.... Let's be honest. Foreign election interference can't be tackled with just one intervention. It's a systematic set of strategies and interventions that cut across all of our ministries and institutions that's required. There's a lot of collaboration with many of our other systemic issues. We know that we need an all-of-government approach, and I think all of us are familiar with calls on the government to have a whole-of-government approach. This is exactly what our government has been implementing, and there's evidence of this. For committee members to claim that the government hasn't done anything just ignores the facts.

When you look at pillar one of the plan to protect Canadian democracy, enhancing citizen preparedness is the pillar. There's been a digital citizen initiative led by Canadian Heritage, which supported skills development through the use of awareness sessions, workshops and learning materials. That's one thing that's been done in that pillar.

Another is Get Cyber Safe. It is another public awareness campaign about Internet security, which added content about cyber-threats to the Canadian democratic process. Again, this is raising awareness among citizens across Canada, because what we've heard from CSIS in our testimony, and others, is that this is not just about intelligence. Everybody has a role to play in protecting our democracy. Part of it means raising the awareness of our citizens so that they understand what we're up against, what to look out for and what the signs are of foreign election interference so that they can help us identify, report and, in a way, gather intel and information that may be helpful in preventing it from happening.

Prior to 2019, the government provided journalists with training on foreign interference and convened regular press briefings. We also helped essentially to inform and to train journalists. There were also changes to Canada's election laws that expanded the CEO information and education programs aimed at the Canadian public. I will just flip to some of the legislative changes that were made.

One was An Act respecting national security matters, Bill C-59. Bill C-59 was a piece of legislation that our government brought forward that provided both CSIS and CSE with the ability to engage in threat reduction measures, subject to legal authorization of course. We heard from the director of CSIS when he was before our committee that they do intervene and have threat reduction measures that they're able to use. Obviously when there's credible intel that's been analyzed, corroborated and evaluated such that they're obviously not acting on a partial piece of intelligence, which as the director said, was the case. Most of the time they were accumulating intelligence that came with significant caveats. However, it's good for us to know that they have threat reduction measures, and they use those where needed.

What's interesting, though, is that our government was the one that gave them those powers in Bill C-59. Again, what's interesting is that the Conservatives keep claiming that we've done nothing. CSIS has threat reduction measures that were given to them by legislation that was passed by our government. That's a direct conflict with what the Conservatives keep asserting.

Another one is BIll C-76, the Elections Modernization Act. Conservatives also claim over and over that the government hasn't done anything, as if they repeat this falsehood and people are going to believe it. I don't believe that Canadians are going to be fooled by the assertion of false claims over and over again. The Elections Modernization Act came into force in June 2019, and it adds a number of different interesting and important measures. One is that it prohibits foreign persons or entities from unduly influencing an elector to vote or refrain from voting, or to vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate or registered party.

It also prohibits third parties from using foreign funds for partisan advertising and activities. It also prohibits foreign entities from spending on partisan advertising and activities during both the pre-election and election periods. It also requires online platforms to publish a registry of partisan advertising published during the pre-election period and all election advertising during the election period. It also has provisions that prohibit knowingly making or publishing a false statement to affect election results.

Those are five additional measures that were added in the Elections Modernization Act.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you.

Madam Chair, I won't direct this comment to the witnesses, because they do an incredible job of being non-partisan. I would just say, in conclusion, that perhaps it would be beneficial for us to reflect on the fact that the Conservatives voted against Bill C-76 when it came before the House of Commons and gave those powers to the commissioner to be able to do this incredible work on our behalf today.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you.

Bill C-76, which came about in 2018, significantly increased the powers of Elections Canada to look into and investigate foreign interference. Is that correct?

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Within Bill C-76, you were given new powers and authorities to compel testimony by applying to a judge to have individuals basically be compelled under oath to testify on these matters. Is that not correct?

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I'm going to move on to the Canada Elections Act. Some changes were made previously by the current government through Bill C-76. There were measures introduced in legislation to keep out foreign influence, including through money, in our elections.

I'll start with Mr. Perrault. I'm wondering if you could explain a bit about what changes were implemented by the current government.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Oh no. It's been a while since I've done this by Zoom. If I'm too loud for the interpreters, please interrupt me. If I need to adjust that, I'm happy to accommodate them.

I have a lot of notes here and a lot that I would like to talk about, but before I do that, I think I would like to reflect on the comments of my colleague Mr. Fergus, who spoke just before me and has raised a very good point.

Mr. Fergus, towards the conclusion of his speech—and actually at the beginning as well—spoke at length about the need for this type of work to be done in a non-partisan way, and I couldn't agree more. I think that at the heart of this we should all be very concerned about any foreign interference in our democracy. We all should look at ways to further enhance and protect our democracy, very much like this government, in my opinion, has done since 2015.

A number of things have been brought into play, some of which the Conservatives actually voted against. I will get to those in a bit, but I am specifically concerned about the partisanship in this issue.

The first thing that comes to mind is how deeply concerned I am with the comments made by a member of this committee. Mr. Calkins, a member of this committee who is sitting in the room right now, when he was in an airport on his way to this meeting, said in a video as he was talking about what he was coming to Ottawa to do and about going after the Prime Minister, “what the Liberals did about...one of their candidates being an agent for Beijing.” Mr. Calkins said that in a video and posted it on social media. He made that comment about a duly elected member of Parliament. I find that deeply troubling.

I mean, if I were Mr. Dong and I heard that, the first thing I would be doing is contacting a pretty high-profile lawyer to take on this case, because I think there is an incredible opportunity to go after Mr. Calkins for defamation in this regard. I think what we are witnessing coming from the Conservative Party and Mr. Calkins specifically in this regard is the story, in my opinion. That's the story of what's going on here. It's about Conservatives not genuinely caring about how we look at this in a non-partisan way and how we go about ensuring that our democracy is kept safe. Instead, it's about how we can turn this into a “gotcha, Liberal” issue. It's about how we can fundraise and how we can defame duly elected members of Parliament by calling them—and I quote—“an agent for Beijing”.

To the NDP and Bloc members of this committee, I ask you if this is what you want to be going along with. Do you want to be associating yourselves with those comments Mr. Calkins made on his way to this very meeting? I think you have to really stop and think about that, because I am fairly certain that the NDP and the Bloc are genuinely concerned about election interference, as they should be, and as all democracies throughout the world should be.

Going along with the Conservative approach on this issue and the comments by Mr. Calkins I find to be so incredibly troubling. To associate yourselves with them by standing and supporting motions that they bring forward.... I think the NDP and the Bloc either should reconsider their position or should go and talk to their friends in the Conservative Party about allowing comments like that from a sitting member of PROC and letting them stand.

I would really like to hear from Mr. Julian and Madame Gill whether they believe that Han Dong is an agent of Beijing. I'd like to hear from other Conservative members on this committee whether they think he is an agent of Beijing.

I'd like to talk about some of the stuff that this government has done and why I believe that Mr. Turnbull's approach is the right approach in attempting to make this as non-partisan as possible.

One of the things this government did very early on, which the Conservatives were actually against, was to introduce Bill C-76. Bill C-76 repealed a number of the initiatives brought forward in the so-called Fair Elections Act, which was introduced by no less than the member for Carleton, now the leader of the official opposition now. Another thing Bill C-76 did was to give and enhance the tools to combat foreign interference in elections. Conservatives voted against that. Conservatives voted against Bill C-76 despite the fact that they are using an opportunity now to grandstand on the issue.

I think it's important to look at what people are saying now versus how they were voting in the past and what actions they actually took. These Conservative members who are sitting on the committee weren't interested in putting resources into combatting foreign interference when it came to Bill C-76 in 2018; they actually voted against it.

The other thing this government put in place, which has been talked about a number of times—it was in place for the 2019 election and for the 2021 election—was the work to put in the critical election incident public protocol. This is a special committee of non-partisan experts, experts in the field of foreign interference, experts who come from our departments, public servants. They get together during the writ period and make sure they are ready to respond and have the authority to respond if any election interference is identified. They're also required to share that information with relevant parties when required. It's a tool that has been utilized in two elections, as I mentioned. Then, based on the information, reports are generated by a third party afterward. One of those reports regarding the 2021 election was tabled just yesterday. Those reports, both in 2019 and in 2021, indicated that the elections occurred in a transparent way and that there was no foreign interference, despite the fact that Mr. Calkins refers to the member for Don Valley North as an agent of Beijing. I think that's a very important tool. It's a tool that gives us the ability to have confidence in our democratic process and allows us to ensure there is accountability by non-partisan individuals and that a report can be generated after the fact, which we've seen.

The other thing, of course, that we have in place is NSICOP. I don't need to spell it out for you, because everybody on this committee knows what that committee is or what the acronym stands for. It is a committee made up of parliamentarians who have access to their heart's content to unredacted documents about these issues, what they need to look at, with the understanding that they have the classifications required to view these documents. The Conservatives have members on that committee when they decide to show up. Let's not forget that Conservatives used NSICOP as another political opportunity.

A number of times, Conservatives used NSICOP as an opportunity to politicize once again whatever their objective of the day was or whatever they were looking to fundraise off. The Conservatives did that.

The reality is that NSICOP is there for a reason. It's there to ensure that the members who are on that committee and have been appointed by the respective parties have access to that information. They have the ability to look at those completely unredacted documents.

Mr. Cooper, Mr. Calkins and the other Conservatives on PROC want to have a public inquiry. As we heard today from Jody Thomas, the national security and intelligence advisor for the PCO, a public inquiry isn't going to be able to have any more access to classified information than this committee. We know that.

It sounds good: “Public inquiry” sounds really good. I can understand why Mr. Julian and the Bloc would be tempted into wanting to do that, because it's sensational, but it's not going to do anything that this committee can't already do. We heard that from the experts. They are those who are in control of that very important and sensitive information.

What she said today at this committee is that the best place for that information was in NSICOP. What's going to happen? I can already tell you what's going to happen. We're going to have a public inquiry, or this committee will look into this stuff, and Mr. Cooper and Mr. Calkins will be throwing their hands up in the air and screaming bloody murder because there are redactions on the documents. Mr. Poilievre will walk out into a press conference and hold up and wave a bunch of papers that have blacked-out information and say, “Oh, look, they're hiding all this information from us.”

That's how you make it partisan. It's by doing things like that, and that's what you will do. That's what they will do, Madam Chair, if we get to the point of allowing this circus that Mr. Calkins and Mr. Cooper want to have. Quite frankly, that's where we're going.

It raises a question: Do we really want to get to the bottom of this so that we can protect our democracy and do it in a way that respects the classification of documents?

Why are these documents classified? It's because we don't want those foreign agents to know what's in them. That's why they're protected. That would never deter the opposition from taking an opportunity to exploit redacted papers with redacted information in them, saying someone's trying to hide something.

Mr. Cooper said it himself on a CBC panel just two nights ago. He said, “The Liberals will redact the documents. We don't trust them with them.” He knows full well the documents are not redacted by the Liberals. He makes it sound like it's happening in a political party's headquarters, with people sitting there redacting documents, but he knows full well the way that it really happens. It's done by the law clerk. That's not to say that they wouldn't jump on the opportunity to politicize the clerk's office either, from time to time, as we've seen, and those institutions that we hold to give us that information, because they've done that in the past.

If it's not about playing a political game and it's genuinely about protecting our democracy, why won't we listen to the experts who came to the committee today? They are the people who are in control of holding this information, I might add. Why wouldn't we listen to them when they say, “You discuss this stuff in public. We won't be able to give you all the information, because of the nature of it”? They're literally guarding our.... They're the ones who seem to want to protect our democracy more than Conservatives right now, so why on earth would we not listen to them? I mean, the NDP has representatives on NSICOP. Conservatives have representatives on NSICOP.

Madam Chair, I think I will leave it there for now, although I do have a lot more to add. I have a lot more notes here. Maybe I will get back on the list later.

I would really like to hear at some point soon, hopefully, comments from Mr. Julian and Madame Gill about whether or not they agree with Mr. Calkins that Mr. Han Dong, a duly elected MP for Don Valley North, is indeed an agent of Beijing. I would like to hear their comments on that.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr Chair, thank you for the opportunity to present to you and committee members today.

I would like to begin by commending the committee for studying the so-called police stations, which are a suspected vector of foreign activities steered by the People's Republic of China and operate in Canada as well as other democracies around the world.

The reports of the PRC attempting to enhance its clandestine footprint on Canadian soil reflect two incontrovertible trends. First is that the geopolitical landscape is increasingly complex, with hostile actors looking to disrupt the international rules-based order that has been in place since the end of the Second World War; and, second, like other democracies, Canada has increasingly become a target of foreign interference, which is a direct by-product of the agenda driven by hostile actors whose objective is to undermine our national interests.

Today, I will outline the concrete steps the federal government is taking to mitigate the threat of foreign interference. Before I do so, let me emphasize that Canada has a strong and resilient democracy that is bolstered by a community of national security and public safety agencies that work around the clock to protect our institutions. These agencies have important resources, technologies and tools at their disposal to ensure national security.

The federal government does not undertake this work alone. Rather, we work collaboratively with other levels of government, as well as key allies in the Five Eyes, G7 and NATO. Together, the whole of government is positioned to assess, mitigate, investigate, prosecute and report on threats to Canadian national security.

We need to be always vigilant, because those threats are constantly evolving and manifesting in different ways, including through state and non-state hostile activities, foreign interference, cyber-attacks and threats to the security of our democratic, economic, academic, environmental and public health institutions.

In the face of these threats, the federal government is vigilant, and we are acting. I'd like to highlight five priority areas of our work.

First, we have put into place robust measures to protect our democratic institutions, including our elections.

We introduced Bill C-76 to crack down on foreign funding from third parties to federal campaigns and candidates. We created the security and intelligence threats to elections task force, or SITE. We created the critical incident reporting protocol to communicate transparently and impartially with Canadians during elections in the event that there is a threat to the integrity of a federal election. We also introduced the digital citizen initiative to promote democracy and social inclusion by building resilience against online disinformation and building partnerships to support a healthy information ecosystem.

The SITE task force looked at the federal elections of 2019 and 2021 and independently concluded that in both cases the integrity of the election was not compromised.

Second, we implemented a national cybersecurity strategy and action plan, which resulted in the launch of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.

In budget 2022, we allocated more than $850 million to enhance the Communications Security Establishment's ability to conduct cyber operations and better protect the privacy of Canadians.

Moreover, last spring, I introduced Bill C‑26, our new legislation on cybersecurity, which prioritizes critical infrastructure protection as it relates to the financial, telecommunications, transportation and innovation sectors.

Third, we have introduced national security guidelines for research partnerships that are backed by a research security centre and a $12.6-million investment, in order to protect the integrity of our academic institutions. The purpose of these guidelines is to integrate national security considerations into the overall assessment of research partnerships. Among other things, the guidelines require clear information about who researchers intend to partner with, what researchers intend to research and what additional due diligence will be taken to mitigate if the subject of research involves a sensitive area. In addition to the guidelines, research partnerships are subject to rigorous admissibility screening and required to comply with existing authorities that regulate exports and imports.

Fourth, when it comes to protecting our economy, the government vets foreign investments under the Investment Canada Act and has the capacity to reject those deals when they are contrary to our national security. The government, as you know, is proposing to further augment the authorities under the ICA.

We also have a new national critical minerals strategy in place. It will help leverage Canada's national resources in a sustainable way, in partnership with indigenous peoples.

Fifth, and finally, we've also modernized our foreign policy with the Indo-Pacific strategy. This strategy calls for the strengthening of our intelligence capabilities in the region, in order to enhance our cyber-diplomacy and deepen our partnership with allies. It is supported by an investment of over $100 million for these particular areas. Within the Indo-Pacific strategy, vis-à-vis our relationship with China, Canada states its commitment to challenge, compete, co-operate and coexist. Put simply, we will never apologize for defending our national interest.

Taken together, these give the committee an overview of the government's approach to managing threats, including foreign interference.

In closing, I would like to say a few words about the activities of foreign governments in Canada. Under international law, all foreign government representatives have a duty to respect our laws and regulations. Any foreign state that threatens, harasses or intimidates Canadians and Canadian residents is in violation of these international agreements.

I assure you that the RCMP is working with the intelligence community and our law enforcement partners to address these so‑called police stations that appear to be operating in the greater Toronto area. Its goal is to ensure that the public feels safe in its own communities. It's about building trust and, where possible, enforcing the law or disrupting activities.

The only way to build trust, Mr. Chair, is by being transparent. That is why we have grown the arsenal of national security tools. However, we have simultaneously raised the bar of transparency through the creation of NSIRA, NSICOP and more frequent public reporting by our intelligence agencies. In a similar vein, we have expressed that we will explore ways to further enhance transparency with regard to our fight against foreign interference. All options are on the table. These could include requiring foreign agents to be properly registered.

However, we must bring all Canadians into this discussion as we reform our institutions so they are more diverse, inclusive and free from systemic discrimination, biases and racism.

The objective of these and other ongoing efforts is to recognize that the threat of foreign interference is not static and that we must continue to develop the tools available to Canada to deal with this evolving threat.

Colleagues, as I close, I will underline that our national security and intelligence agencies continue to investigate and monitor reports of Chinese overseas police stations in Canada. There will be no tolerance for this or any other form of intimidation, harassment or harmful targeting of Canadians or individuals within Canada.

Canada will continue to stand for its interests and values, both at home and abroad.

Thank you.