Evidence of meeting #120 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Members, we will now resume the meeting. Just as a reminder, we are now in public and in committee business.
I have a list of speakers. So far I have Mr. Barrett, Mr. Bains, Ms. Khalid and Mr. Villemure.
Does anybody else want to be on that list?
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
I'd like to raise a question of privilege, Mr. Chair.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Okay. Can you hang on? I'll come back to you in a second.
You are fourth on the list of speakers, Mr. Villemure.
Mr. Bains, I think you'll have to wait until you have the floor. I will just confirm that with the clerk. I've not dealt with a question of privilege at committee before, so just give me a second, please.
Mr. Bains, on the question of privilege, having not dealt with this before at committee, I need to determine what the reasons are for the question of privilege and an explanation of such. I cannot determine whether in fact there is a question of privilege to be determined. It is up to the Speaker of the House to determine that.
11:50 a.m.
An hon. member
Perhaps I can add to that.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
I can add to it.
I'd like to raise a question of privilege. It's in regard to statements that were made last week in the committee. I want to respond to some accusations that were made against me. The accusations were made in committee.
11:50 a.m.
An hon. member
Chair, [Inaudible—Editor] the floor.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Just hang on, Michael, please.
Is it a question of privilege or a point of order that you're raising?
11:50 a.m.
An hon. member
Can you suspend while you—
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Well, the clerk, I'm sure, doesn't need the help.
I will suspend for a few minutes, because I want to be better prepared on how to deal with this. I think it's incumbent upon me as chair to make sure we do the right thing here, not having experienced this in the past.
I'm going to suspend.
Noon
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
I appreciate the patience of the committee. Not having dealt with this matter before, I want to be very sure that, from a procedural standpoint, we're doing all the correct things.
Mr. Bains, when we left, you raised your hand on a question of privilege. I'm going to allow you to state what you believe the question of privilege is.
If you want to go ahead, please do.
Noon
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Thank you.
As I stated, I'm raising a question of privilege with regard to statements made last week in committee. I want to respond to some of the accusations that have been made in the committee. I'd like for the committee to decide if it should go to the Speaker of the House.
Page 57 of the third edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice describes parliamentary privilege as follows:
the rights and immunities that are deemed necessary for the House of Commons, as an institution, and its members, as representatives of the electorate, to fulfill their functions.
Page 88 outlines that:
Members individually have the responsibility to not abuse their rights and immunities, particularly freedom of speech.
On page 112, a quote from Speaker Fraser in 1987 says:
The privileges of a Member are violated by any action which might impede him or her in the fulfilment of his or her duties and functions. It is obvious that the unjust damaging of a reputation could constitute such an impediment.
Furthermore, Mr. Chair, on page 619 it states:
Remarks which question a Member's integrity, honesty or character are not in order. A Member will be requested to withdraw offensive remarks, allegations, or accusations of impropriety directed towards another Member.
During our last meeting, Mr. Brock made false claims and allegations of collusion towards me in an effort to intimidate and bully me and to impede my work as a member of Parliament. This raises a prima facie case of intimidation and threat to my reputation.
In 2021 I was approached by members of the community and encouraged to run for office. I'm very honoured to be representing the people of Steveston—Richmond East. I stood for office to speak to my values and my vision for Canada. I was elected by the community where I've lived my entire life, because they know me and they trust me. They know I can represent them here in Canada's Parliament. I ran to help build a better Richmond, a better B.C. and a better Canada for present and future generations, with things like building trade links, greening the economy and improving government efficiency.
That was one of the key reasons I chose—I think I was one of two people who chose—to sit on the mighty OGGO committee. I know other members sit on the committee with me. It was to improve the management of taxpayer dollars. I was motivated at the time to do a spending review and apply it to how taxpayer funds are used by departments, but also here on Parliament Hill, to find savings without impacting services on programs by closing loopholes.
I say that sincerely, Mr. Chair. This was the spirit behind the motion that I tried to raise at the last committee meeting. I gave notice on Friday, May 17 of a motion to study a clear abuse of taxpayer dollars, in this case committed by dozens of members of the Conservative caucus, including the members opposite.
However, last week Mr. Brock filibustered his own motion and abused his parliamentary privilege to issue a flurry of allegations against me, intended to intimidate, impede and commit character assassination rather than accept the slightest measure of accountability for his personal and unethical actions, and to avoid voting on an issue that would place him and others in a clear conflict of interest.
Having known about Mr. Chiu's claims for three years, the member opposite had plenty of opportunities to bring this motion forward. Only when I, in the course of carrying out my work as an MP, attempted to shed light on a spending loophole and a potential unethical abuse of taxpayer dollars did he come forward with these accusations.
Mr. Chair, I think you can also attest to my participation in this committee. I try to work with everyone. I try to be non-partisan as much as possible. I work honestly and try to get to the heart of the matter in all the issues that we raise in this important committee.
The timing of their motion confirms that it has been made in bad faith, motivated purely by partisanship and malicious intent.
Mr. Brock's accusations.... The attacks were not aimed just at me but also at Justice Hogue and her findings. When he repeats the falsehood that “They”—the CCP—“got the outcome they wanted: They got the Liberal government in power again,” these statements couldn't clash more with Justice Hogue's findings.
The report indicated clearly that Canada's electoral system “remains...sound”. The evidence shows that foreign interference did not impact the integrity of Canada's electoral system in 2019 and 2021. Justice Hogue also said that none of “the evidence [she's] heard to date” suggests that officials acted in “bad faith”, yet this is what Mr. Brock accused me of.
These findings hold with what Mr. Chiu said at the committee last year. He made no accusations of my being involved. He only went so far as to allege that I benefited from the supposed interference, and now he himself is also changing the story. He actually went on the radio during his many interviews after losing, especially on CKNW, and said that he knows about the work I've done in the community and that he knows me to be a good man.
Ironically, while at committee, my former opponent engaged in the very conduct that he and Mr. Brock indict me and accuse me of: impropriety in doing nothing to counter, and even purposely spreading, CCP misinformation and disinformation. Specifically, Mr. Chiu now claims, as part of his evidence, that I labelled his bill and his leader as racist and that I was spreading CCP misinformation. It's an attempt to damage my reputation and, quite frankly, to try to bully me.
This is a lie. I never spoke about Mr. Chiu during the election. I didn't have to. I spoke about myself. I was raised in Richmond. I'm a local guy, a local community guy. I don't work against people; I work around them. I only talked about myself and what I could do.
On the matter of the registry, I said that I couldn't support something that is viewed to be discriminatory, and this was during a wave of anti-Asian hate. You all recall that this was a post-COVID time when anti-Asian hate was on the rise. In the city of Richmond specifically, there was a case in which a hot coffee was spilled, and it was well known, documented across Canada or covered across Canada. A hot coffee was spilled on an elderly Chinese lady. That case went to court, and it was proved to be a hate crime. This was happening at the same time. Having been through.... At the same time, many members of the community came to me and said that no one ever stands with them, including Mr. Chiu. I never mentioned his name, but they told me that Mr. Chiu and other leaders in the community don't stand with them and don't help them.
Having been through the report, and assuming that Justice Hogue examined the 2021 Steveston—Richmond East election in some detail, I know of no such conclusions made by Justice Hogue that match the ones made in the sensationalist and fundamentally false statements made by Mr. Brock in the committee last week.
After three years of Mr. Chiu making his claims, including numerous appearances at committees on the inquiry, where he reluctantly admitted to not collecting or retaining any of the supposed evidence from the election—he also said that CSIS never got back to him and that the RCMP never got back to him—as well as over 10 months of investigations by Johnston and Hogue, nothing in the way of serious evidence has emerged.
This is why the statements in the report referring to Steveston—Richmond East are qualified with “could” and “possibly”. While I may not be a lawyer, I can be certain that if the member opposite—we know he's a very experienced litigator; he's told us many times—walked into the chambers and told the judge that they needed to convict somebody based on “could” and “maybe” and “possibly”, I think he knows that the result would be that he'd be sent out very quickly.
The fact is that serious claims require serious evidence, and neither Mr. Chiu nor Mr. Brock has been able to provide even ordinary evidence to support their very serious claims.
This case is not without precedent, as evidenced by a decision of Speaker Milliken in November 2010. In response to a point of order raised by the member for Scarborough—Rouge River about a negative attack delivered by the member for Brant against the member for Ajax—Pickering, the Speaker found that this violated parliamentary procedure and previous rulings of the Speaker.
Speaker Milliken concluded that:
For all of these reasons, after careful review of the Statement of the member for Brant, the Chair finds that it constituted a personal attack on the member for Ajax—Pickering and that it was an inappropriate use of a statement made pursuant to Standing Order 31. Therefore, I call upon the member for Brant to withdraw his comments.
It's clear, Mr. Chair, that personal attacks against members are out of order and should not be allowed to proceed. However, if Mr. Brock is looking for evidence of intimidation and disregard of the Chinese community, he needs to look no further than the previous government. I think I've made these comments before as well. Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper approved CCP police officers coming onto Canadian soil and allowed them to police their community here, ultimately through intimidation, and repatriate Chinese Canadians back to their home country, striking fear into the heart of the community. This happened. The Conservatives did this to curry favour with the dictatorship in Beijing at the time, which they now claim to oppose.
I do believe the registry has merit. I'll make some comments on that.
We heard from Mr. Stanton, a former CSIS executive manager, that they are also limited, as they cannot target the proxies. I proactively reached out to CSIS after the election, and I said, “Hey, I need your help. I want to know a bit more about these issues that have been coming up.” They also said that the registry doesn't have teeth and doesn't address the issue of the proxy.
Instead, Mr. Stanton recommended that Parliament focus more on the Security of Information Act as the best way to tackle foreign interference, and this has been a focus of mine during my time as an MP. I also collaborated with MP Dhaliwal on drafting motion M-112 to combat foreign intimidation against diaspora communities, which recently passed unanimously in the House of Commons.
Rather than simply imposing a reactionary tool to address foreign interference and expecting it to fix the problem, Bill C-70 has also been put forward to modernize Canada's security establishment, and I'll be speaking on that as well. It will more actively pursue foreign actors bent on causing harm to Canadians.
We're dealing with misinformation and disinformation. It's information, and the focus should be on the security of information. My former opponent also claimed I was spreading misinformation and misleading voters by saying that the Conservative Party would eliminate the assault rifle ban if elected, but this was not misinformation; this was actually part of the CPC platform.
At the same time, Mr. Chiu was actively spreading misinformation by disseminating actual flyers. I never spoke about Mr. Chiu, as I mentioned earlier, throughout the whole campaign. I never said his name once, and I didn't talk about him; I didn't have to. He actually handed out flyers saying I was going to legalize hard drugs in Richmond. This was not part of the 2021 Liberal Party platform, nor is it the law of the land today.
Rather, Mr. Brock and the CPC have been sitting on their hands while claims of foreign interference run rife in the Conservative Party. I think I've raised some of these issues before as well. Mr. Brock frequently made reference to former leader Erin O'Toole's claims that up to eight ridings were affected by foreign interference in the 2021 election, but Mr. Brock doesn't seem to think Mr. O'Toole's recent claims of interference by the government in China contributed to his being ousted as the leader of the Conservative Party. Mr. O'Toole even suggests that a CPC member and former member of the CPC's national council, Bert Chen, who was suspended from the party's national council after launching the petition to recall O'Toole as leader, was involved.
It gets worse: More than 100 Iranian Canadians sent a letter to Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre on Tuesday, calling for an investigation of the party's handling of allegations—
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
I have a point of order, Chair.
Mr. Bains, in his meandering offering, is talking about things that have actually occurred since the meeting in which he claims the offence against his privilege was taken.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
I'm sure he believes it's relevant, but Chair—
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
I'm not sure specifically which point of order he's referring to from the Standing Orders, Chair.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Relevance is the first thing, Chair—
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Ms. Khalid, can you hang on, please?
Go ahead, Mr. Barrett. I think I got your point, and I actually got on the microphone almost at the same time you did.