Thank you, Chair.
What I'm proposing through my amendment is that we study foreign interference and the threats to the integrity of democratic institutions, intellectual property and the Canadian state itself arising from this foreign interference.
To me, I think that is a sufficient scope that removes reference to any one specific instance. This gives us the ability to broaden what it is and what kinds of witnesses we bring in to testify before us. It gives us the ability to look at specifically what kind of evidence we want to dive into. It doesn't limit us to a specific election. It allows us to be nimble, to be versatile.
For example, if we have a witness here before the committee and something comes up, we won't have to put forward a new motion. We can really take ownership of what that foreign interference is and how we protect our democratic institutions and make sure that we are talking about how we protect the Canadian democratic values as opposed to saying, “Oh, look at this bad state actor” or “Look at that bad state actor”.
I think that through my amendment we'll be able to have that effect, as opposed to, if my amendment does not pass, looking specifically and only at the 2021 election and looking only at China. This is how I read it.
I understand and appreciate that this is a study that's already happening somewhere, right, and we're looking forward to seeing what the outcome of that study is going to be. What I'm trying to say here is that foreign interference is a really big issue. It matters, we need to look into it and we need to look into it with a bigger scope rather than narrowing it, to broaden the horizons of what it is that we're trying to achieve here.