Finance Committee on May 2nd, 2023

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I'm going to stay on topic, as I have been.

My subamendment, just to refresh, is that the public safety minister be invited before the committee. The reason I think we need the public safety minister before the committee is to address the proposals in the budget implementation act that deal with the issue of foreign state-backed interference, which is a defining national security threat.

There's no way one could be more on topic than when speaking about the national security threats we face, the context in which they exist and the proposals in the budget to address them. Maybe just to foreshadow where I'm going, the budget contains provisions around creating an office of.... It's not an office of foreign influence. There are a few other offices that are of foreign influence. It's an office of combatting foreign influence, ostensibly, or an office of responding to foreign influence.

Mr. Chair, the budget has this proposal, and I think it's ill defined. I think it generally misses the point. Obviously, there's a lot of work that needs to be done on foreign interference. There's a lot of expertise out there. So much of the problem has seemed to be political will. The problem has been that we have intelligence agencies, especially CSIS, that are waving the flag. They're saying to the government that we have these big issues. They raised concerns with the government about multiple things that were happening. The government has given very ambiguous, unclear answers about what and when it knew about various issues. Now it says, “Oh, no, we're on top of this, we're creating an office.” It's creating a relatively small office that's going to put all the pieces together.

One of the challenges we already have is that when people look at the issue of foreign interference, it's not always clear where they can go for resolution. If you're a Tibetan-Canadian, and you are facing foreign state-backed interference.... I could list various real-world cases where this is happening. The most publicized one was a student leader elected to an office on her university campus, who was subsequently subjected to a series of threats in a way that was likely coordinated from abroad.

If you're a Tibetan-Canadian, if you have concerns and you face this sort of thing, then where do you go? Maybe you go to this office of combatting foreign interference. Maybe that's your call. Do you call that office? Do you contact Global Affairs Canada, the RCMP, your local police or CSIS?

In fact, in many instances, people have been—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Blaikie, you have your hand up.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Is it a point of order?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I saw a hand up.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I do have my hand up, Mr. Chair.

It's not a point of order. If you can put me on the list, then I'll be happy to speak when it's my turn.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We'll put you on the list, MP Blaikie. Thank you.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

If you're a person who is facing these kinds of issues, if you're a victim of this and you're looking for support, where do you go? Who is responsible for coordinating this response? I don't think that response is going to be coordinated by this small office that, as it sounds in the budget, is going to exist sort of independently from these other institutions.

There's a lot of information that CSIS already has, but the issue has been political will. The issue has been the government not responding to that information or taking it seriously or maybe making the calculation that it's not in their interest to respond seriously to that. What we have seen in reports in various newspapers is that the Communist Party in Beijing believed that it was in its interest to see the re-election of a minority Liberal government.

That's what has been reported, so it's, I think, this structural challenge that we have, which is that if we are seeing foreign state-backed interference that has as its goal political interference that benefits political actors—and those political actors are the ones who are supposed to be solving the problem and those political actors are not motivated to solve the problem because they are the ones who are in some way benefiting from this interference—then we have a problem. I think the only response to that is some degree of sunlight. When these issues get exposed, the public understandably is concerned about the issue and puts pressure on its leaders to do better.

We have a case right now that has just come out. It's really a baffling and horrifying situation, such that it was the lead item for all three opposition parties in question period—rarely does it happen that there's such a unity of focus and concern on a particular issue—which is to say that we have foreign interference that involved threats against the family of a member of Parliament in response to a vote and work done by that member of Parliament on human rights issues, particularly on the Uyghur genocide. The government, it seems, was aware of that information and did not inform the member involved until it became public.

The government's response since then has been to say it has offered reassurance to the member and so forth, but that engagement should have come much, much earlier. I think any of us would expect that if a foreign government were involved in something that was impacting one of our families, the government would be engaged with us right away.

These are questions that I think we need to put to the Minister of Public Safety. We need to understand what he knew and when. He was asked repeatedly in question period today: When did he get this information, and when was he told what was happening? In fact, at no point did he provide a response. Well, he provided responses, but at no point did he provide an answer to the question in terms of actually saying when he became aware of this information or not. These are the kinds of questions we would likely pose to the public safety minister if he were here.

Related to that, to the BIA, I think it's important to establish what the government is actually planning on doing structurally to combat these problems. On this “we're going to create a new office and we're going to appoint someone new” response, how is that actually going to constructively respond to the problem?

It has been, I think, the pattern of the government in general, as is recommended in the great British television show, Yes Minister . When the minister sees a problem and his officials ask him what is he going to do, he says, “I'll appoint someone.” He almost has a special rapporteur, but he's not at that point yet.

This is the tendency, but it's not actually resolving—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Excuse me, Mr. Genuis. Could you just move away from the mike and give it some distance? The feedback is affecting the sound for the translators and, of course, it's for the health and safety for our translators, please, if you just keep back a bit from the mike. Thank you.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

If I do it from here, is that being heard on the mike? Is that okay? That's perfect. I can lean further back, even. Is that okay?

This is much more comfortable, Chair.

I've been a parliamentarian—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I don't think anyone is struggling to hear. The struggle is in appreciating what's being said, not in hearing it.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Blaikie, I look forward to your subsequent comments on what Conservative principles are, but I welcome your attention.

To be honest, I've been a member of Parliament for eight years, and I've always leaned into the mike, so this is great news.

Anyway, Mr. Chair, what I was—

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We have a point of order.

MP Perkins, welcome to the committee.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Sorry to interrupt my colleague, but I just want to make sure I'm following. The clerk has been kind enough to send me the original motion from Mr. Beech, but if Mr. Genuis could circulate his amendment to the members so that we can put it in the context of the whole thing—so, send it to the clerk and perhaps have the clerk send it to us—that would be helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Mr. Genuis is welcome to submit it to the clerk, and the clerk can then distribute it to the members.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you.

What's the appropriate email for that?

[Alexandre, Sacha) Vassiliev (Committee Clerk]

It's [email protected].

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Just a moment here.

What I sent you is the text of.... I bolded and underlined the additions that I'm proposing and used a strikethrough for the bits that I'm removing. Otherwise, it's the text of the amendment from Mr. Blaikie.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Genuis. It will need to be translated before it can be distributed.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Okay. Thank you.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I think this demonstration of technological prowess is meant to make the case as to why we need to hire experts to combat foreign interference.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Blaikie, we appreciate it.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Blaikie, we'll open a chess.com window once somebody else is....

It will no doubt be a great source of disappointment to members when I say that I have to duck out at six o'clock. I will quickly conclude my remarks. I think others may have some points to make, but if the discussion is still going on after seven o'clock, to quote the great General MacArthur, I will be back and I may have more to say at that point.

To conclude, on the issue of the Minister of Public Safety and the importance of his role, as well as the important moment we're going through right now in terms of concern about this issue, I think in the budget implementation act it would have been wiser to allocate funds for a full inquiry into what's going on. That would have been the more appropriate approach. We need to actually look at what has happened, get to the bottom of it and hold people accountable.

I might say that the national inquiry should not be led by someone who works or has worked at the Trudeau Foundation. There are still some Canadians out there who have not worked for the Trudeau Foundation. I'm sure one of them would be available to lead such an inquiry.

Again, this speaks to the importance of having the Minister of Public Safety speak on the budget implementation act and answer some questions about what he's been up to and what the spending plan is around strengthening our police response to these issues. We'll probably have some other questions for the Minister of Public Safety about the challenges this country faces in terms of crime and how the budget seeks to respond to those. The government is devoting enormous resources to targeting law-abiding firearms owners while failing to directly deal with the issue of repeat violent offenders, which can be directly traced to changes the government made to the parole system.

The subamendment that I put forward does deal with the fact that ministers should appear. They shouldn't just be invited to appear; they should be expected to appear. Indeed, the subamendment does say that the clause-by-clause will not proceed unless the ministers appear.

To explain that a bit, there's no way to compel ministers to appear, as has been said and as members know. We can't compel ministers to appear. That's the one exception. You can compel anyone to appear, but you can't compel ministers who, ironically, are the people who should be appearing most often and are most fully accountable for the work being done by their departments. That's the principle of ministerial accountability.

We can't compel ministers to appear, but if we say that the committee expects them to appear before the committee proceeds to clause-by-clause, I think that enshrines the principle that.... I guess you could say it uses the leverage that we have. The committee doesn't have the ability to legally compel ministers to have the Sergeant-at-Arms drag them here. The committee can say that if the government wants to proceed with this legislative agenda, then it has to explain that legislative agenda to committees. It has to make its ministers available for a reasonable period of time—I think two hours is a reasonable period of time to answer questions—and at least respond to questions, if not answer them. If they do so, then the clause-by-clause will proceed.

With great respect for Mr. Blaikie, I think the idea of inviting ministers is fine. Let's invite the ministers, but it would be too easy, if it was simply a matter of an open-ended invitation, for those ministers to blow off the invitation. It will be back to finding Freeland territory again and wondering where the Minister of Finance is and wondering where the Minister of Public Safety is.

In the interest of not being in that territory again and not needing to worry about finding Freeland and so forth, we could proceed with passing the subamendment. Again, to not being in that territory of finding Freeland, I think we should pass the subamendment and therefore be able to move forward.

I will yield the floor at this point and proceed to my other meeting.

As I said, Mr. Chair, I have more things to say. I may have a chance to say them later on this evening.